Anyone recommend a video capture card?

[Jon]

I'm looking for a video capture card so that I can capture old VHS tapes onto my PC with the aim of eventually burning them onto a DVD. I'm looking for something that can handle 640x480 at 30fps and hopefully does not cost a fortune. The big brand in the UK seems to be Pinnacle but I have read nothing but complaints about their products and their support. Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks,

Jon.

[ricercar]

Anything with a VIVO (video in/video out) will do. You don't need the latest performance card for capturing 60 FPS video.

For analog capture from a VCR I use an eVGA VIVO GeForce2 GTS. Works great with Windows Movie Maker, but also comes bundled with ULEAD recording software. However, there are some who claim that ATI has better image quality for TV. YMMV.

Note that hard drive speed can matter more to video capture than graphics card performance. Any VIVO on the market will capture 50-60 FPS (PAL-NTSC) analog video. ATA66 and earlier HDs probably don't have the throughput for video streams or multi-track audio without a striped RAID.

[Phil_12345]

Hi,

Try Navis-Pro hardware Mpeg1/Mpeg2 real time capture & encoder
card from www.pentamedia.com . It capture great
VCD/SVCD/DVD formats from any analog sources. I used
one for more than a year now to convert my old VHS video
collection to DVD without any problem (audio/video sync
problems with most other capture cards). The price is right
for a good hardware encoder card; around $260 US.

[Gator]

check out this thread at Rage3d, it is filled with information including some screen captures comparing various cards
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33668071

[Jon]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I can't seem to find any PCI graphics cards with VIVO on sale in the UK at the moment, although I am tempted to go for one of the Leadtek Geforce 4's with VIVO (AGP).

I have had a look on the web for the Navis Pro and it is highly regarded as an excellent capture card. But again, I am having difficulty in finding one in the UK.

The conclusion of the thread from Rage 3D suggests that Leadtek do a really good TV card which can capture from an analogue video source at DVD quality. It is also quite cheap. I managed to find a shop in the UK that have them in stock. I think for the price it is definately worth a look.