Maximum PC

i was wondering what ATI AIW card is good for VHS capturing and is at the same time not expensive. i will only been using this card for the VHS to DVD purposes and not as my primary video card.

Seeing as you say this will not be your primary videocard, the AIW (which has graphics card capabilities as well as capture capabilities) might not be the way to go anyway, and you can save lots of dough by going PCI. The TV Wonder/Tv Wonder PRO are examples, but there are other manufacturers out there too, such as Hauppauge and Avermedia.

Be careful though, since with a lot of solutions, you will be doing your capture/encode in software, and in realtime. This might be fine for you, especially if your just pulling old VHS into DVD, and you have a fast proc, but there are solutions for hardware encoding which will have better quality and most likely save you some time.

For PCI, ATI has the E-Home Wonder coming out soon, which will be able to do hardware mpeg2 encoding. Creative has the Video Blaster Digital VCR for this, and Avermedia and Adaptec have cards for this too. In addition, there are numerous external USB products that can do the encoding for you by Hauppauge, Compro, Plextor, and others.

For some time, I was even using my DV Cam! It has a an analog to digital passthrough that allowed me to run video from VCR->DV Cam->Computer via firewire. Then of course I could either do a realtime software capture, but I usually just captured (transferred technically, since it's coming through as ones and zero's already) the footage to DV, and edited and encoded from there. So if you happen to have a DV cam, check out it's features, you might have it too.

i do have a dv cam but never thought of it like that but now that i think about it, it does make sense

also im very new to the idea of the VCR to DVD thing so what to you mean by realtime software capturing?

does that mean as i am capturing i am encoding at the same time?

Basically, the AIW cards and quite a few others do NOT have an onboard specialized processor that does nothing but encode analog video. This is fine for viewing TV on your computer, but when you want to capture video to your HD, your processor (which is not specialized or optimized for the task) has to do all the work, and it has to do it RIGHT NOW, or else the video is lost for that frame. Lots of things can affect the quality of the resultant encoded video, including how dynamic the footage is (PBS or Terminator?), how peppy your proc is, and what quality settings you are using for the capture. This can result in artifacting, choppiness, dropped frames, etc. A lot is dependent on your hardware and how easy you are to please on the project.

The other products I mentioned can do hardware encoding. They do have an onboard, highly specialized processor on the card (or box for the USB versions) that does nothing but use built-in algorithms to convert analog video signals to ones and zero's. The file appears on your computer already encoded in the format you selected, and you can use your computer to surf or whatever in the meantime.

Still other products, like my DV cam with the analog-digital passthrough, or products from ADS and Pinnacle, only encode the analog video to DV. DV is (for our intents and purposes) uncompressed and huge as you probably know. The advantage is that the quality level is very high, and the material is the easiest to edit and work with in a NLE (non linear editing) program. After editing, etc., just like your home movies, you would then have to use an encoder to get it to the more compact and friendly file format of your choice (mpeg2, divx, etc.). This is software encoding again, but not in realtime! The computer can take all the time it wants to examine the DV file, make multiple passes, apply filters, whatever you want it to do. With this method, how peppy your proc is just affects the time it takes, not the quality of the result. Ultimately you have the most control over the process and yield the best results in your final video with this method.

Capturing old VHS to digital though, usually the quality of the original isn't that great to begin with, so dialing down the settings saves time and usually can't be noticed. You might be able to get away with software capturing, but IMHO, just get a USB or PCI hardware capture card. They can yield very nice results, and while not as cheap as the non-hardware capture cards, they are easily less expensive than the AIW's you were looking at. They also often have some of the same nifty features like Divx encoding, PVR functions, remote controls, or TV Tuners!