8 Capture Considerations: What to Look for in a Digitizer or Capture Card for Video
You already own a camcorder and you have a computer, but you want the two to work together. There is no question that editing video on your computer is the way to go, but the problem is that you need to get that video onto your computer first. Fortunately, you can solve this problem yourself with only a small amount of cash and limited technical skills. We've got something for you veterans out there as well, since there are some pretty sophisticated and attractive new hardware packages that you could use to upgrade your machine from basic to advanced. In any case, this is the place to start your research as we offer these eight observations.
1. FireWire
Computer editing is the way to go and going digital is what it is all about. The ideal situation is when your video starts out digital on your digital camcorder, because a Mini DV or Digital8 camcorder is already ready to talk to your computer, if you have the proper interface card. FireWire (aka IEEE-1394 or i.LINK) cards are cheap (as low as $15) and easy to install. In fact, you might not even need to install anything at all: Macs have had FireWire for some time now, and many new PCs now come with the connection as well.
You won't need a supercomputer to edit digital video, but a fairly new PC running Windows 98SE should be a minimum. A Phillips-head screwdriver and a half an hour should be all you need to insert a FireWire card into a PCI-slot. That and a FireWire cable. Oh, and some software, of course. If you aren't comfortable just receiving a card in the mail with no instructions at all, you might consider getting a complete FireWire bundle, such as the ADS Pyro 1394DV ($80). It comes with sophisticated but accessible video editing and DVD authoring software for beginners and includes explicit installation instructions that you might not find when you buy a generic card.
2. Analog Inputs
Analog capture is a much more complex process since we need to figure out how to convert analog video into a digital format that your computer likes. Analog cards are most likely not automatically (natively) supported by your computer's operating system and may need to be configured before they'll work properly. Because analog cards need to convert your video and audio into digital data, these cards can be more demanding on your computer as well.
Analog capture is not an IEEE standardized process, so you'll have to pay more attention to the properties of the card you buy. Low-end cards might convert incoming analog video to compressed MPEG-2 video, which can be extremely challenging to edit and is often of marginal quality. Still, MPEG-2 video files are relatively small in size and the format is great for distribution, which is why it is used on DVDs, digital cable, satellite systems and in-home digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo. If you don't need to perform extensive editing, MPEG-2 is a good choice.
Some of the higher-end cards capture 4:2:2 MPEG-2 video at a 25Mbps data rate, which is quite high (DVDs typically have data rates around 8Mbps). Some analog cards capture to the DV format, which is a good option. Professional cards often record in a high quality MJPEG mode or even in a proprietary highest quality uncompressed format.
The final advantage of analog capture cards is that they usually swing both ways, capturing analog video to your computer and also sending it back out (typically via S-video or RCA). Sometimes this analog out ability can be used by your editing software to send previews out to a television set, which is a very nice feature for hobbyists but is a necessity for the pros.
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