digitalFAQ.com Forum - Is there still hardware that captures in avi, for VHS and Hi8

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I have about 80 hrs off home video, VHS & mostely HI8, and am planning to capture all off it, do some indexing, advanced editing and then create a dvd. Finaly i will get ridd off all the tapes howerver before i do that I want to make sure that when i have captured all off the video i will have captured it in the best possible way to get the best end results. I am a critic and don't like to see pixels in my endresullt as far as this can be prevented. I have some experience in video editing with adobe premiere. My experience is that the newer capture cards decode to mpeg wile capturing but i want to be the one that makes the decision when to compress to mpeg and that is when i have finished my project. Is there still hardware that captures in avi or is it stupid off me in wanting to achieve this goal. Kind regards, Elzo

If these are valuable family home videos, your family memories, then I'd not throw the tapes in the trash -- methods in later times may be able to further clean up video, especially if you're doing it yourself.

The biggest issue is getting a good workflow. This starts with an S-VHS VCR. Often you'll follow the VCR with a few other filter devices (TBC, proc amp, audio mixer), and then further filtering by either the capture device (like a JVC DVD recorder) or in software.

Most of this has been covered thoroughly here in this forum -- specifically in the workflow, capturing and restoration forums.

Yes, there is a lot of capturing hardware that does AVI captures. The ATI 600 USB cards, for example. Or Blackmagic Intensity cards.

Your country format and location play some part in what is available, and what you'll need for best results. The computer's slots also have some determination on what you can use (AGP, PCI-e, PCI only, USB2, Firewire, etc). With some of that info missing, it's hard to give a specific suggestion at this point in time.

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