video capture card

[Al Pollock]

hello People .............Well don't know a whole bunch about video capture cards ........But say if a person wanted to down load a video or a dig cam cord .would you install a video capture card to accomplish this ? Or could that be done by just using USB or fire wire?? say like download through thrugh the capture card to Hd then burn to DVD???? like I said don't know very much about video capture cards and their use.....

[RJ]

Hi,

video capture cards are used for capturing from an analog source, such as VCR or analog camcorders, for example.
They exist as both internal PCI versions or external USB ones.

If you wanna capture from a digital source, you don't need a capture card. Digital cameras connect via USB, digital camcorders (DV) via firewire, some also via USB.

After all, digital footage just has to be copied, whereas analog footage has to be digitized, hence the need for a capture card in the latter case, as it includes the necessary digitizer chips.

RJ

[Al Pollock]

Thats what I thought , is there any special software that comes with or to purchase to utilize the capture card

[gary_hendricks]

Hi Al,

Please message me as I have the resources to help you out here (actually I've a detailed guide on capturing video into a computer, but I don't want to post it here as it would be sort of linking to my own website).

[RJ]

Thats what I thought , is there any special software that comes with or to purchase to utilize the capture card

There will be software bundled with the capture card. Otherwise, there is freeware (like VirtualDub, for example), but AFAIK they don't work with all capture cards.

Video editing programs like Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Studio etc. can capture as well from cards they support.

RJ