bruce Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 looking for recommendations for a cheapie USB device to capture composite video + unbalanced audio. It'll potentially be feeding various applications, things like ScreenMonkey and Adobe Flash Media Encoder. Needs to work with Windows. Don't need anything more than basic capture of composite video, and potentially S-video. Don't need any higher res. I've borrowed and tried one of those "copy your VHS to computer" things, which worked fine. You can buy dozens of different types of them on ebay for 5-10 pounds. Any recommendations? Are any better than the rest, or all they all equally bad :) Years ago when I did this sort of stuff, I used Osprey cards, but this sort of technology now seems to fall right into the "budget consumer product" arena. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shez Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Pinnacle Dazzle is worth looking at. I spec'ed one for a couple of projects for other folks to use which did (and continues to do) the job for them. Looks like there are a few more options out there now than there were when I was looking. I've happily used other Pinnacle hardware too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cameroncoats Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 I wouldn't recommend an 'EasyCap'. There's one version for £30, and a seemingly identical one for £5. The £5 one is missing the proprietary software that makes it work as well as any form of driver. As such I now have one sitting on a shelf, doing absolutely nothing, as it has been for the last year or so. If you're confident that you can make it work it might be worth a shot for a fiver, but with the amount of other capture cards out there it's probably a waste of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 For SM I was recommended Kworld DVD Maker 2, as several otehr folks are using it, but I haven't been able to make it work yet :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
revbobuk Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 I've specified the Pinnacle hardware - most of the Pinnacle packages use the same hardware, but with different software applications - for live use in churches, and it works well with most of the worship software out there. It's a little more expensive than the cheapest solutions, but it appears robust and reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted July 18, 2012 Author Share Posted July 18, 2012 I wouldn't recommend an 'EasyCap'. There's one version for £30, and a seemingly identical one for £5. The £5 one is missing the proprietary software that makes it work as well as any form of driver. As such I now have one sitting on a shelf, doing absolutely nothing, as it has been for the last year or so. Apparently the genuine "EasyCap" is a good unit. But it has been targetted by the pirates, and the "fake" ones use a different chipset. The genuine unit has now been rebranded "EzCap". Your £5 one is likely to be fake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owen123 Posted July 28, 2012 Share Posted July 28, 2012 Even the cheap £5 easycaps are okay, - no where near hd. I also recommend pinnacle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjb304 Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 One thing I found with our Pinnacle DVC100 is the lag. I was using it playing straight out to VLC on a reasonably specified machine and the video was a second or two slow. Which ruled it out for the purpose we needed it for. OT - We then tried using the DVC100 on an ARM board and found the ARM drivers for it are totally broken, however an EasyCap (£5 jobby) worked better - although it does have some oddities re how it presents its options to the drivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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