Evening all.

I was just wondering if anyone had any experience of video capture devices for laptops? Or any computer for that matter! I'm trying to find the best sort of device that will allow me to take recorded tv programmes (Off a HDD tv recorder type thing) and copy them to my laptop, or desktop pc so that I can burn them to a DVD, or put them on a memory stick for work

I'm vaguely aware that there used to be video capture cards available for desktop pcs, but to be honest I would prefer something that would work with a laptop, or possibly an external device that can be used with any PC. I have no idea what is out there though, so I am after some recommendations if possible!

The other thing is that I would quite like to be able to record a video stream from a wireless camera/receiver system that I use on some of my kites/planes

Cheers!
Andy

you do get video capture devices that are USB, they will work on USB1.1 but are better with USB2
Hauppage do one, and i'm sure other companies do to

http://www.hauppage.com/pages/products/data_pvrusb2.html

Best one's are firewire (or IEEE1394) not sure on USB but I suspect transfer rates are slower that Firewire. You will need a fast CPU and Video RAM to get best results.

Good luck - sounds like a neat project!

You may already have one. Do you have a digital camcorder? In which case you have 2 choices: -

1) A lot of digital camcorders will do an analog-digital passthrough, so you hook up the analog output (via svideo or composite) to the analog input of your camcorder assuming it has one, and the camcorder converts this on the fly to digital output on the firewire. Take this to your laptops firewire (or a few quid for a PC firewire card) and bobs yer dog.

2) If your camcorder doesn't do passthrough then use the analog input to record to digital tape, then reoutput via firewire to your PC/laptop.

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Originally posted by Genesis
Best one's are firewire (or IEEE1394) not sure on USB but I suspect transfer rates are slower that Firewire. You will need a fast CPU and Video RAM to get best results.

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Originally posted by the_fbi

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Originally posted by Genesis
Best one's are firewire (or IEEE1394) not sure on USB but I suspect transfer rates are slower that Firewire. You will need a fast CPU and Video RAM to get best results.

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Firewire is 400mbit, USB2.0 is 480mbit
There is now Firewire2 which is 800mbit but not sure what actually exists on a hardware front apart from the PC expansion cards and storage.

USB2 is your best bet.

If you've not got a fast CPU then most of modern USB solutions have inbuild compression anyway, perhaps not to a format you'd want for a DVD, but certainly you can recompress it to a suitable codec/format after.

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usb2 will be well fast enough.

the bitrate from a dvd maxes out at 10mbit/ sec. USB2 can cope with 480.......

I have a usb1.0 capture device that does 360x240 at about 25 frames..... so a usb 2 should be way faster - made by Adaptec.

atb

steve

quote:

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Originally posted by Genesis

quote:

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Originally posted by the_fbi

quote:

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Originally posted by Genesis
Best one's are firewire (or IEEE1394) not sure on USB but I suspect transfer rates are slower that Firewire. You will need a fast CPU and Video RAM to get best results.

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Firewire is 400mbit, USB2.0 is 480mbit
There is now Firewire2 which is 800mbit but not sure what actually exists on a hardware front apart from the PC expansion cards and storage.

USB2 is your best bet.

If you've not got a fast CPU then most of modern USB solutions have inbuild compression anyway, perhaps not to a format you'd want for a DVD, but certainly you can recompress it to a suitable codec/format after.

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Firewire is a dedicated video connection - USB2 would probably be using other devices eg printer, modem etc - rendering the USB2 slower.

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Originally posted by steve_gus
I have a usb1.0 capture device that does 360x240 at about 25 frames..... so a usb 2 should be way faster - made by Adaptec.

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If you are looking for a real bargain

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=14718271454&product_uid=51722

Its in their "open box" section, but theres not exactly anything to be missing. Apart from drivers and you can download all that from
http://www.belkin.com/support/download.asp?download=F5U228&lang=1&mode=

The Ulead software is the only thing you won't be able to download free, but Windows Movie Maker can probably do all you'd need anyway.

I have actually designed USB2.0 hardware - although i wouldnt claim to be an expert on its implementation Even the guidance document is approx 500 pages long - for a two wire protocol!. I worked on the hardware side of the project where a workmate did the drivers.


USB actually has full bandwidth capability for each port - there isnt any bandwidth sharing as such on each connector as they are seperate inputs for each device.

Where the bottleneck comes in is during the software servicing, and the way that the data is 'time sliced'.

Although the bitrate over the line is 480mb, the throughput is lower due to there being a 125us time slot for transfers (there are 8k slots per second). So, each device has to 'grab' its share of time slots.

Peripherals cope with this by having buffer memory present in the hardware - the data is stored until a burst of data packets can be output. So, its not a constant smooth data stream, but intermittent bursts.

each usb port is fully capable of 480mb - its moving the data after its recieved that slows things down.


Therefore, the bandwidth over the usb is dependent on the buffers being able to trasmit the info from the end point of the device in sufficient time slices, that are not being used by other devices. I would suspect cheaper devices use greater hardware compression and smaller buffers..... so you likely get what you pay for

for those that want to be bored

http://www.usb.org

mine is a 'videoh cd' - there is a DVD version, and I thought it said usb 2 on the box.....

Im working on a project at the moment that uses a dvd qulaity one - thou its with my software 'partner' right now - if anyone is interested in the make, i could let you know. Hes been using it a fair bit to write custom capture software, so should have some idea of how good it is.

atb

steve

atb

steve

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Originally posted by the_fbi

quote:

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Originally posted by steve_gus
I have a usb1.0 capture device that does 360x240 at about 25 frames..... so a usb 2 should be way faster - made by Adaptec.

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I believe most of the Hauppauge USB devices are still USB1.1 devices (although are clearly 2.0 compatible) as they do hardware compression onboard, so the actual bandwidth required is still coped with by USB1.1

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This kind of thing usb doofer bottom of the page?. I use a tv card in my pc and convert stuff to divx from mpeg2 or avi for watching on the telly (divx dvd player) or computer. I bought the converter but it wasn't an expensive download for the use it's had.

[Edited on 2/1/06 by Peteff]

This may be interesting.
http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/product.php?product_id=3773