Voyetra Turtle Beach Video Advantage PCI Capture Card Review (page 2)

The Video Advantage PCI is clearly a great value for the hobbyist or amateur videographer. It wasn't long ago that you would have spent three times as much to get the same performance. The combination of easy installation, reliable video performance, convenient drive bay inputs and a suite of capable software makes this a tempting package for even semi-pro videographers on a budget. We'd want to resolve the audio sync and dropped frame problems we encountered in our AVI test before we'd use this file type for longer clips. But with a variety of other compressed file formats available, some may not see this as a significant issue.

Is your living room floor covered with domino-style knock-down mazes of unedited Mini-DV or VHS tapes? You'll find the Video Advantage PCI a well-priced and complete solution for capturing analog or digital video and authoring DVDs.

Brian Peterson is Videomaker's Editor in Chief.

Processor: Intel Pentium or Athlon 1.2GHz or better
Operating System: Windows Me/2000/XP (XP recommended)
RAM: 256MB (512MB recommended)
Sound card: required but type not specified
Optical Drive: CD ROM drive, DVD burner (extra free 5.25" drive bay slot also required)
Hard disk: 7200rpm ATA 100
Disk Space Required: 600MB hard disk space for software, 15GB of hard disk space for project and temp space
Connectors: S-video, A/V RCA composite, stereo mini-jack (for microphone), 4-pin 1394, USB
Bundled software: AD FullCap, PowerDirector DE, PowerProducer Express, AudioSurgeon

• Easy installation
• Convenient access to inputs via drive bay panel
• Intuitive interface
• Stable performance

• Problem with A/V sync
• Frames dropped on 2 minute or longer AVI files

A good low-cost solution for real-time DVD authoring with a few bugs left to work out.

$170
Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc.
5 Odell Plaza
Yonkers, NY 10701
www.turtlebeach.com

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