Which TBC should I buy?
 

As I mentioned in a previous post, my elgato video capture was dropping frames. But now I want to know which TBC I should buy. I've tried using my Toshiba DVR620 DVD recorder but I didn't quite get the quality that I hoped for (there was a line on the bottom of the screen when i used my DVR620 that I didn't want there) so I want to use my capture card instead (my capture card doesn't have a line on the bottom of the screen). I don't have enough money for the Datavideo TBC-1000. Would the AV Toolbox 8710 be okay for my capture card?

Please attach a video sample from each, or at least screenshots, so we know what you mean by "a line on the bottom of the screen."

Head-switching noise at the bottom of the frame is normal. I believe the Elgato starts the capture two rows earlier than a DVD recorder would, though, such that the bottom-most lines of the image aren't captured.

Here are screenshots from the DVD recorder (bottom) and elgato (top), if you look closely at the bottom of the DVD recorder picture you will see the line that I was talking about Attachment 6218 Attachment 6217

The Elgato capture is merely zoomed in (cropped on all sides).

So what TBC do I need to get it to work without dropping frames? I would really like to make video without the line

You're missing the point. The capture without the line looks like crap. The one with the line has its own problems, but you can easily hide it during playback the same way the Elgato capture is doing so now, without permanently damaging the video as that one did. If viewing on a PC, simply enable a slight zoom in the video player, and if viewing on a TV, enable overscan.

But how do I do the zoom when I upload the videos to YouTube?

If you use the software that comes with the capture device you get crappy quality and the frame is chopped on all 4 corners like the top picture, But if uploading to youtube is your main goal I guess option one is more convenient as it is already heavily compressed and youtube likes that less stress on their servers.

You can upload a pre-filtered version. But masking the bottom of the image would be extremely preferable compared to cropping and resizing.

I just got my elgato to work again, thanks for your help anyway!