I'm looking for a good, low-cost USB video capture device that I can use to make VCD's. Has anyone used the Berkin USB video capture device? Does it work fairly good or is it as bad as the Dazzle 80? Any other suguestions for <$150 USB video capture devices?

-- Paul Pawelski (pawelski@writeme.com), October 22, 2001

Answers

I am presently playing with Belkin VideobusII and things are looking good. The installation was ok and the capture seems to go well. I have not yet burned any cd's but that is next on the list.

Limit on capture size, but all else is good

Using: Win98 (all service packs) virtualDub Easy CD

-- Jose Castillo (vf500f@fast.net), November 20, 2001.

i also use the same one cause i was cheap at the time...its not as bad as the dazzle cause it can capture in uncompressed avi..the dazzle caps in mpeg which is already compressed.i capture with video wave( since thats what it came with and it seems to work good ) i then go to virtual dub and put on filters and cut it up..i then am currently using ulead video studio for the titles and transitions( i am trying to learn a better program) then go to tmpg enc to encode..but as for the capture quality...its pretty good..the guys who have " REAL " capture cards must have nice stuff

-- john boy (johnbmx4christ@yahoo.com), December 04, 2001.

I just bought a Belkin USB video capture device. I've tried it with the bundled MGI VideoWave III SE software. I found out that it will only capture AVI's and not MPEG1 or MPEG2 (although that must be asking too much from such a 'cheap' device). However, I can't seem to record the audio part although I select the Video+Audio capture option. I don't know if that's a general problem encountered with the device or it's just the one I got.

-- mark valdez (mmv_bahrain@yahoo.com), January 16, 2002.

Last January I bought the Belkin USBVideoBus II for Mac, it was dissapointing for me...The video capture was low quality and the sound was very bad as well...(8Khz, 8 bits, mono). I returned the device and right now I'm shopping for the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge, it uses Firewire technology, so it promises better quality.

-- Ahriman (ahrimanpob@rocketmail.com), March 07, 2002.

My answer is going to be about the same as john boy's, except I used Magix Video Deluxe to do cutting/editing. It's my first time making VCDs, so I wanted to get the least expensive stuff, and they came out pretty good. The only problem I had was whether the DVD player would read certain brands of CD media. A few coasters here and there, but I think I kinda got it figured out.

-- Simon (templar_saint@myrealbox.com), April 10, 2002.