Can someone help me in selcting the best low priced capture card for capturing my home dvds and videos to VCD & SVCD. I have a Dazzle DVC 2 at work but because it is PCI it is hard to disconnect everytime and bring home. Does anyone know of an internal to external PCI lead/ adapter box? Although the DVC2 has excellent quality ,I wondered if there was any better card for the price? I looked at the DC10 plus but that captures in MJPEG which is not very good compression size and does not capture the audio. Also resolutions confuse me. If I was to capture / convert a DVD what is an acceptable resolution to write it to VCD without losing much quality when playing back on a DVD?

-- Mark Ellis (Mark.H.Ellis@btinternet.com), February 11, 2001

Answers

I personally use the Dazzle DVC2......I got it for $220 (please dont go emailing me where I got it at this price) and I must say for the quality and price you cannot get a better deal. There are so many other cards in this price range but they dont come near the cost/value, but rather the other way with inconvenienct. MJPEG cards take another step to go from AVI to MPEG-/MPEG-2 and unless you have a fast PC and alot of time on your hands, thats not gonna be something you should get into.

I myself use the Dazzle DVC-2 along with the Darim M-Filter and Sima Color Corrector and my SVCD's pretty much match the original video source. Plus if later on I wanted to make DVD's, the Dazzle DVC-2 has that area covered. Simply put, it CANNOT be beaten for the price and quality it delivers.

-- MrVCD (mrvcd@juno.com), February 14, 2001.

DO NOT buy that piece of shit called Dazzle DVC-2! The quality is horrid ! C-cube sucks ! First of all even capturing an MPEG-2 at its highest bitrate supported by the card which is 8Mb/s, the result is fuzzy looking video with sort of like a white thin-film and lack of detail, this piece of trash has so many bad reviews, DO NOT get that crap! Dazzle = CHEAP SHIT!

-- John Rimmer (smtc4@yahoo.com), February 25, 2001.

Then which one is better

-- Aji Paul (ajipaul@yahoo.com), April 10, 2001.

If you want to retain high video quality I would suggest the ATI All- in-Wonder 128. You can capture in high quality MPEG-2 format and then use software to convert it to a more compressed format such as divx. This is the best solution I have found. I have a Dazzle DVC and it is a piece of crap!

-- bucky (buckyboo2@hotmail.com), June 24, 2001.