Hello, I've done a search and couldn't find any threads that helped me so I'm posting this. I've got loads of old VHS tapes I want to sell/chuck because they're taking up too much space. But some of them have stuff on I'd like to keep. And since I've got 280 gigs of storage I thought it'd be a good idea to digitise some of them before I get rid of them. However, and this bit is important... I do not want to be messing about with transcoding from one format to another. I want to get a cheapish capture card and then record them [bold]directly[/bold] to the format they'll end up in. A one-step process, if you like. The final format is something I might reconsider but WMV seems like a pretty decent bet for now as it's always gonna play in Windows and it's decent quality at fairly low file sizes (I should mention at this point that I'm not fussed about being able to watch these videos on a standalone DVD, just being on the PC is fine) I realise DivX is better in terms of quality-for-filesize but I want something that will play on all future systems with minimal fuss (ie no installing third-party stuff). So it's either WMV or MPEG1/2 and since MPEG filesizes are much bigger I'm thinking WMV. It seems from googling that Windows Media Encoder will capture directly but everything in the list of supported cards is fairly expensive. I was hoping to spend about £40 on a capture card that would talk to WME with no fuss. Can anyone help?
Well Pretty Much any WDM capture Card will work with "Windows Media Encoder" as I have used it with Pretty much every Card I have owned and it worked with them all.... The Thing with Captureing to WMV is you will need a Very Fast PC to Capture to WMV with any sort of Resolution because it is such a Compressed Format it uses a LOT of CPU power to Compress Video so I hope you have a 2.5 to 3.5ghz Machine.... Also if your VHS tapes are store Bought Retail VHS movies they will Most Likely be Macrovision copy protected in which Case you would have to either get a Card that Doesn"t have Macrovision Detection or you also Buy a Video stabilizer to remove the Macrovision from the Video Signal..... Cheers
