Analog Video Capture

I was looking at a couple of video capture devices at the local Best Buy store. The 3 they had on the shelf were Dazzle (2) and Pinnacle.

I can't think that the cheapest Dazzle device is a simple converter. It has the standard red/white/yellow analog video/audio connector inputs and the output of this bulky 'adapter' is a USB cable.

Is there a standard means to connect this to the PC versus spending $80 for a damn converter or am I missing something?

ANY thoughts are appreciated.

 

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if you have a good video card, and the right software, you can get it through your TV-in and microphone jacks, however most people do not have the right video card(even i only have a TV-out) and finding the software can be very hard.

 

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From what I remember if you by a video adapter card then you are more than likely to get packaged software with it. Just remember to make sure that the package you are purchasing has all the trimmings with it and isn't like the ATI "SE" range which didn't include extra software. (I know thats graphics cards but thats the best way of explaining how things are packaged)

Admittedly it was a long time ago when I bought a video adapter, however it only dealt with Analog input (and output) it didn't deal with sound, which meant you would have to "Dub" the footage afterwards in a program.

 

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Thanks for the input.

I was thinking along the lines of hardware adapters. I haven't studied the USB connector yet but know with this $80 adapter I will have 3 wires (are the RCA connectors single wires only?) coming into the adapter from the camcorder and 'whatever' number of wires coming out in the form of a USB connector.

Guess I'm thinking about a project that would use more than $80 of my time ...

 

Many enthusiasts who build their own PVRs use hauppauge (winTV) cards. I don't know if they're the best but my searches usually landed me on forums with people selecting this brand. Whatever card you choose, make sure it has an integrated hardware encoder (so that it doesn't use the CPU for encoding). I haven't seen a "video card" with a hardware encoder. The best (and easiest) solution is to capture using using a capture card and output by any video card. I've had the WinTV PVR-150 for a year now and I'm pretty happy with it.