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Mosquiton

414th Post

Gold Customer

"IMAGE CAPTURE HELP" , posted Fri 23 Aug 08:45

Before I make a purchase, I wanted to ask you guys what video/image capture cards you personally use or find to be the best.

I'm in the under $100 US price range, and primarily concerned with taking still images of console games at a reasonably high resolution. Any suggestions or insights are deeply appreciated.

/ / /

Replies:

Marcel van der List
23th Post

New Customer

"Re(1):IMAGE CAPTURE HELP" , posted Fri 23 Aug 10:12

Hi,

I use the Aimslab Video Highway Xtreme, a card with the bt848 'capture unit'. Since the card is failry old (it's from 98 if I'm not mistaking) the image quality is not perfect. As the capture program I use Dscaler (www.dscaler.org), a big, heavy piece of software with A LOT of functions. I recently shot some imges of the Biohazard 0 Trial Edition , found here - http://members.fortunecity.com/okidokipokimon/okidoki / . I had no svhs cable available at the time of grabbing.

A friend of my works at EA and he recently bought a capture card worth 1500 euro. Perfect image quality, he can even grab video at dvd quality. Awesome stuff!

'into the wonderful'

Amakusa
55th Post

Occasional Customer

"Re(1):IMAGE CAPTURE HELP" , posted Fri 23 Aug 19:19

quote:
Before I make a purchase, I wanted to ask you guys what video/image capture cards you personally use or find to be the best.

Don't know how it is now, but I've a fairly ancient ATI All-In-Wonder Pro (this is around when there was no ME, btw). I wouldn't say it was the best, it comes with its own (decent but cruddy) software, but it gets the job done.

I found Kagami's sword in a junk yard.
"Dink-a-dink-a-dink-a-do."

Sklathill
37th Post

Rare Customer

"Re(2):IMAGE CAPTURE HELP" , posted Sat 24 Aug 22:20

The All In Wonder 8500DV has been seen around for as little as 160, thanks to the recent pricedrops to make way for "bigger and better things." Anyways, with that, the All In Wonder 7500 could be had for around the 100 mark, and has pretty good image quality. I've bought two of them for friends' computers (I use an 8500DV) and good experiences all around.

The Temptation of Wheat is upon us!
---
www.insertcredit.com

Mosquiton

418th Post

Gold Customer

"are USB capture devices always inferior?" , posted Sun 25 Aug 10:57

If anyone has any direct experience, please share. I had owned an external Dazzle capture device that did its job decently, but simply couldn't deliver the image quality I wanted. Have things gotten any better? Would a USB and PCI version of the same product have substantial performance differences?

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Sklathill
40th Post

Rare Customer

"Re(1):are USB capture devices always inferior" , posted Sun 25 Aug 12:49

If you're using a USB connection, you would almost always be relying on the hardware compression. With a PCI device, you can have the raw stream at a high res (640 x 480 or 720 x 480) go through your codecs, so that you can compress as you like. I know with the USB TV Wonder, you can't do a high res stream over USB. You can only stream at 320x240 or 352x288. You can capture stills at 640x480, though...

If you have a PCI device, what with computer processor going up, you have a greater variety of compression techniques besides the ones offered by the hardware...

quote:
If anyone has any direct experience, please share. I had owned an external Dazzle capture device that did its job decently, but simply couldn't deliver the image quality I wanted. Have things gotten any better? Would a USB and PCI version of the same product have substantial performance differences?

The Temptation of Wheat is upon us!
---
www.insertcredit.com

Professor

1728th Post

MMCafe Owner

"Re(1):are USB capture devices always inferior" , posted Tue 27 Aug 09:39

quote:
If anyone has any direct experience, please share. I had owned an external Dazzle capture device that did its job decently, but simply couldn't deliver the image quality I wanted. Have things gotten any better? Would a USB and PCI version of the same product have substantial performance differences?

If you just want to take snapshots- USB or PCI, it shouldn't really matter too much. Most capture cards take a pretty decent picture as long as it has a S-VHS connection.

On the other hand, If you want very good quality video, a cheap or normal priced cap' device won't do so much good. The standard for 200$ and under cards haven't gone anywhere yet... they still tend to use BT8x8 series 8-bit condensers.

USB tends to have a limit on the amount of data which can pass through, so I think the general suggestion is to use a PCI card if you want to take some high quality material like 640x480 footages.

Mosquiton

419th Post

Gold Customer

"Thank you kind sirs." , posted Tue 27 Aug 10:15

You've been a lot of help, thanks!

/ / /

Professor

1733th Post

MMCafe Owner

"Samples (Dscaler vs PowerVCR)" , posted Tue 27 Aug 11:35:

Here's a few stuff I found while looking for Aquarake's material. It'a all taken with a BT878 DA converter.

With Dscaler (from live snapshots)
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5

With PowerVCR (after recording from mpeg2)
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5

No retouches with photoshop, you're seeing the snaps as they were taken (except in jpeg, not bmp or tiff).

[this message was edited by Professor on Tue 27 Aug 11:40]