On Thu, 23 Aug 2001 20:49:35 +0100, "Joe3k" wrote:
There are a lot of cards on the market & you should take your time deciding on one. I've been using a Matrox card for the last 2 years (already obsolete) and it does the job fine. Their current cards would probably work for you. Try to get the fastest hard drive (>=7200RPM) that you can.
The software you need usually comes packaged with the card. (hardware encoder)
Depends on the resolution. At 352X240 pixels, a couple of gigs. The higher the rez & the higher the quality of compression, the more disk space. Get the largest HD you can. (they're usually faster anyway)
It all depends on how much $ you want to spend. If you don't want to do a lot of fancy editing, go for cheap.
"Joe3k" wrote in message news:9m3mri$hvo$[email]...
and
I guess you meant SVCD not SVHS ;)
That depends what you wanna make. If just VCDs (they're build on mpeg-1 files 352x240 or 352x288) then you don't need much. I was making first VCDs in 1997 using Pentium166MMX with ATI All-In-Wonder Pro card, and actually I was using this card until I bought All-In-Wonder Radeon this year. You need at least 7200rpm hard drive, and it helps alot if you set DMA (Direct Memory Access) if you use Windows9x/Me; at 29.97fps 352x240 you won't loose any frames with DMA enabled for your hdd and defragment it prior to videocapturing.
Basically any videocard with VIDEO-IN will do, because you can connect your TV's or VCR's "out" to the videocard's "in" and record tv programs from their tv tuners
Ive tried Hauppauges, ATIs, Zoltrixes and some even less known videocards with video-in or tv tuner. Up until I got All-In-Wonder Radeon my best card was older All-In-Wonder Pro 8MB PCI. But if you want to make SVCDs then A-I-W Radeon is your best choice (and most likely most expensive one). But if you have Digital Broadcast (DTV) in your area, then you should go for Hauppauge WinDTV or newer; I don't have DTV/HDTV in my area (only plain cable), but I've seen SVCDs made off DTV vidcaps - and they were excellent.
Best MPEG-1 you get from bbMPEG Encoder or Panasonic MPEG-1 Encoder. First one is definitvly the best, but boy is it sloooow. I have P4 1.4GHz and it is still slow :)) When I had slower machines (i.e. P233MHz) I was using only Panasonic Encoder for its optimal balance between quality and speed. Some ppl like Tsunami MPEG Encoder (TMPGEnc), but it doesn't make good MPEG-1 encoding, if you encode the same avi file with same settings using Tsunami and Panasonic you'll find lot more pixelation/blockiness in Tsunami's file. Avoid Ligos, DVMPEG and other useless crappy encoders since almost all of them don't make vcd-compliant mpeg-1 files.
much
Again - that depends what you wanna do, and what hardware/software you're going to use. 640x480 avi with low compression (for SVCD) would gobble up even larger size hdd fast. Best would be videocapturing straight to mpeg-2 using A-I-W Radeon with 1-pass and then re-encoding with 2-pass compression. But if youre up to making VCDs, then you could use All-In-Wonder Pro 8MB, capture to 352x240 avi with low compression (i.e. 1:8 using ATI's codec "vcr1.0") and encode it to mpeg-1 with Panasonic and still have good quality VCD.
CPU is more than enough for VCDs, but too slow for capturing mpeg-2 on-the-fly;
LOL - why you need so much RAM? if you do lots of graphics then it doesn't help anyway since you have slow CPU
Thats enough if you wanna go for 20-30min vidcaps for VCD, but I'd suggest getting bigger hdd as a priority ;)
VCD Authoring software is needed as well, but since it is whole another story and I don't wanna type 100KB post I will skip it. Adaptec's VideoCD Creator makes best VCD Standard 2.0 discs; for VCD Standard 1.1 (without menus) you can use Nero or WinOn. To make SVCD best way is to use DVD Authoring software.
you'll need USB port only for Dazzle and one of very few other videocapture "devices" that are external; they're all usually much more expensive and "convenience" of having some box atop your computer instead of a card inside doesn't justify their stiff price in my opinion