Good morning folks, i wonder if you could help me out. I,m currently building a PC. It is going to be used as a general purpose machine, bit of internet, bit of kids homework and a bit of video editing. Now then, here's the bit where I,m getting myself confused.
I have old movie footage on VHS tapes and some on S-VHS tapes and I want to be able to get that from the video recorder or camera onto my new PC in order to edit it and subsequently burn to DVD.
I,ve been told I don,t need a great graphics card but I could buy one with VIVO functions that would do the job. And I,ve also been told that I could buy something like the Canopus AVDC 50. However, looking at the canopus website it says that the canopus also needs a capture card.
I just want someone to tell me what on earth I need to buy.
Nowt fancy just capable of doing a bit of editing now and then.
I now have a digital camera and will never need to capture analogue again once my old vids are done, so I don,t really want to be spending too much.

Can you tell us what DV camera you have and what facilities it comes with. e.g some cameras have DV in /out and analogue in /out. If yours is like that the you dont need a capture card as the camera can be used to do the analogue DV conversion. If not then you will need a capture card and some editing software.

My analogue video camera is a JVC Gr-AX55 which uses VHS-C tapes.
Looking at the manual it appears that it only has an "AV-OUT" socket.
Many thanks

No, you don't need a seperate capture card with the Canopus ADVC 50. Did you mean editing card? The ADVC 50 is designed solely for converting analogue video to video saved on your PC. It does nothing more than this - it doesn't help with the editing process or output your video back to tape (for the latter you beed a ADVC100). So it has a distinct advantage over a graphics card with VIVO in that it was designed purely for the job in question (but doesn't allow video out).

If you have a very fast PC, a graphics card withg VIVO will work fine (I get good quality capture with a failrly old ASUS VS9280) - and work out cheaper. But if you don't want to take the risk, go for a dedicated converter.

As for the editing card, well Canopus are eager for you to buy more of their products. I wouldn't reccomend an editing card (arouund £500!) to anyone just starting out. You can edit fine without one.

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The specs of the PC I,m building are as follows:-
Asus A7N8X deluxe motherboard
1 gig of Crucial PC2700 memory
160 GB Maxtor Diamond Max SATA hard drive

Is this what you would call a "fast" PC

I won,t need to put the edited movie back onto tape as I hope to be burning it to DVD.

If you were to spend a couple of hundred quid on a product (or products)that will give you graphics AND capture analogue video what would you go for?

What processor u thinking of going for, you have a choice of the following higher end CPUs with that mobo:

AMD Athlon™ XP 3000+ (333 FSB)
AMD Athlon™ XP 2800+ (333 FSB)
AMD Athlon™ XP 2700+ (333 FSB)
AMD Athlon™ XP 2600+ (333 FSB) Model 8
AMD Athlon™ XP 2600+ (266 FSB)
AMD Athlon™ XP 2500+ (333 FSB)
AMD Athlon™ XP 2400+ (266 FSB)

Go for the for upper end of that list . This link i a bit out of date now, but gives an idea of video editing perfomance of CPUs: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2003...charts-26.html

Finally, if I were you (a bit of a newbie with stacks of analogue video), I'd spend the money on a dedicated anologue converter like the ADVC50. And you also won't have the restriction of choosing a graphics card with VIVO - but go for one with the best preformance/value!

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Arthur, good to see you posting by the way Makes me feel a liitle less lonely on the boards! :lol:

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what about the 400mhz fsb socket A cpus? they'll run fine on any newer a7n8x, which this almost certainly will be.

if you MUST get a vivo card, i'd have to say go for the best radeon you can buy.

you should be able to get separate cards for sensible money though.

i'd also think about getting a second hard drive, so that when you're editing video and stuff you can bounce the video from drive to drive, rather than reading and writing to different areas of the same drive.

Computer building never was my strong point

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Thanks guys, the CPU I have is unfortunately not at the top end of your list. It is an XP2500. I will probably get myself a second hard drive but money is getting tight so it might have to wait. I don,t HAVE to get a VIVO card. It just seemed like a decent all in one solution for me.
I suppose thats what these forums are for Is,nt it, to educate and help you make informed choices. I,ve been to a computer fair today and they are selling TV cards capable of capturing video for £50, are they rubbish?
Thanks for taking the time to reply.