#1  
03-14-2022, 11:28 PM
Slouchy Slouchy is offline
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Goal:
Capture important home movies, from two dozen Hi-8mm video cassettes (and a few earlier VHS tapes), in best-possible quality uncompressed or lossless avi files.

Brief background:
I have been trying (more off than on) to get my capture project underway for 10 years — and the color of the video on the 8mm tapes has faded noticeably over that period. I am a reasonably intelligent person but far from a computer expert. I have read a lot on this forum and finally started purchasing items and building a computer — only to find that I had made a number of errors (even leaving aside the faulty vintage equipment purchased on eBay). I am at my wit’s end.

Question:
- Is the following hardware configuration (a) close enough to ideal, (b) acceptable, (c) poor but useable, or (d) trash (bearing in mind my use case)?

Current configuration:
- ATI Radeon X1800 XT PCIe graphics card with S-Video in. (Mistake 1: Thought I was buying the ATI AIW X1800 XL.)
- No option for Turtle Beach PCIe sound card. (Mistake 2: Used a Gigabyte motherboard with only one PCIe slot (model GA-H61M-DS2).)
- Windows 7 operating system (which I should be able to change to XP).
- DataVideo TBC-1000.

Specific issues (in light of the mistakes identified above):
- Is the X1800 XT card substantially equivalent to the X1800 XL for my purposes (capturing family video from Hi-8 tapes to uncompressed or lossless avi files)?
- Is there a USB sound card as good as a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCIe sound card? (Your view, Lord Smurf?) To get the best possible quality, would I need to get rid of this build and starting over with a motherboard that has two PCIe slots?

All input (opinions as well as facts) from this knowledgeable community will be gratefully received!
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  #2  
03-17-2022, 10:31 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Radeon is just the graphics, All In Wonder (AIW) is the video.

x1800 AIW really isn't all that great of a card. The cards added more audio/video hardware to the Theatre 200 chips, and those aren't good. The MPEG capturing got worse. The image has offset. And MMC is worthless, no dropped frames counter. The AIW PCIe cards are not as good as AGP (or certain rare PCI and USB), with some situational exclusions (which isn't yours).

Random buying, especially on eBay, often does end badly, mistakes made. Early on, decades ago, I made a few mistakes, so don't feel too bad. Just move on, re-buy better, don't try to force yourself to use the mistake.

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is PCI, not PCIe. For PCIe, card choices get harder, compromises must be made. The quality of the audio on non-TBSC, for example, is somewhat tinny. Yes, even overrated Creative SoundBlaster, which was never a good brand of card, regardless of what the masses think (marketing).

Win7 can work with some cards, but not AIW, XP required.

If functioning correctly, which is getting harder, TBC-1000 can be fine.

Audio cannot be USB for capture. There is a lag. That's fine when audio+video is processed externally, but not when it has to be clocked to internal video processing. If you're running into motherboard slot limitations, then you need a new motherboard.

Right now, you're sort of C, poorer and unusable. It's not trash, just the wrong combo for the task. Make some changes, AIW AGP, TBSC PCI, XP, and you're fine.

You have options, too, in terms of how advanced the build can get. But for those more modern hackish type systems, more computer knowledge than usual is required (forcing drivers, disabling BIOS, unofficial XP builds using customized installer, etc). The easy button is to just use hardware from around 2010, not try to get late 2010s system built.

- Did my advice help you? Then become a Premium Member and support this site.
- For sale in the marketplace: TBCs, workflows, capture cards, VCRs
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  #3  
03-18-2022, 05:34 AM
ST332 ST332 is offline
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Hello.
I am living in Russia and it is very hard to find AGP AIW card. If x1800 is not so good, what about x1900?
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ati aiw, ati aiw radeon, ati all in wonder, sound card, turtle beach santa cruz

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