I need some advice on the matter. I bought a Dazzle PCI DVC 2 which seemed to be the top of the line model at the store and figured a PCI input would offer a faster speed and encoding over a USB model. Anyhoo, the unit only works with MovieStar software (through FAQs on Customer support I just learned this) and the issue is that it captures video and sound perfectly BUT the audio is a fraction of a second off making it unbearable to watch.

Not doing anything complicated, just converting family videos (not editing) - at full lenth up to 2 hours into one file. Setting the capture bitrate for audio and video lower still yields the same problem. If I could use another software program I might be able to avoid this.

I even went as far as to format a new hard drive - IDE 7200rpms with windows XP and running nothing but the bare minimum. Lowest graphical card setting and no other programs running.

Computer "should" be able to handle this being a 1.3Ghz P4, 384MB RAM, ATI 32 agp video card.

The goal is to covert video 2 hours to an mpg file for CDR burn or 1 hour for VCD - dvd playback. Short clips maybe 5 minutes long don't seem to incur to the audio lag. There is an option to seperate video and audio and manually produce yet I see this as more work than i have time or patience for.

If another video cature system is a better choice please share your thoughts.

 

Personally I've used ATI ALL-IN-WONDER to capture MPEG-2 home videos, then convert to DIVX and burn to CD's. This setup has worked pretty well for me.

 

does the ATI AIW capture audio in sync too all in one or do you have to put the 2 together?

One mistake I made before this was buying a DVDRW drive but NOT reading the box completely. The Drive was NOT DVD-R compatible and I cant see using $12 discs that might not be read in other drives.

i hate computers

 

I tried 3 different types of capture cards and external USB/FireWire devices.

What I finally ended up doing was buying a higher end MiniDV camera - Sony DCR-TRV30 (it goes for about $1500 - $1700) - got my unit throught JandR.com

With the TRV30 I can capture directly from the MiniDV cassette - or use it as a analog to digital converter by connecting the VCR or DVD player to the cameras audio and S-Video inputs. The the camera has a direct conversion mode so you do not have to first dump to the MiniDV and then dump the miniDV to the computer.

My personal preference for for capturing from the camera is MGI VideoWave, but I like ULEAD VideoStudio to edit/producing (only uncompressed digital video). For video encoding (to Mpeg2-DVD, Mpeg-VCD, etc..) the only sub $1000 program that provides really good encoding is TMPGEnc.exe (better yet - it is freeware

The TRV30 is pretty expensive, but I believe Panasonic has a similar camera that is not quite as feature rich and does not have the CarlZeiss lense - but offers MegaPixel still capability, MiniDV, and acts as a capture device that will convert your DVD or Video Signal into a firewire digital stream (I see them selling for about $600 here in Arizona).

I shoot a lot of diving video so I wanted a good camera (you may never get a chance to shoot that Oceanic white-tip or pod of dolphins twice).

Lucid, I have a lot of good codecs and the TMPGenc.exe program that I could email you if you are interested. You may also want to visit this website they have lots of good information.http://www.vcdhelper.com/.

Regarding the DVD burner - I went with the HP DVD+RW drive. It is rewritable and I have not found a DVD player that can not play my disks yet - although I know there are some models that can not. It also does DVD-R and DVD-RW media

 

Regarding the AIW, there is no post processing required to synch audio with video. The only reason for post processing would be to edit for content or to reduce the overall file size using compression (DIVX in my case.)

 

I have the DVC I which only does MPEG-1 video capture. However, I've had no problems with it and I'm running an XP machine with a Dell PIII 866, 384mb. I just recently purchased the Soundblaster Digital VCR card for $50 and it is incredible. It acts like a TIVO and also has the added functionality of capturing MPEG-2 video. Has worked like a charm.

As a side note, I have used my Dazzle DVC I with Ulead MovieStudio, and MGI Videowave without a problem. I think they are also both supported by Dazzle (they have updates for DVC to work with these software packages on their website).

I used the AIW (8600) and did not like it at all. Maybe it's my machine, but it didn't work to my satisfaction.