What's the best bet for a high quality capture from both VHS and Hi8mm camcorder tapes? It seems like we're getting conflicting advice all over the place. We already own the WinTV card, but we could always ebay it if something else works better. I'm a total newbie, having just figured out the DVD backup process, and of course, I want to run before I can walk! How about a brand recommendation on a video stabilizer? I only found out about needing that last night while reading the forums - thank God all of you who know what you're doing are so willing to share the info!
I would definately recomend a Canopus ADVC-100 or better yet a Canopus ACEDVio over the WinTV PVR 250.. The WinTV PVR is a Good hardware encoder but the ADVC-100 will still produce better capture quality and if you want to add any effects or do any editing or cleaning up of the Video you can not do it properly if the files are in Mpeg format but the ADVC-100 captures directly to DV AVI which can be edited over and Over with little Quality loss which can not be said for Mpeg files.... The ADVC method will take longer than the WinTV PVR method but the Quality will be higher and the files are much more versitile and it is the way that professinals do Analogue/Digital Conversions..... As for a Video Stabilizer so you can capture Retail VHS tapes it really doesn"t matter which one you get as long as you are just Captureing from Hi8 and VHS, if you Plan on Captureing from DVD then a Different type of Video stabilizer is needed but there is not need to capture from DVD because it is best to Rip a DVD as opposed to captureing it...I have seen the basic Black box video stabilizers for as Low as $20 on e-bay....Cheers
