Well Pinnacle Studio 8 is OK for editing But I found it very Buggy when it comes to Capture , The Big Problem with Studio 8 Analogue Capture is that it will only let you use the Proprietary Codecs that come with the Program to capture ,of which None of them are Very good..
For actual Video Capture some of the Best Tools are Freeware programs like "Virtual Dub" and "Virtual VCR"..These Programs capture to AVI format useing the Codecs you have installed on your System but captureing to a High Quality Low Compression AVI format will use a LOT of Disk Space so you should have a Large Dedicated Fast Hard drive Just for Captureing Video because Full Resolution AVI files can use 250mb-1000mb per Minute of Video captured depending on the Codec used...I have a Dedicated 160gb Maxtor($80) ata/133 drive just for capture and Video files and a 120gb ata/133 drive as My Main Drive...If you try to capture Full resolution Files to your Main Drive you can Drop a Lot of frames when the System has to access the Drive, and Haveing a Fast PC helps also...There are New 10 Bit TV/Capture cards that were released earlier this year that Produce Very High Quality captures ,Some of these Cards Can be found for between $50-$75 US...The 2 cards that I know of that Use these New 10 Bit Decoder Chips are "MSI TV@nywere" and the "Asus TV Tuner" ...You can Pick up the Old 8 Bit Cards For really cheap and some Produce Fair Quality but the 10 Bit cards are the Way to go for a Cheap Good Quality capture solution....
You will also Need a Good Quality Mpeg2 encoder to encode your Captured Files into Mpeg2 DVD Compliant Format..There are Only 4 encoders on the Market that I would consider High Quality ,One is the ever Popular "Tmpgenc"
which Produces pretty Good Quality and has a Low Price and they have a 30 Day demo available..Another Very Good and Very Fast encoder Is called "MainConcept Encoder" it Produces simular Quality as Tmpgenc but is 5X as Fast, Another Good encoder But very hard to find is Called "Canopus Procoder", this encoder Converts To and From Many Formats and Is Extremely high Quality But it is also Extremely slow, and the last and in My opinion the Best For Mpeg2 encodeing is called "Cinema Craft encoder" or "CCE" this encoder is extremely High end and Probably the Fastest and highest quality encoder, but it is Difficult to use...You will also need a DVD Authoring Program to author the Mpeg files to DVD ,There are Many of these Programs arround But I find only a Handfull are any good, One very good and easy one to use is called "DVD-Lab" it has some Features that only High end Programs have and it is Very reasonably Priced..So as you can see there is Quite a Bit to Captureing Video and authoring it to DVD but it can also be Fun and rewarding when you watch your Own Creation on TV and all you friends Look at it and Go "Wow You did that?" "Your a Genius"...lol
If you need any Help you can message me ...Cheers
PS: it doesn"t Matter what software you use with the DVC 80 cuz none can capture Quality video from a Low Quality Capture device...
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 7. November 2003 @ 14:20
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