No sync issues with EasyCap?
 

My easycap broke, and I need a new capture card. My budget is tight, so I was thinking about getting the Hauppauge USB-Live2, that's the easiest and fastest option I have right now.

I have a Sony CCD-TRV418e, which has an internal TBC(?), and never had serious sync issues with ezcrap before. Only thing that happened, while capturing 90min tapes, that the capture started lagging 2-4 times in that period, and I just had to rewind, and re-record, then edit the changes.

So, considering that these were the issues I had, and I assume something just got messed up a bit with TBC, can I have different problems with a bit more serious card? I mean, I know everything can happen, but will probably be just fine?

Hmm. I didn't realize those were still available on Amazon, but I do see it there. Kind of surprising since the native software doesn't note supporting anything newer than Windows 7. From the posts I've read, they are well supported in virtualdub, AmarecTV and others. I've heard of people having audio sync issues with Virtualdub and not Amarec, but suppose you'd have to try for yourself. The Live2 is generally regarded as a much higher quality device than the easyCap, so it should outperform on all fronts.

Your camcorder most likely has a line TBC, so the capture card could potentially still drop frames. If the line TBC is working, you shouldn't see any horizontal waviness if it's a first generation tape. Each capture card has a different degree to the amount of timing errors it'll tolerate before dropping frames. Basically all a frame TBC does is buffer two or three frames and re-release them at a digitally precise frame rate so the capture card doesn't get upset by frames arriving slightly early or late.

I'm guessing that the video gets ahead of the audio when it goes out of sync? That just means that frames were lost/dropped somewhere and when the file is played back. Each time a frame is missing and a null frame is not added to compensate, the audio permanently gets one frame worth of time behind the video. So audio being behind/delayed by say 2-3 seconds means something like 50-75 frames were dropped at random places prior to since your frame rate is 25fps in PAL land. Problem is that (attentive) humans can notice audio sync issues when you get in the neighborhood of 3 or more frames.

Hauppauge USB-Live2 is a very touchy card for timing errors. There are better cards.

How did you determine that no frames were being lost? What software was being used? What were the settings? Some cards can have dropped frames detection turned off (side effect of unticking certain settings), while others detect dropped frames differently than what you think.

If you had "lag" (audio?), then you were dropping frames.