Video capture device?
 

I have a ton of VHS-C videos from the video camera that I'd like to save as Quicktime movies and eventually burn to DVD.

Can anybody recommend a good, inexpensive device?

ATI TV Wonder VE cards will let you plug in an audio/video line and record something and they are really really cheap. I bought one a few years ago for about $20. You can spend hundreds of dollars if you want quality and nice software, but the video capture hardware itself should be relatively cheap.

By the way, if you want these copies to last a long long time, you will need to pony up the $$$ for high quality DVDs or CDs. I hope your PC has a lot of memory (RAM), most video capturing and editing takes loads of memory. I'd probably want 1GB of RAM at least for video editing.

I don't want an AGP video card, since I already have one.

As for the RAM, I'd be open to an external unit with hardware buffering (the speed/RAM of the PC wouldn't matter in that case.)

The TV wonder cards aren't AGP video cards. They are PCI video capture cards. They also have USB versions.

If you want all the work to happen in an external video capture device, you will pay more. Unless you simply want to pull the VHS tapes wholesale into one massive video file, you may want to do some video editing on your PC like adding transitions and removing crappy footage in the middle. I'm no expert and you can probably buy an external device that allows you to do all of that. Once again, more features = $$$.

For a cheap straight from analog input to digital video a TV Wonder capture card is a good way to go.

It's PCI? Cool.

I'll check it out.

i think it was saul that posted some gizmo for recording vhs to digital for the pc...

it was an external usb device and wasn't very expensive, iirc...

but if you spring for a all-in-wonder tv card, you can do lots more with it besides just record from your vcr...

depends on what you want to do...

i'd recommend bumping this thread during the week if you want more info...