What is
the best solution for recording VCR video on a laptop computer?
Usually for the best video solution it is
recommend using a hardware PCI capture card but on a laptop this
is not an option.
If your laptop has an IEEE1394 port and
you have a DV camcorder you can record from your VCR to laptop
via DV camcorder. There are also stand alone products that
do this same function but without the full DV camcorder. If your
PC does not have an IEEE1394 port, you can add one with a PCMCIA
card. The problem with this solution is that you are converting
the video twice. Once from analog video to DV (DV-AVI) and then
from DV to DVD (MEG2).
Another solution that you have,
would be to import video via the USB port. Traditionally it has
been recommended avoiding USB for streaming video
because of bandwidth limitations, although fast, USB
bandwidth is not constant.
USB
Bandwidth Chart USB bandwidth is very processor dependent and excessive drops
in bandwidth result in lost frames of video. (USB 2.0 works
better than USB1.1 but it still has some of the same inherent
problems). This is why USB encoding bit rate
is limited to 6mb/sec (typical DVD bit rate) while many PCI
hardware encoders can support up to 15mb/sec.
To avoid taxing your CPU when dependent upon
the USB bandwidth it is recommend to use an external
hardware encoder. The hardware will relieve the CPU of needing
to do the encoding thus leaving the USB bandwidth more stable.
While using USB for video capture is not
the best solution, it has improved with refinement and it is
what would be recommend for capturing video to a laptop.
* With a quality
digital capture device, you can actually get slightly
improved video quality over the original. (Probably due to the
fact that a PC has tighter video specs than a TV display.)
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The USB hardware video capture hardware
that we sell is a USB 2.0 third
generation solution (New for 2004). It can out perform
many earlier PCI hardware capture cards. With
the hardware we also include additional editing software that
allows for titling, effects, and DVD creation.
USB
2.0 Video Capture [This
product is USB2.0 optimized]
