Video Capture Cards

[Vamp]

Do all VC cards, no matter how cheap all do the same thing? Record video onto a PC and allow the recordings to be edited with software? I'm a filmmaker, and I want to do some Digediting, I can get a cheap capture card for around 30 dollars what feautres would a cheap card be lacking?

[harrycary]

While they all will capture video, it's the format and features that will vary. Some will capture video in the mpeg-1(VHS quality) format and some in the mpeg-2(DVD quality) format. Some will do it more efficiently than others.

Hope you have a large harddrive. An hours' worth of DVD-quality video can take up 3-5 Gigabytes of space.

I'm sure others will provide some more info for ya...

[MediaSlayer]

First go here , and then here . You didn't put a location in your profile so I don't know where you are therefore can't help you with finding a cheap one. I think ATI has the market on the highest quality capture cards. Those would probably be suited for the average user. There are some companies who are making cards/digitalcamcorders that will record all of the mpeg 4 variants(divx,xvid,open divx, ect...) in real time. Then you could use VirtualDub or maybe even Adobe premiere to edit your newly created videos. I think another preferred format for capture is huffyuv. Basically uncompressed video is ridiculously large so you can't really store it uncompressed. I think huffyuv is to video what adpcm is to audio. Its like a very basic way to compress that can be built upon, thereby allowing you to compress further with a different codec.

[jonathan_tijuana]

buy an IEEE 1394 PCI card