Does anyone have a recommendation for a good MPEG capture card? How much do they cost? (US) How good is the quality? Is there a file size limit? Could I capture an hour of footage? How much space would that require? I have Wintv which captures in .avi format, but that takes up so much space. I do convert to MPG, that that takes forever. My video camera has a firewire out. Would I be better off using that, and just getting a firewire card? Do firewire cards come with capture software? I should assume so. Do they capture in .MPG format? Thanks for your help.

-- Reginald Craig (rgc101@hotmail.com), June 07, 2000

Answers

If you want a high quality mpeg, use Broadway Pro 4.5. The price about US$ 800. I Have one.

-- Freddy Djena (djena@indosat.net.id), June 08, 2000.

Just don't get any parallel port MPEG encoding devices. I spent $87 on a Videonics Python MPEG encoder (because the sample on their site looked like it was Snazzi quality, which isn't that bad), and when I encode with it, the videos are pixelized and look "alive" with all the pixel movement. Also, the box says the it captures with perfect audio/video syncronization, and this thing doesn't even have audio inputs, let alone correct a/v sync. If you are going for good price and OK quality, get a Snazzi (around $150 now, if you can find one). I still recommend capturing with that WinTV AVI card and converting to MPEG, as you get near professional quality results.

-- Mr.Ian Roswell (cyberlien51@juno.com), June 08, 2000.

Hi, I've just purchased a Sony PC-100, took it to disney and returned and created an edited travel video using my firewire card. Let me tell you, after playing with Dazzle, the Firewire port is a blessing. It's incredibly fast to transfer video to your computer, but you've gotta be prepared to drop lot's of HD space. I had 38GB available when I began importing video, and with about 30 mins of video on my drive, and numerous versions of the work in progress, I had dropped about 20 GB. Also, a pro over a capture device like Dazzle, is that you can transfer the video back to a DV compliant Camcorder with virtually no processor-based loss (my observation, feel free to contradict). The Pyro Firewire card I purchased came with an edition of Ulead VideoStudio 4.0...which, while buggy, does the rudimentary tasks really nicely. Hope this helps.

-- Jon Hauer (spybug@nemesys.org), June 09, 2000.