Video capture cards on old laptop
08 December 2009, 11:52 PM
#1
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Video capture cards on old laptop
Hi All
I've got some video8 tapes I want to digitise and archive onto DVD. I'm hoping to borrow an old camcorder to play these, and a mate of mine recommends a Pinnacle Dazzle USB video capture card. There are much cheaper ones of these on Amazon/eBay but he reckons these are less good compatibility wise, and I don't have time to mess around as I want the DVDs done for xmas presents!
This should work ok but the stumbling block is I'm away from home and only have my laptop to use for this. This is a Dell Latitude D610 with Intel Centrino 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel 915 integrated gfx, Win XP.
The Pinnacle Dazzle says it needs the following:
# Intel® Pentium® or AMD® Athlon™ 1.4 GHz or higher (2.4 GHz or higher recommended)
# 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
# DirectX® 9 or higher compatible graphics card with 64 MB (ATI® Radeon® or NVIDIA® GeForce™ 3 or higher, with 128 MB recommended)
# DirectX 9 or higher compatible sound card (Creative® Audigy® or M-Audio® recommended)
I'm pretty close to the limits there I think, particularly on the gfx, don't know how much RAM is allocated to gfx (how do I check?)
Does anyone have any experience of this and have any thoughts on how I'll get on given being close to the spec limits? Would I be better off using a set-top DVD recorder, bringing those into the PC to edit, then burning my final DVDs? Or just paying the man in the yellow pages?
I've got some video8 tapes I want to digitise and archive onto DVD. I'm hoping to borrow an old camcorder to play these, and a mate of mine recommends a Pinnacle Dazzle USB video capture card. There are much cheaper ones of these on Amazon/eBay but he reckons these are less good compatibility wise, and I don't have time to mess around as I want the DVDs done for xmas presents!
This should work ok but the stumbling block is I'm away from home and only have my laptop to use for this. This is a Dell Latitude D610 with Intel Centrino 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel 915 integrated gfx, Win XP.
The Pinnacle Dazzle says it needs the following:
# Intel® Pentium® or AMD® Athlon™ 1.4 GHz or higher (2.4 GHz or higher recommended)
# 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
# DirectX® 9 or higher compatible graphics card with 64 MB (ATI® Radeon® or NVIDIA® GeForce™ 3 or higher, with 128 MB recommended)
# DirectX 9 or higher compatible sound card (Creative® Audigy® or M-Audio® recommended)
I'm pretty close to the limits there I think, particularly on the gfx, don't know how much RAM is allocated to gfx (how do I check?)
Does anyone have any experience of this and have any thoughts on how I'll get on given being close to the spec limits? Would I be better off using a set-top DVD recorder, bringing those into the PC to edit, then burning my final DVDs? Or just paying the man in the yellow pages?
09 December 2009, 09:31 AM
#2
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Graphics are not the issue with video capture. It's processor and hard drive speed that'll be your problem.
I tried the Pinnacle stuff, and threw it away. Thought it was a load of rubbish. I too was capturing old Video8 and Hi8 tapes, and every time it hit a dropout on the tape, it mangled the video. Plus even when it did capture, the quality was below par. This was on a much faster machine than you are proposing to use. I'm now using a Matrox MXO2 Mini to do the job, and the results are far better (albeit at a much higher cost).
You may be better off getting hold of a standalone dvd recorder, plugging the camera into that, and just transferring the tape straight onto disc. You should get much better results that trying to use the old laptop.
I tried the Pinnacle stuff, and threw it away. Thought it was a load of rubbish. I too was capturing old Video8 and Hi8 tapes, and every time it hit a dropout on the tape, it mangled the video. Plus even when it did capture, the quality was below par. This was on a much faster machine than you are proposing to use. I'm now using a Matrox MXO2 Mini to do the job, and the results are far better (albeit at a much higher cost).
You may be better off getting hold of a standalone dvd recorder, plugging the camera into that, and just transferring the tape straight onto disc. You should get much better results that trying to use the old laptop.
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