Show us your capture PC builds!

[ge0dude]

This is an expensive hobby and so I've been slowly building up equipment over the years. I believe I've finally settled on my Primary workflow and I've chosen which PC I will recycle (Originally built by me circa 2021.) I chose it for it's modernity and Windows 10 Workflow.

Capture PC:
Intel Core i3-10100 (4 cores, 8 threads. Benchmark-wise, it's between an i7-7700 and an i7-7700k)
32gb DDR4 RAM (Oloy Warhawk)
Gigabyte B560 HD3 Motherboard
LG WH16NS40 Bluray Burner with stock firmware (most desirable UHD firmware version, can't remember revision but apparently they've all but vanished from the market, they are more desirable stock vs flashed because of a "sleep bug")
Western Digital Black SN750 500GB NVME drive
2TB HGST HDD - Recycled from ~2013 build, ~5 years of hours on it.
Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 ATX Mid Tower Case - Recycled From ~2013 Build.
EVGA Power Supply - Recycled from ~2013 Build

If I'm not happy with the analog input on my windows 10 machine, I have a Windows 7 Machine I can KVM into.

Intel Core i5-3570k
24GB DDR3 Ram
Mystery motherboard (prebuilt)
Asus DVD Drive
Intel Enterprise 120gb SATA SSD
Prebuilt Case and Power Supply


I would like to see some of your builds, and learn about your troubles and hurdles, tips and tricks. How have you maximized your rig for capture? I'm still in the building out phase of my capture setup(s) so I'm here to learn.

[Aya_Rei]

I myself use laptops, was never the kind of guy to use desktop PCs.

For my capture rig I use a 2013 Dell Latitude e6430 running Windows XP, was the last ever Latitude to officially support Windows XP. Originally bought it to play retro PC games but I've changed it to strictly be an offline capture laptop.

VirtualDub works great on it, getting no drops nor inserts. I had an issue with inserts happening last year but I guess after a reinstall the problem magically fixed itself. I never dealt with seeing inserts show up in VDub before that incident.

Any and all raw .avi files I capture on XP I trim down in VDub and transfer them to 2TB Samsung Portable SSDs.

I then transfer the files from the SSD(s) to a 2022 Lenovo Thinkpad P15v Gen 3 (AMD) running Windows 10 to do restoration work in Hybrid and upload the restored .mp4 file to YouTube. Also use the laptop for scanning photos.

Basically do any and all work that isn't capturing on the modern laptop.

[ge0dude]

Thanks for the reply. Just like cycling power, sometimes uninstalling/reinstalling can do the trick! Good to hear that worked itself out.

I have an XP motherboard with an AGP slot i got for very cheap if I ever need it.

As for transfers, I've been looking into how to set up VLANS for offline transfers. Networking is not my strong point but I'm sure I'll figure it out when I decide to tackle that project.

I also need to buy a photo scanner eventually and I've mostly settled on the Plustek ePhoto Z300 for it's price to speed ratio. Though I'm not necessarily thrilled about the quality! Eventually I'll also need a film scanner that is able to scan many sorts of film slides and negatives since I have many of those as well.

[Aya_Rei]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ge0dude

I also need to buy a photo scanner eventually and I've mostly settled on the Plustek ePhoto Z300 for it's price to speed ratio. Though I'm not necessarily thrilled about the quality! Eventually I'll also need a film scanner that is able to scan many sorts of film slides and negatives since I have many of those as well.

I myself use an Espon V600 Photo for prints and medium format film, and a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE for slides and negatives. I use Vuescan with the Plustek, and Espon's Espon Scan software for well, the Espon V600.

[ge0dude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aya_Rei

I myself use an Espon V600 Photo for prints and medium format film, and a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE for slides and negatives. I use Vuescan with the Plustek, and Espon's Espon Scan software for well, the Espon V600.

After using the flatbed, do you find yourself wishing you invested in a vertical scanner to handle more photos at once? Or are you happy with the quality to the point where you don't mind the extra time spent (I have oodles of photos to process.)

[BarryTheCrab]

I have 2 capture PCs, one laptop and a tower.
My old Phoenix liquid cooled CTO tower was in need of about $600 to fix and upgrade when it died. It was an i7 4770 Haswell.
My replacement tower is an ASUS RoG GL10DH. Ryzen 5 3400G/16Gb dual-ch DDR4/4GB GTX960 (my original card) and the ASUS has it's own 2GB RX Vega 11 video memory.
I have not yet used it for an actual capture yet but renders with Hybrid are moving along faster.
The capture laptop is an HP DV7T CTO 17" i7-820QM with a 1Gb Nvidia GT230m and 8GB DDR3. It was a near-beast a looong time ago. This is an expensive "hobby" but cheaper than boating!

[Gary34]

My capture PC is an Inspiron 3847 with an intel core I3-4150 CPU and 8 gigs or ram. It’s an offline windows 7 PC. I swapped the hard drive that came with my newer computer then added an SSD for the OS. I noticed when capturing I’ll get 50 percent CPU usage while the preview is going but still won’t have dropped or inserted frames or any kinds of issues like that. Of o disable preview I get CPU usage in the 20s but there isn’t a reason to disable it if I am not dropping or inserting.

My editing computer is an Inspiron 5675 with a Ryzen 7 1700x. I upgraded the ram to 32 gigs of DDR4. I put 3 SSDs in it for the OS, scratch/cache, and media. That system is really cheap now because it’s kind of outdated. The PC was 1,200 when I bought it then I added to it. The CPU has 8 cores and 16 threads so it’s good for editing. I noticed just getting all of the other stuff off of it and doing a clean install of windows 10 helped a lot.

[Tea Monster]

I have two capture PCs. One is an Inspiron 530 desktop tower. Core 2 Duo 4300 . Two SATA SSDs. Windows XP SP3. 3 Gigs of RAM. This machine was actually gifted to me by my Son's friend who was getting rid of it.
The other is an i3 Lenovo laptop running Windows 7. Again an SSD. I can't remember the specs. 8 or 16GB of RAM.
I find that capturing with Windows XP is far better than Windows 7. Far fewer dropped frames. I would never even try to capture with Win 10 or, God forbid, Win 11.

I have a Panasonic NJ-J47 VCR, standard VHS. That links to a Panasonic DMR-ES15, which acts as a TBC. Not very technical, but it does the job. Then I feed that into my capture device using S-Video.

I've been capturing using a combination of different cards. A Dazzle 101, a Philips BT878 PCI card and recently a Tevion USB.
I've experimented with loads of different cards and dongles off of Ebay. I even got an extra USB capture card stuffed into the box of the Tevion that I'm using now. I've found that navigating what works and what does not is a complete mine field. For archiving a publishing project, I've got an old graphite G4 computer. I'm going to try capturing through a camcorder next!

I capture using VirtualDub. Capturing to Avi with Lagarith compression. I de-interlace using Avi-synth and QTGMC. I edit my videos in Blender because I'm weird like that. I work mostly in 3D modelling and I know Blender inside and out so I've used that as I can get results quickly. My editing machine is a Ryzen 7 tower with 64GB of RAM and 20TB of storage. I kitted the machine out for rendering, but the specs work well for dealing with video files as well!

I've used 3 different professional services to transcribe tapes from fan video productions we did back in the 1980s and the quality has been all over the shop. People who advertise what great equipment they have deliver blurry results. So far the Tevion is doing the best. I'm quite sure that at least one of the professional services easy-capped my video, it's that bad!

I do have a Pinacle DV 500, but I don't have a Windows 98 machine to run it on.

[BarryTheCrab]

My main PC is new-to-me, bought it used at the local PC fixer upper. It is a nice step up from my i7 Haswell tower.
This an ASUS RoG tower, Windows 11, works with zero issues regarding my Tevions, and my Hauppauge 850 & 950.
Specs: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G, 32gigs DDR4, Asustek mobo, Nvidia GTX 960 (4gig), Radion RX Vega 11 (2gig).
Two screens, and firewire, lots of USB ports, a joy to use.

[radiokom]

For my 2 main systems I use Dell Precision T1500 i7-870 2.93GHz, 16GB RAM, Win 7Pro and Dell Precision T1600 4-Core Xeon E3-1225 3.1GHz, 16GB RAM, Win 7Pro. 2x Pinnacle 710-USB, TBC Cypress CTB-531R for first and CDM-831TR for second, + 4 main VCR - 2x JVC HR-S7711 as primary and 2x Panasonic NV-FS200 as secondary. I have a lot of other gear for special purposes but those are main system. Because those Cypresses has 2x inputs video and audio, all 4 VCR are connected and can be switched as needed. That switch box on top of TBC is only for audio monitoring at recording and connected to 710 audio outputs. Panasonic NV-FS1 for rewind and special purposes (commonly together with ES10).

P.S. Those are for capture only.

20251123_115337[1].jpg

[radiokom]

One advice on headphones. You may consider AKG K92. I have given them to all my relatives and friends. That is the studio monitor quality for a price of consumer headphones. I commonly use Sennheiser Linear 2 but it is because I know them for last 25 years and I can immediately tell how what I hear will sound on Tannoy DMT 215 etc.

20251124_192143[1].jpg

[Gary34]

I’ll post a pic since it’s more just people sharing pics or there whole setup and not a custom PC build.

[radiokom]

In my opinion, in 95% of cases, if the PC is capable of running Windows 7 and has 8 or 16GB of RAM (in terms of price, the difference is a few $ and even though you don't need 16GB of RAM for capture, it doesn't hurt. Just remember "why dogs lick their balls - because they can" (c), the same is with RAM) it is OK for capture.
Of course, there may be some particularly sadistic PC who does all trying to spoil your dinner in any capture setup. In that case, throw it away and get another one.

[matt314159]

Quote:

Originally Posted by radiokom

In my opinion, in 95% of cases, if the PC is capable of running Windows 7 and has 8 or 16GB of RAM (in terms of price, the difference is a few $ and even though you don't need 16GB of RAM for capture, it doesn't hurt. Just remember "why dogs lick their balls - because they can" (c), the same is with RAM) it is OK for capture.
Of course, there may be some particularly sadistic PC who does all trying to spoil your dinner in any capture setup. In that case, throw it away and get another one.

I think I agree with this. I manage the IT help desk for a college and we put machines on the recycling pile every year that are more than capable of video capture. For my project I grabbed an HP ProDesk 600 G5 off this summer's recycle pile, goosed the RAM to 16GB because we have oodles of it floating around in our drawers, and I'm confident it will work fine. It's an i5-7500, 16GB, 128GB SATA SSD for the OS, and I added an internal Western Digital Red 5TB HDD to it for this project, just because I had it lying around in my personal stash.