Capture Cards - Page 4

In recent years the prices of capture cards has fallen rapidly. Functionality that used to cost $1,000 is now below $200. I'm going to look at two fairly inexpensive capture cards that are still up to professional standards, but are cheap enough for hobbyists.

The Viewcast Osprey 100 has a list price of $159 and can be found for $149 if you poke around a bit. The other card worth mentioning is Winnov's Videum AV that sells for about $199.

Input/Output (I/O)

Video cards are generally differentiated by two things: Performance and I/O. I've always been a big fan of the Osprey 100 card. It's very small and fits well into a typical cramped desktop computer. It has three composite (RCA jacks) inputs as well as a S-Video input. This allows you to switch between a variety of external video sources. Its main draw back is its lack of audio inputs. I normally use the audio input on my sound card and never seem to have any problems. There is a slightly more expensive board, the Osprey 200, that includes audio inputs. In the past I've had audio driver conflicts between the 200 and existing sound cards. Thus I normally stick to the well tested Osprey 100. When recording longer video segments there supposedly can be synchronization problems when using the Osprey 100 and a separate sound card, but I've never run into them.

The Videum is a much larger card and shouldn't be used on small desktops. I'd only use it in a tower case. The Videum has a major advantage with built-in audio, though as I mentioned this it can cause problems with existing sound cards. The card is limited to only one composite video jack though jacks for MXC video and S-Video are provided.

Both cards come with basic capture software that will produce an AVI file or several other formats. You can also make basic adjustments to brightness and color levels. If you have access to Adobe Premiere or Vegas Video both these cards work well with these software packages.

Capture Quality

Video capture should always be done at a considerably better quality than the final product. With these cards I would recommend against capturing at a full 640x480 and 30fps. I've had some problems with both cards dropping frames at these resolutions. I'd recommend dropping the capture size down to 320x240 and capturing at 30 fps. This will give you smooth high quality source AVI files.

Both cards are capable of capturing at 640x480 pixels and 30 frames per second (fps). However, since we are going to be encoding to a final resolution of either 320x240 or 160x120 and either 24 fps or 15 fps, we don't need to capture at the higher rate. On any modern computer you should be able to do 320x240 capture at 30 fps with no dropped frames using either card.

In our next article we will cover the conversion of the captured AVI files to Windows Media.

Conclusion:

In our first article we have looked at Windows Media for both the consumer market and the commercial markets. Currently the corporate market is the most developed and offers the best chance of delivering profitable revenue in the short term. Next we looked at when streaming is a viable alternative to closed circuit and VHS tapes. We also discussed how video that is intended for streaming media should be shot. This is probably the area that differs the most between analog video delivery and streaming media. It is important to realize the effect of the Windows Media codec and how it trades bandwidth for quality.

Next we transferred our source material from analog tape such as Beta SP or VHS to the computer using a video capture card. We looked at two mainstream prosumer capture cards that are both cheap and reliable.

In our next article, we're going to take our freshly made AVI file and convert it into Windows Media using the Windows Media encoder. Then we'll look at how to place it on a server and make it available on a Web page.

Shooting Streaming Video - Page 3
Windows Media: Encoding