Hi all, i have read a lot of the postings and questions but i am still looking for a clear cut answer on what is best (on a limited budget) a capture card or a Dazzle type box? I used to use an old Matrox external box but it had an AGP card which had to be installed to use it, this had to come out when i got a Gforce card. If i have understood what i have read correctly??? external units use hardware acceleration to speed-up the capture/encoding process,where as capture cards use s/ware for this process and are slower, is this correct? I note that the Leadtek TV2000-XP seems to be the card a lot of people rate but there seems to be divided opinion on what is a good s/ware package for editing and finally burning to disk. My main use is for transfering VHS to DVD, any advice/clarification would be most appreciated. Regards Mike.
i had the same exact question. i bought both the winfast leadtek tv2000 deluxe and dazzle dvc 80 (usb connection). i had some problems with the sound with the dazzle device. apparently others had a similar problem and were waiting on feedback from pinnacle/dazzle. the vid quality was also less than what i expected. the winfast card works well, however. i havent completed the entire process of burning to a dvd. i am currently capturing some old vhs home movies and intend on creating a single dvd out of them. one note, i bought the leadtek tv2000 deluxe, which apparently uses an older 8-bit encoding chip. the tv2000 expert version has a new 10-bit chip that i assume is better.
Yo cdcoaster, I bought the Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP Expert (10 bit) and the softwares that come with it is more than sufficient right from encoding to burning. There are feedbacks that budget USB box delivers inferior video as compared to capture cards and ext box are mostly just for video input with no TV Tuner and FM function. Hey, you might want to checkout this review http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/leadtek-2000-expert/ for a better picture of the Leadtek Expert. I've converted VHS to DVD with my Leadtek card the playback on my 43" TV is good and now I'm waiting for my 'Digital Video Stabilizer' to come before doing backups of my LDs as well.
I think the Best Box For Captureing Video From analogue Sources is definately the "Canopus ADVC-100" It compresses the Analogue signal into DV useing one of the Best DV Encoder chips you can get and it locks the audio and Video together at the time of compression so there is no chance of Sync Problems occuring..The Image Quality is totally indisistinguishable from the Source Video..This Video gets transfered to your PC VIA Firewire Port when it can be edited over and over again without any Quality degridation and is the Best and easiest Format to edit with, and once you have it the way you want you just Encode it to Mpeg2 for DVD and Author Like normal...Out of The Dozzens of Capture Devices and Have Owned and Tried this one is By far the Best for Quality...Hardware Encodeing directly to Mpeg2 has Many Drawbacks becides Marginal Quality , Like the Lack of Proper editing...Well anyways This will Probably be My next Capture device as soon as I can get $250 hidden away....Cheers
A big thank you to all of you for replying, i think that has cleared that question up for sure. I have had a look around (thanx for the link onestop) and found the Leadtek Expert for sale at between £40.00 and £44.00 including the dreaded English VAT (a "Value Added Tax" have you ever heard such a contradiction in terms, talk about an insult to the intelligence, sorry, must stop ranting!) which considering the overall package seems excelent value for the money, and lots of people really rate it's performance, that will do for me thanx as i am hardly looking for broadcast quality just a straight forward method of transferral. I checked out the Canopus that you discribed Minion and it certainly looks impressivehttp://www.canopus.com/US/products/advc-100/pm_advc-100.asp although out of my budget range at the moment. 43" onestop, jez i bet you are popular lol, just what is a "digital video stabiliser" Thanx again, mike
Has anyone used the Plextor ConvertX capture box yet? I've used the Dazzle DV150 with marginal results thru my USB2.0 port. Also used the Pinnacle but experienced audio synch issues due to lost frames (I'm guessing..).
Yo cdcoaster, you can check out this link http://www.squeakersneakers.com/vs.htm for what a "Digital Video Stabilizer" does and it is much cheaper in ebay and more options too. As for the Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP Expert, please be inform that the sound input must be link directly into your sound card or some cases into the "AUX" of your motherboard.
