I'm about to embark on building a new computer. One of my main missions in the next few months will be to captuure about 25 Hi8 video tapes and burn them to DVD (recently got a new DV camera so want to preserve my tapes!). The mobo I am looking to use (ASUS P5AD2-E Premium) has no AGP slot but does have the new PCI-E x 16. The last computer I built for my wife has an AIW 9800 Pro plus Pinnacle Studio 9. I have captured one tape on that machine but when it came to burning that to DVD it took over 4 hours to burn ONLY 17 minutes of video (that machine has 3Ghz and 1GB RAM). I don't understand whay it should take that long and want to avoid that kind of time with the new PC. I don't mind using a PCI-E video card plus another internal (PCI) or external device to capture video. I don't want to lose a lot of quality and I don't want to tie up the machine forever to render / author DVD's. I would be very interested in any recommendations that anyone might have on what solutions might work. Thanks
The Reason it took so long on your Wifes PC has veryy little to do with the PC but the Cr*ppy software that was used.... If you have a DV Camcorder then you don"t need a capture device you just need a Firewire Port and if your DV Camcorder has analogue Inputs then you can convert the Hi8 Tapes to Digital and Transfer them to your PC Via Firewire with Much Better quality than Most Analogue Capture devices Can Produce.... So Basicly you can do the whole Camcorder to DVD process in a Much Quicker Time and with Better quality if you just used Proper Software as 3.0ghz is Plenty Fast enough for Working with Video..... What software you get would depend on the how much money you want to spend...And if you want the Best quality in the shortest ammount of time then don"t get one of those "all In One" software Programs like Studio 9 as they will rarely do any one thing very well, I find it better to use seperate software for each step in the Process, Like use one Program for Captureing the Video and one for Encodeing the Video to Mpeg-2 for DVD and one Program for authoring the Mpeg-2 files to DVD.....
Absolutely! Pinnacle came with the AIW card. I don't really have a grasp of the whole process for "converting" my tapes to DVD. I guess I'm not sure if I should get a video card with video in / capture capability or should I get a separate device. Not too concerned about the software although I'm not looking to spend a lot of money. I understand there are some decent free programs out there somewhere.
Remember if you are Captureing from your DV Camcorder you will Not need a Capture Card and if you are Transfering Hi8 Tapes to your PC through your DV Camcorder then you still Will Not need a Capture Card so you should See if your DV Camcorder has Analogue Inputs then you can Transfer from your HI8 Camcorder to your DV Camcorder which will convert the Analogue Hi8 Video to Digital DV and Transfer it to your PC Via a Firewire Port...So there is a good Chance you will not need any sort of Capture card ,Just a Firewire Port.... There are Freeware Programs for Captureing from analogue Capture Cards and there are Freeware Capture Software for Captureing DV from a firewire Port.... One of the Biggest Factors for the quality of the DVD is the Mpeg encoder you use to Encode the Captured Files to Mpeg-2 for DVD so you should Try to get the Best quality Mpeg encoder you can and the Mpeg encodeing is the Part of the Process that Takes the Most time....
There are only a Handfull of encoders that I consider worth useing that can Produce Professinal results ,Some of them are Very expensive and some are a Little more reasonable.... The one that are in the Reasonable Price Range are : Tmpgenc Xpress (About $55) CinemaCraft Encoder Basic (about $55) MainConcept Encoder (about $125) They are all Good encoders But CinemaCraft and MainConcept are the one ones out of the Three that can encode at a fairly Good Speed were Tmpgenc Xpress is a Little Slow but has the Most Options out of the 3 encoders... The only other encoders I would recomend are : CinemaCraft Encoder SP (about $2000) Canopus Procoder (about $500) CinemaCraft Encoder SP is probably the fastest and Highest Quality software Mpeg encoder on the Market and it should be at that Price but it isn"t practical for most poeple because of the Outragous price..... You could avoid the Whole Encodeing Process if you got a Capture device with a Hardware Mpeg encoder...There are some Lower end ones that you can get for a reasonable Price (Under $150) that will capture the Video Directly to Mpeg-2 for you but these Cheaper ones don"t produce Professinal Quality results... If you wanted to get a Professinal Quality Hardware Mpeg encoder you would have to spend about $400 on something like the "Canopus Mpeg Pro EMR".... If you had a Hardware Mpeg encoder all you would need is a DVD authoring program Like DVDLab Pro so you can add your menu"s and Chapters and Burn the DVD and if you needed to do any Editing then you would need a Native mpeg editor Like the "Womble Mpeg Video Wizard" which will edit Mpeg files without any quality Loss and render your Files in a Matter of Minutes as opposed to Hours with other editors..... When useing a Hardware Mpeg encoder you don"t need a super Fast PC because all of the Compression is done on the Capture device so even a 1ghz PC could be used to create DVD"s with one of these capture devices.... Cheers
Minion, you are a legend! Thanks very much for taking the time to provide such detailed replies. I will be sure to look into the options that you have provided.
