capturing video

[rshri]

I have a p4 2.8 ghz, 504 mb ram. I have a digital handycam and am told that I need a video capturing card and a firewire port to capture the video from this handycam. What should I use? If a card is required, would it also serve as a tv tuner card or enhance the gaming experience?

regards,

Rajeev.

[maverickrohan]

Dude! U seem to be all muddled up here......

Now to feed u in with some info.....

Not all Handycams allow transfer of videos through firewire, if they dont have compatible software/drivers along with the camera...........If urs does, great!!!

Using a TV Tuner Card will allow you to cature Video from any source(VCR, VCP, Cable, Handycam, etc.), without installing drivers for ur camera.........its the most flexible thing.

If ur handycam has an S-Video out, use that to capture the video, it gives really neat quality. you will need to connect the S-Video o/p of ur Cam to the S-Video i/p of the TV Tuner Card, and use a simple stereo cable for the audio. ( Or else use the normal RF cable)

Softwares, which you use to capture the video depend on ur end usage:

If you want to make VCDs, use WinDVR, PowerVCR, Pinnacle PCTV, etc.

If you intend to view captured content only on the comp, you can use Windows Movie Maker 2, Windows Media Encoder, iuVCR, etc.

Your last question is really weird....anyways...

Firewire, TV Tuner & Graphics cards are three different entities...though u do get a few TV Tuner Cards & Graphics cards in One(But i dont recommend them.....

Noticing the RAM u have mentioned, it suggests u dont have a graphics card, which inturn means ur gaming experience as of now, S U X!!!

Finally

If ur handycam supports Firewire transfer, buy a firewire card.

If u play games, buy a decent GFX

If u want to watch TV, Listen to FM on ur comp, capture video buy a TV Tuner card, Pinnacle is the best, Compro n Prolink are the other good ones.

[amitsaudy]

Most handycams with firewire also have support for usb.
Check ur user manual

[AlienTech]

You need a 1394 fire wire card, cost under 1000, I seen some for 500. It works great, I spent a lot of money and years trying to get proper capture equipment and none of them worked well. The best I found was an outdated parallel port VCD capture card. None of the others worked without major problems. With the 1394 card I just hook up the Cam to th computer and I can even use the windows movie maker to capture the clips.. Then I have to run a program that converts the clip into MPEG1 or MPEG 2 format. The DV cam only stores like 15 minutes on a DVD. So it needs to be compressed a lot and takes an entire day to compress a 1 or 2 hour clip. But I just seen ads where they say they can capture and save MPEG format files in real time. But haven't tried it. The 1394 also can control the device so if it drops a frame it can go back to it and start again which is essential for proper capture. I am sure the quality wont be as good as the compression I do now but to save a day it might be worth it.
IF you can get it, Get the newer 1394B version since it is faster than the original 1394 cards.

rs 480
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[AlienTech]

I forgot to mention, the firewire card is just a port like a serial port or a USB port.. You can get serial port cards and a 1394 card is just like that.. No built in tuner or anything.