suggestions on video card for two monitor operation and VHS to DVD transfer?

[liquidblue69mce]

Hello all,
I have not been on the board lately, but I’ve been reading… Anyhow, I have a couple of questions related to video cards. Here is the video card I currently have: CHAINTECH Geforce FX5500 256MB. I’m want to do a few new things in the near future that will require a new video card. First, use a two-monitor display for college study/work and transferring old family (my dad’s tapes) videotapes to DVD. I don’t mind paying a premium price for a video card that satisfies my needs(<250$$), but I don’t want to ripped off or pay high price for a POS card. This idea has just come up this weekend and I have not done any research on it (CNET & PC forums), but I thought that send a post can get my foot in the right direction… Thanks a bunch for your time and comments.

-Hector (and no, I’m not the guy from the new Jack Black movie)

[glc]

AGP or PCI-E? Dual VGA, dual DVI, or one of each? Any gaming?

[liquidblue69mce]

I don't think this dual monitor issue is that hard. The card that I currently has is a VGA and a DVI tails and I'm going to get a VGA to DVI cable and hook up my extra monitor and see how it performs. Now how to set up the dual monitor will be a later post is I have problems. The video capture card I would like to be a PCI interface, so that I can keep my current AGP card. There will not much gaming on this PC, its mostly a work station type work load. Are there issues in running AGP & PCI at the same time? Will there be conflicts?

[glc]

Sounds like a simple dedicated PCI capture card will do the job. If you have USB 2.0, you could even consider a USB capture device. Analog capture is all in the software anyway - more expensive devices do have better hardware compression and stuff though. If your video card is dual head, NView makes it easy to set up a dual display.

[XenaWP]

Just remember that if you have a digital camcorder, in most cases you don't need a capture card/device. The VCR can plug into it and it converts the material to DV, then you can firewire to the PC and do the MPEG conversion in software. And the quality beats most capture devices.

[glc]

And Firewire cards are dirt cheap - under 20 bucks and some even come with basic software.