Windows 10 best video capture setup?
 

Hello, I've scoured these forums and I understand that I'd get the best results from a Windows XP machine with AGP slot to take an ATI 600 card. I have been on the hunt for these components but they are not easy to find.

What I have is a JVC HR-S9500U VCR that I just had repaired by Jots (GREAT service btw), an AV Toolbox AVT-8710 TBC, and a Windows 10 computer.

I know, I know... but what capture card would give me best results with my existing hardware? Something like a Hauppauge Colossus 2? I'm limited to a PCI card but I also assume I want S-video from my VCR to my capture card, correct?

By the way what I am doing is transferring about 40 VHS home videos to digital. I'll edit the video in DaVinci Resolve and burn to DVD's for the family.

Any help appreciated, thank you.

I'd suggest you continue your research. the ATI 600 is not an AGP capture card. It's USB.

My condolences on Windows 10, but the other hardware should serve you well. If you have 4-hour or 6-hour tapes, you might want to add a Panasonic player to your toolbox. The JVC 9500 looks pretty much like an average VCR on slow speed tapes, but it's better than a cheapie.

Horrors! Lossy stuff, and the wrong tool for the job. I'd suggest the Hauppauge USB Live-2 or Diamond Multimedia's VC500 USB, both with W10 drivers, both suitable for lossless capture, both optimized for VHS source.

Great editing tool for cut-and-join work. But your tape will still look like tape, not like digital video, with compression artifacts added to boot. Editors are not repair and restoration tools. DaVinci can do a neat job on color (assuming you've captured with legal input signal levels and can switch between YUV, RGB, and YV12 cleanly and without degradation, which are things you should already know about if you intend to use high-falootin' software like DaVinici). But it can't do anything with the flood of typical VHS defects: tape noise, head-switching noise, general analog playback floating grunge, frame hops, dropouts (spots, blotches, rips, ripples, horizontal tears), chroma noise, rainbows, excessive interlace combing or buzzing telecined edges, DCT ringing, even if the 9600 can help smooth some of that stuff (but not nearly all of it).

Likely you also know about working with lossless media if you intend to maintain the kind of quality levels you hope to get with software like DaVinci. With the proper cleanup in Avisynth or VirtualDub, DaVinci can help you meet your expectations. Otherwise, lacking lossless capture and without suitable post-capture processing, results will be fairly average. DaVinci won't help much with quality issues in that case, but you can make the colors look nice.

Good luck with your project. I wish I had a mere 40 tapes when I started, instead of 300-plus of the darned things. But some of us are just gluttons for punishment I guess.
:wink2:

Sanlyn, good info, thank you. I had assumed I didn't want a USB interface but a PCI-E card. I have an ElGato Video Capture USB but it's very limited on options and is 'crashy'. I'll look at the two you mentioned.

We've seen results from several Elgato devices. They don't appear to be optimal for analog sources like VHS, VHS-C, etc. and. Much of their analog source captures look pretty noisy and grimy to me. My preference of the two products I suggested would be the VC500 because it doesn't clip super-blacks and seems to have greater clarity in dark areas. Both are little clunky in use (but so are all the other USB gizmos!) but both make excellent lossless captures.

The ATI All In Wonder line included AGP and PCIe devices: AGP is preferred when it comes to handling. Brief History of AIW cards and list of models. There are no drivers later than XP.

ATI 600 USB will usually install/work in Win10. Not to be confused with the PCI (not the same chipset), and not an ATI AIW. (BTW, I have some again, broke up some workflows.)

Did Jots recently fix that JVC? They told us they were getting out of VCR repair game. (Or maybe just AG-1980?)

I've not yet had time/need for DaVinci, but it's on my to-do list.

As mentioned, DaVicin = editor. For restoring, VirtualDub and Avisynth required.

Colussus is not for VHS, but is an HD timeshift/PVR style card that records lossy. Wrong tool for the task.

ATI 600 usb is nice. I got one from someone on this forum, a reliable chap :P

You could always create a win7 bootable partition if win10 isn't playing ball.

Elgato stuff is very hit and miss, even the hd capture stuff. Seems more for gaming capture where dropped frames isn't such an issue.

For HD stuff i use a usb 3.0 framegrabber; works a treat but not relevant to your query :hmm:

Yes they did, the cost was very fair, great communication and a pleasure to work with. I give them 10 stars out of 10.