Video recorders and capture cards?

Question

Hey I am going to buy something to record some footage off of my tv to make a Halo montage. What I need to know is what do i need to buy? I've heard people call it a capture card, but i have no idea what that is or where to get it. i'd appreciate it if you could tell me what i should buy, maybe some names and what one has the best quality.And if your interested in seeing the montage, ill probably have it posted on yout tube some time soon(i plan on buying the stuff this weekend).my youtube name is cruelagamemnon.Oh, and by the way it would help if you might be able to tell me where to buy the item you tell me about. Thanks!

Answer 1

I've actually captured xbox to my computer to make a montage before.  It works quite well with the proper hardware...

You will only be able to record in SD, so if you were looking to make an HD Halo 3 montage, you are out of luck...  There are no consumer cards that can encode component video real time, and HDMI out from the xbox has encryption in place.

First, for the setup, you want to playing the xbox on A TV and not  on the computer monitor.  Playing on the computer introduces some video lag that was not easy to get over.  splitting the A/V so that it goes to the capture card AND the TV is as easy as plugging it into a VCR: plug the Red/White/Yellow RCA cables from the xbox into the aux in on the VCR, and take the cable out AND red white yellow out to split the signal.

The card you want to look for should have hardware encoding.  this means the card is doing the work changing the video from analog to digital format, instead of your computer.  if you don't get hardware encoding, you will need a VERY fast computer.

Hauppage cards with "PVR" have hardware encoding and are generally decent.

If you do have a fast computer and lots of storage space, you can encode at a higher quality and produce a cleaner montage in the end.

I would reccomend using Dscaler 4 for software encoding, and thus picking a supported card (see reference).

You could go with a cheaper card, for instance the Hauppage win-tv series (PVR not necessary).

hope this helps.

P.S.  Internal PCI vs External USB shouldn't change anything - pick what works for you.