I am looking for a PCI video editing card for my Father's PC. It
needs to have the following features:

1) rear RCA inputs for video and audio (preferably, two for stereo
audio, and one for video)

2) Easy to use software

3) capability of capturing Hi-8 or MiniDV resolutions

4) Works well with an AMD 2800+ cpu

5) rear firewire port would also be a big plus, for future expansion
and use with newer
video cameras

That's it! We are finally ready to try to capture some old 8mm home
movies by projecting them onto a screen, and capturing them using a
Hi-8 or MiniDV camcorder. (and running the resulting video and audio
feed (audio mostly from a bunch of us talking about our memories of the
shown events) into the PC to capture and eventually burn to DVD's.

It is a sort of family genealogy project that we've wanted to get to
for years. Now we are worried that the old 8mm movie film is
deteriorating, and would like to get this project finished, pronto!

The big problem I have is that I can't seem to find a decent capture
card with the features above. These are the only features I need, and
I want to try to keep it all simple for my Dad. I've seen plenty of
cards out there that don't capture at very high resolution, or ones
that don't have rear RCA inputs. If you have any ideas on what would
work for us, I would greatly appreciate it if you could post a response
here. Thanks!

If you're using miniDV, you don't need a capture card, you need a
Firewire port.

slugbug wrote:

If you're using miniDV then you don't need RCA inputs. Generally speaking
unless you're talking about a broadcast quality board, PCI analog capture
solutions aren't terribly satisfactory. However I have seen few analog
capture boards that do _not_ have rear RCA inputs, either on the board or
on a cable that plugs into a smaller connector.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@snet.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:e6i0960ica@news3.newsguy.com...
If I were you, I would choose the capture and editing software first. And,
in your case, I would probably go with Microsoft Movie Maker. It is free.
It is easy to learn. It will do what you say you want to do.

Capturing through a firewire port is dead easy, when using any of the DV
(MiniDV) cameras. In addition, many MiniDV cameras have video and stereo
inputs, which allow copying to DV tape from analogue inputs --- such as from
a VHS or Hi-8 analogue camera or deck. Many of those cameras provide for
throughput of the video and audio signals to the Firewire output of the
camera. In other words, if you have a miniDV camera with these features you
don't need an analogue PCI card --- which, as another poster pointed out,
have problems of their own. If you currently have such a camera you are
good to go with no other capture device. Your computer will need a Firewire
port, but that can be had for $15 bucks or so on a PCI card. Your AMD 2800,
which will be just fine for editing video, probably already has Firewire.

A third choice is to get a Canopus ADVC 100. This is an external box that
provides two-way conversion from analogue to firewire and firewire to
analogue. Plug the Hi-8 camera into the video and stereo audio RCA jacks on
ADVC 100; then, go firewire from the ADVC 100 to your computer. The ADVC
100 also will take a firewire output from your computer (or a miniDV camera
for that matter) and feed analogue signals for video and stereo audio to
analogue decks: VHS, Hi-8, etc. You can find the ADVC 100 on EBAY for $160
to $200. When your project is completed, sell it on EBAY and get all or
most of your money back. I have one. It works flawlessly. In addition to
using it as I described above, I use it to feed the preview window of my
video editing software to a standard NTSC TV. That gives me a real world
look at my video rather than the less accurate depiction one gets on a
computer monitor.

The PCI analogue capture card would be my third choice of last resort.

Hope this helps.

Steve King