I am capturing video using Dazzle DVC80 USB on my laptop. The quality isnt as good as the original and sometimes the sound in out of sync. This is expected as it was a cheap hardware tool. I am now thinking of upgrading to the Canopus ADVC-100, but this uses a firewire connection. Can i do this with my laptop?? how?? cheers!
Hello, Strictly speaking there is Firewire PCMCIA Card available in the market if you need them. Honestly, before spending on Firewire Card and Canopus ADVC-100, you might want to consider if your notebook is sufficient to video encoding. Video/Audio sychronization problem can be rectify by enable DMA of HDD, enable audio streaming in capture PVR, lowering of video quality settings, etc. I don't have much experience with Dazzle DVC 80 but to what I know that it is a lower resolution capture device. Of course Canopus will be much better if your notebook meets the system requirement and has large HDD for video encoding.
All you have to worry about is if your Hard drive is Fast enough to Transfer data DV Data to your Hard drive...The ADVC-100 Compresses the Video signal to DV useing a Hardware encoder chip and the audio is Locked to the Video stream so there is never any chance of there Being sync problems but you have to be sure that your Hard drive can handle about 10mb per second and it would be a Good idea to use a second Hard drive which I don"t think you can fit in a Regular Laptop so you might have to get an external Hard drive.....Cheers
Generally Speaking if you only have a Single Hard drive on your System and all your Programs and Operateing System is installed on, that Drive it will Not be able to handle writeing the Data at that rate for long..When Captureing Low Compression Video Like DV you need a Second Dedicated Hard drive for the Video Capture..On my system I have a 120gb Main Drive with my OS and Programs installed on and a 160gb Drive just for Video Capture because My 120gb Drive can not handle it because your PC has to access the Drive while Captureing so it can run your PC and when that happens I drop Frames...I thing there is a Utility in Virtual Dub that tests the ammount of Data that Can be written to your HD....DV Material also Takes up a Lot of Disk Space Like about 10-15GB per hour of Video so if at all Possible get a second Drive....Good luck
