Video Capture Cards for PC.... What do I look for?

[Mark42]

Have been capturing a lot of camcorder DV lately. Saving it as MPEG2 to the server. Was using a Roxio program I bought about 4 years ago and a capture card w/fire wire that is about 8 years old.

The latest software (AVS) is just overloading the PC. The little capture I did get before it starting chugging looks so much better than what the Roxio software was producing. So I want to go with AVS, but need more memory and HP.

Now I'm going to build another PC, but was wondering what to look for in a better video camera capture card. Looks like the firewire is still the preferred connection, so I will go with that, knowing both the Sony camcorders have firewire output. So what do I look for in a video capture card spec? Not interested in TV capture, just strictly capture from the camcorders.

Thanks!

Mark.

 

[JaSla74]

Re: Video Capture Cards for PC.... What do I look for?

I've been out of the PC building loop for awhile, but if it's a DV camera do you really need a video capture card? Unless you need to pull video off a tape source I would think a firewire port & some decent software would do the job. I'd put most of the money toward other hardware if you're not going to capture TV. However, I could be wrong.

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Video Capture Cards for PC.... What do I look for?

Last one I set up for this specific application, I didn't use a capture card, I just used firewire. But I did make sure the computer had the horsepower and memory, it was a 3.0 ghz with 4 gig of memory, 2 500 gig drives and a souped up video card, I was running XP on that machine, that has been a couple of years ago, now with windows 7, I would up the memory and probably go with one of the new intel core cpu's /

You might do a bit of searching to see what the pro's are using these days, and then build as close to the specs they are using to build a good machine.

 

[NYBo]

Re: Video Capture Cards for PC.... What do I look for?

Yep, video capture cards are needed for analog output devices, not digital. However, since my laptop doesn't have have a Firewire port, I use my Pinnacle USB Studio MovieBox Plus, which does analog capture as well as having a Firewire port for my DV camera. Great product, IMO.