Capture Card Suggestions

[ShatteredFlame]

My brother is looking into buying a great capture card for recording footage. He has tried many in the past, all the cheap crap like Dazzle and they all had their problems and broke after awhile. I was wondering if anyone here can suggest one of the better capture card models. It doesn't have to be cheap, he was willing to spend $200 on one on Amazon(I don't know which though). Thanks.

[post-it]

.. hmmm .. I've used Radio Shacks WinTV-HVR 850 for so long now, its hard to remember
what I used to do before LapTops.
.. If I remember correctly, Pinnacle released a USB-Flash Recorder which encoded it to
MP4 video and M4A Audio. I've still got the little bugger! "Pinnacle Video Transfer - Press & Go"
I pretty much gave-up on a good capture card and settled for a Capture Device instead.

. My biggest problem was Getting ready to record the series always seemed to run into a
bug or delays on the starting of the capturing. Next, it was saved in a format which hogged
the hard-drive space. next, the Audio always seemed to be out of sync .. which meant you
not only had to re-sync the audio to the Video but you also had to re-sync the Sub-titlings!!
T_T .. .. .. there had to be a better way .. .. the "Pinnacle Video Transfer - Press & Go".

. Considering that nothing is being sent in 1080i, this little unit had no problem with 720i and 720p.

You can ask around if you'd like but, I think the only thing better at recording live TV is a DVD Recorder with its own tuner.

[post-it]

.. "Pinnacle Video Transfer - Press & Go"

sorry about that, the link didn't show the movie.
.. this one does .. and, instead of using a Flash Stick, this one shows
how easy it is to record something directly to your PSP-3000 ^___^

"Pinnacle Video Transfer - Press & Go"

could it get any easier? .. THAT's Why I Switched.

[NeoQuixotic]

I'd recommend one of the Blackmagic Design Intensity devices if you want some quality gear.
http://www.amazon.com/Blackmagic-Design ... B001CN9GEA $189 internal PCI-E x1
http://www.amazon.com/Blackmagic-Design ... B003WSQTWU - $189 external USB 3.0

They have a PCI-E x1 internal card and a new USB 3.0 external box. Personally I'd go with the internal card because I've heard nothing but nightmares to getting the USB 3.0 box to work. The external box supports more frame rates and resolutions, but be absolutely sure you have a motherboard or USB 3.0 add-on card that is supported. Also for either device you will need a fast set of drives (in RAID) or a SSD if you want to capture uncompressed video, at least for HD. You'll probably use Blackmagic's MJPEG codec for most capturing or VirtualDub for other codecs. I've had used the Intensity Pro PCI-E card, but on a Mac Pro with Final Cut Pro. So I can't really comment on it's use for Windows.

I haven't used this, but many people have had good luck with the Hauppauge HD-PVR. It is still expensive and is limited to H.264 for the codec due to it being compressed in the hardware and sent over USB 2.0.
http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-1212-De ... B0018LX0DY - $189 external USB 2.0

There are definitely cheaper capture devices out there, especially for SD only but I'm not familiar enough with any to recommend anything. Well, I know some, but they are outdated and still expensive. I'd say 90% of the sub $50 capture devices suck so that's why I lean toward the more expensive side.

[Enigma]

Go for an HDPVR, it is around the 200$ mark

[post-it]

the HVR1800 I did try, a long time ago ( on a Gateway 5432 w/Vista )
.. It worked fine for a while . . . then something went "south" and it
never worked right after that! [ the computer nor the capture card ]

I do like the "Blackmagic Design Intensity B001CN9GEA $189 internal PCI-E x1"
as brought to my attention by NeoQuixotic. Direct HDMI capture would be the best.

.. just my opinion here but, the quicker the Capture -- the better the editing.

. One thing not touched upon so far is, "View As You Capture." USB 3.0 would
be the best of these designs ( if your computer was "up to spec's" ) and PCI-E
would be next fastest. Read your owners manual and make sure that the Capture
Card does not require you to have "A Specail Video Card needed to View The Capture!"
.. no, I'm not joking!! Hauppauge requires 350 mhz video ram as a minimum .. but
the G-Force Gaming Card does a much better job of displaying whats' being recorded.

.. like I said; this is just my opinion.

[ShatteredFlame]

So yeah thanks for the info but my brother didn't wait and went ahead and ordered that HDPVR one. Hopefully it's simple to use and works well, that's all he really needs.