How Do I Video Capture

Status
Not open for further replies.
Can anybody help me out. I want to record programs from cable tv or a vhs onto VCD. The guys at the computer shop tell me I need a video capture card, a good cheap one might have the Pinnacle brand but nobody at the shop has any actual experience having succesfully recorded anything. They also say I need lots of hard disk space for a 2 hour film or so.

Am not much tech-oriented, so I'd appreciate layman-type explanations please. I'm also looking for an inexpensive card, just for to make simple vcd's. What kind of software should I use or does it come with the card. Also can I record from VHS with this.

Hope somebody here can help out. Thanks in advance.

Lisa :)
 
I have a cheap Pinnacle TV-card (PCTV Rave), and it works beautifully. With VirtualDub, you can capture 768x576 @ 25 fps (PAL here) using lossless Huffyuv codec and then compress it to XviD or whatever you want. Yes, it takes a lot of disk space, about 700MB - 1 GB / minute, depending on what kind of video you're capturing, ie. if there is a lot of motion and small details.

Naturally, all this requires CPU power (1 GHz+) and a fast hard disk, 7200rpm ones should do.
 
Whoa, if I'm going to be ripping, say, an entire movie (let's fix it at 120 mins), does that mean I need 120 GB to allow for all of it? Where the h*ll am I gonna find a disk like that? Must cost a fortune too. LOL

Thanks for the replies guys.

Cheers.

Lisa :)
 
120GB aren't that expensive as they were 6 months ago. I would recommend a Western Digital Caviar(WD1200JB) 120GB with 8mb memory cache which would cost you approx $108 from www.newegg.com. It also comes with a handy 3 yr warranty.
 
Oh, ok. Never looked at how much the bigger ones cost before, so there. What's the biggest hdd I can have, by the way. A terabyte? Ooooh, this is gonna take a lot of brain work I think, just to be able to rip videos. But fun too huh. lol

Thanks all.

Lisa
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back