|
Video Capture
The Hardware
There is a huge selection of capture cards
out there so we have created a list of some of the best consumer end video
capture cards in the market today. Let's have a look!
|
|
Product
Name |
Product Type |
Interface |
Street
Price |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
ATI All-In-Wonder
9700 Pro |
Video Card/TV
Tuner/Capture Card |
AGP |
$370 |
|
 |
ATI All-In-Wonder
8500 DV |
Video Card/TV
Tuner/Capture Card |
AGP |
$168 |
|
 |
ATI All-In-Wonder
7500 |
Video Card/TV
Tuner/Capture Card |
AGP |
$125 |
|
 |
ATI TV Wonder VE |
TV Tuner
Card/Capture Card |
PCI |
$48 |
|
 |
Hauppauge WinTV
PVR |
TV Tuner/Capture
Card |
PCI |
$140-$180 |
|
 |
Hauppauge WinTV
PVR USB |
TV Tuner/Capture
Card |
USB |
$180 |
|
 |
Pinnacle PCTV |
TV Tuner/Capture
Card |
PCI |
$65 |
|
 |
Pinnacle PCTV
Deluxe |
TV Tuner/Capture
Card |
USB |
$165 |
|
 |
Pinnacle PCTV Pro |
TV Tuner/Capture
Card |
PCI |
$82 |
|
 |
Dazzle DVD
Creation Station 200 |
Capture Card |
USB |
$185 |
|
 |
Dazzle Digital
Video Creator |
Capture Card |
USB |
$58-$150 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you notice, we have listed quite a few
products from ATI. The All-In-Wonder product line are superb video cards
that have a TV tuner as well as video in and video out support. They
are all excellent products and highly recommended. The AIW 9700 is
currently the cream of the crop and is considered one of the best video
cards on the market right now. The ATI MMC software (we will look at
shortly) is excellent and has a great scheduler and some very neat
features as well. All of the ATI products above are actually video
cards except for the TV Wonder VE which is their stand alone capture card.
Hauppauge, Pinnacle & Dazzle make some decent external USB capture cards
if your looking for an external device.
The Software
For capture
software, we will be looking at ATI's Multimedia Center (MMC) which is
bundled with any of their AIW cards or the TV Wonder VE capture card.
It's an excellent tool and ATI just keeps on making it better and better.
We will also look at another app called Virtual Dub which will also be
featured in the editing section of this guide as well and take a peak at Ulead's
latest video suite, Ulead Mediastudio Pro 7.
ATI MMC
Since we will be using an ATI All-In-Wonder
Radeon 7500 card for this guide, I will show you their excellent software
suite which includes there TV application. ATI's TV app is an easy
to use, highly customizable video capturing application.
The TV application will allow you to
record/capture from the following sources:
-
TV (via TV tuner)
-
Composite
-
S-Video
The software allows you to capture
video in a variety of formats including VCD, SVCD & even in DVD quality.
ATI's TV app will compress captured
video in real time but you can also select your own custom capture
settings such as uncompressed AVI format and even Windows Media format.
One excellent feature of the TV application
is the scheduler. You can use it just like a digital VCR.
You can schedule recordings and set the duration of each recording as
well.
The Scheduler will allow you to run the
event either once or schedule it Daily, Weekly and even yearly.
As you can see, ATI cards come with
excellent software to capture/record video from any source in just about
any format you desire.
|
