hardware for simple video recording?

[dakota81]

I'm in need of a cheap, yet effective way to record video files from vhs. I do have an ATI TV Wonder VE that I've had for a while for TV, but the video recording is so limited and really does not provide any feasible options to record even a half-way descent file.

Anyone have some input on ATI's TV Wonder USB? Or another card that would work well for me?

 

[cdogg]

dakota,

Sounds like it's more software than hardware, don't you think? If you've got the hardware, then the quality of the recording mostly depends on the type of file you are creating. ATI makes decent video capture devices, so I doubt you need to upgrade the card. What's the format you're saving the video to? MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI?

 

[fedto]

I have an ATI All in Wonder 128, running windows XP Pro and have found with it, the best video capture for it is the default video CD setting.

I have used ATI All in Wonder video caputre cards for years and have had wonderful results. It's mainly dependant on the format chosen and the Operating System.

It takes experimenting with the different default formats and customizing before you will get the results you want.
That is with ANY hardware for video you buy.

One suggestion I do have is go to the ATI web site and download/install the latest updates for your Operating System.

 

[dakota81]

My own card is the Value Edition version, and they do seriously limit you with what you can record as. Basically the options I have is record in their own special codec, about 100meg per minute _minimum_, and then I cannot open that file in any video editor. Or if I don't want that, I can record in VCD format at about 50-100meg per minute, yet a wonderful 6 or so frames per second. There's a few other options, but they're like mpeg-1 or uncompressed RGB, stuff like that.

With the software for the Value Edition, you _cannot_ select any other recording option than what is given by default. I've tried downloading freeware and trial versions of several different video capturing software from the internet but none of them can get any input from the card.

So what I'm hearing is that the other ATI products do have good recording capabilities, that's what I want to hear.