HI, Can someone please suggest the best capture card for making SVCD's without spending a fortune please? As I am tired of wasting my money on things which do not work properly. I have used an Iomega Buzz in the past a Pinacle VCD capture card (does not capture in SVCD format) also a TV capture card (also does not capture in SVCD format). Any experience, help and information into selecting the right capture card would be greatly appreciated. Also I need this capture card to work with Win XP Pro as well.

Kind Regards Erica

-- Erica Sievers (erica@cybagirl.net), September 15, 2002

Answers

This is a reasonable question, but "spending a fortune" is relative. I like the Dazzle DVC II. It can do VCD, SVCD and DVD. It is a video capture card only - it has no TV capabilities. To record TV shows, you must connect the output of a VCR to the DVC II, but it's not difficult to do. http://www.spawns.dk is an unofficial site for the card. It will cost you about $220 US to buy the card. Look on http://www.pricewatch.com for the best prices (search on "Dazzle" not "DVC II" to find it). You can spend less on other cards, but they won't have the quality of the DVC II. Download a sample clip at Spawn's web site and see what the DVC II can do.

-- Root (root@yahoo.com), September 16, 2002.

i will put in my 2 cents.. when it comes to SVCD i havent tried it yet but i do know that tmpgenc.exe (free) can convert any avi or mpeg1 into SVCD compatible video. I hope you know that many DVD players will not play SVCDs (thats what i've heard) why not make VCDs which are more compativle. I found that if i capture video with my ATI TV wonder VE ($49) into mpeg1 video at 6.00bit rate and then convert to VCDmpeg1 video i get excellent results... sometimes the obvious is hard to see I mean mpge1 at 6bit is closer to vcdmpeg1 than avi is to vcdmpeg1 so it should work better (i think). i tried capturing in avi like everyone else but when converted i got pixelated video, so FOR ME this newly discovered way is better but it also depends on your system hardware you have to try what works better for you. I have just got an AMD 2000+ (1667mhz) with 256ddr ram and win xp home. Someone from this forum also mentioned hardware encoding better than software encoding. like mentioned above Dazzle makes a hardware encoder i dont know what its called though.

-- daniel b (bonl1@cs.com), September 18, 2002.