...cost effective and simple.

Get a basic firewire card and cable ($20-$30) and buy a miniDV camcorder from EBay (as long as it has the pass-through feature - i.e. analog in to firewire out).
The camera doesn't have to record so the transport portion can be defective.

Mike

It seems that so many of the inexpensive capture cards these days capture in a compressed format such as .mpg 1/2/4, so if you want to actually capture uncompressed AVI files or DV Type 1/2 you can go with the Turtle Beach Video Advantage ADX. It's a PCI card for $100.00

http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/vaadx/home.aspx

I'm on my way to the store to buy one of those Turtle Beach PCI cards now. Thx for your time and help....

Canopus ACEDVIO. About $300 or so. Can't beat it with a big stick.

http://www.canopus.com/products/ACEDVio/

bought the Turtle beach pci video capture, installed, got it to work. In video capture mode when recording, the preview is all jittery. Then in playback mode the file plays back a little faster than normal and it crackles....

Seriously, the only 100% way to capture with any application is via firewire and a proper A->D converter. Get an ADVC 110 or for older tapes spend the extra dollars and get the ADVC 300.
If your camera is Video 8 or Hi8 then get a cheap Digital 8 camera. That'll play back all the 8mm tapes over firewire with time base correction, problem solved.

Bob.

for several years I used a hi-8 cam analog into a video capture card. with perfect results. I'm not trying to make tv shows or movies, just small instructional clips for my web site. My webcam capture isn't good enough quality, but I guess I'll have to go with that and I just wasted money on the Turtle Beach card.

You could have probably picked up a Digital 8 camera off eBay for the price of the card, just make certain you get a model that will play Hi8 tapes, some of the later Sony cameras dropped this feature.

Some of newer web cams aren't too bad, I've got a $20 one that blows everyone I Skype with away, even has 6 LEDs for lighting and a proper focusable lens.

Still if you can see the difference between a web cam and your old Hi8 it'd be worthwhile getting a better capture from your Hi8 cam with a D8 camera me thinks.


Bob.

Only a few models of Digital8 camcorders will play back 8mm/Hi8 tapes. You have to check the specs before you buy.

I just wasted money on the Turtle Beach card.

Not necessarily. You just need to figure out what's causing the issues you're having and see if there's a solution. Google around for some Turtle Beach forums; there's a world of helpful people out there, and someone out there has probably had (and solved) this same issue.

The surest way to "waste" money on hardware is to give up on a piece of it at the slightest problem. ;)

Rob

Sorry to hear that you are having capture/playback issues with the card, especially since I suggested it. I've run my card under both XP and now Vista and don't have any of the issues you describe. Perhaps I am one of the lucky ones. Have you checked the Turtle Beach website for the latest driver/software updates?

Most stores allow you to return products that don't work for you, where you did you buy the card?

I want to eventually get a Canopus unit for capture like everyone else has suggested here, but like yourself, I wanted something inexpensive. Hopefully you'll get it running or be able to return it for a refund.

Check the Turtle Beach site for driver updates. Capture cards almost never work quite right until the 3rd or 4th driver rev.

What you should buy is a USB2 hardware encoding card.

A hardware encoder contains it's own encoder chip and relies very little on the computer. This means that you don't have to have any kind of powerful machine to run it. Most if not all of them encode in mpeg2 format.

I have the Win TV PVR2 usb capture card. Although it is a tv tuner, it does have composite and svideo inputs.... and the nice thing about it is that it will capture perfectly stable up to 12,000K with no stress on your computer..... all the encoding is done by the PVR. The only thing your machine needs to do is copy the mpeg to your HDD.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvrusb2.html

I also have the sounblaster Audigy 2ZS video editor... it's a bit pricier, but it works well... it's also a hardware encoding device
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=205&product=11226

just tried updating turtle beach driver, don't think it did anything. Hard to tell. I'm not a PC expert. But with the audio issues I was having, I now notice that my Line 6 Toneport (a USB device) audio is all choppy. So something has messed up my audio somewhere somehow since installing the TB card.

The only problem with both of those is they're encoding to mpeg-2. That means by the time you've finished editing and putting it onto a DVD the video has been though at least two mpeg-2 encoding passes.
One of my video cards has ViVo through S-Video that gave me DV to the HD. I don't use this feature anymore as the lack of a TBC drove me nuts with one client's dodgy LP VHS tapes but it got me started. Interesting thing was that Vegas would capture quite happily through this card.

I wonder if midiaxer could get his Turtle Beach card to work through VidCap?

Bob.

"The only problem with both of those is they're encoding to mpeg-2. That means by the time you've finished editing and putting it onto a DVD the video has been though at least two mpeg-2 encoding passes."
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And this is EXACTLY why vegas needs a smartrender system. When I work with mpeg (other than HD) I will use another product that includes smartrender.... this way, only the parts that get changed actually get rendered.

The lack of a smartrender system , IMO is one of Vegas's BIGGEST weaknesses.

Another vote for the little Canopus converters. All the processing (conversion to DV) happens in the converter, so all the PC need do is write the incoming stream - via Firewire - to disk. None of the problems of editing lossy MPEG either.

The OP didn't mention the age/speed of his computer, that has a huge bearing on whether one can capture in real time and in what format. If he's trying to do a lot of number crunching or capturing to a loss-less format, that'll tax a lot more system resources.

The OP didn't mention the age/speed of his computer...

I've used a Canopus ADVC-100 on an old PII-450 with no problems at all.
The good, no, make that great, thing about the Canopus box is that it works as advertised :-)

Mike

Yes, props to the Audigy2 ZS. With the tools you can download from CreativeLabs you can engage the analog->DV [DV25] acquisition mode (via USB2). You lose some of the processing options you otherwise get in the MPEG-2 modes but for me that wasn't a loss to be entirely fluid on the timeline, (pretty well) all of the time. You might get a digital-8 camcorder with analog->DV passthrough (or via first recording to tape) for about the same money. However my Audigy2 ZS was bought from a box shifter for quite a bit less than half the list price and in the UK where a bargain is that much harder to find in good technology.

I've had consistently good results from this from Hi8 and even Digital8 (given that the Sony camcorder had a broken firewire port due to bad design from a self-protection side of things). The Audigy2 ZS also gives life to older desktops and laptops in need of better audio and/or DVD decoding (and even a way to handle DVD-Audio discs).

"I've had consistently good results from this from Hi8 and even Digital8 (given that the Sony camcorder had a broken firewire port due to bad design from a self-protection side of things). The Audigy2 ZS also gives life to older desktops and laptops in need of better audio and/or DVD decoding (and even a way to handle DVD-Audio discs)."
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I bought my 2 ZS when I was running my laptop. It's an absolute must-have for laptop owners!
Everything rolled up into one neat little casing with one USB connect to the laptop... a 4 port usb hub, sound card, mic inputs, firewire input, s-vid, and component inputs.... the list goes on. I don't really use mine anymore since I moved to a desktop, but I refuse to get rid of it!

Much, much cheaper than full Canopus setup is the Osprey range of PCI cards. They do an excellent job of RCA or S-Video capture. I've used several over the years, and have installed the same for several corporate clients.

They are cheap, reliable, and work brilliantly with such freeware capture apps as Windows Media Encoder. At the same time they are professional gear, not cheap consumer muck (I went down that path and wasted lots of time)

I can't recommend them too highly (and no, I have no affiliation with them other than being a satisfied customer!)

http://www.viewcast.com/products/osprey/osprey210.html