Anyone still use an analog capture card?

[M76]

If yes, what software do you use for it?
I can't find anything that would work on Windows 10, half broken, discontinued, or both is all I can come up with. Either preview doesn't work, or can't set up capture options properly or audio doesn't work, or out of sync. It's all garbage.

 

[Zepher]

What device and what software have you tried?
Have you tried this device and it's software? I have heard people say that this is a pretty decent one, although a bit pricey.
https://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Video-Capture-Digitize-iPad/dp/B0029U2YSA

The last analog one I use was a Dazzle that I had hooked up to my Alienware Windows XP machine since I couldn't get any sort of drivers for it to work in Windows 10.
I used the Dazzle software for capture. capture was perfect and in sync.


And I did try my Matrox RT.X100 but the Matrox software would crash when I switched to analog input.
This one uses Premiere Pro CS2 and DV capture was perfect.

 

[Absalom]

Back in the Win98/XP days I used AVI_IO for capture of analog satellite box output using a Matrox Rainbow Runner G400 add-on card. The add-on card could do realtime encoding in lossy MJPEG, but I found that image quality distasteful, so I sought out lossless compression alternatives. Anyway, every software solution I tried dropped frames or was difficult to setup. AVI_IO worked like a champ, rarely dropped frames.

Nowadays software is fancy. The last attempt at analog capture for me was using a kind of expensive Elgato capture card. I was archiving home VHS tapes using their software, it was alright. I found their video encode a bit lossy, but the capture resolution was well beyond the source material so it didn't bother me that much.

Other capture software that I've used that are probably still relevant:

• OBS
• VirtualDub
• Adobe Premiere

I'd say a lot of modern capture software like OBS and even Premiere require modern capture hardware and drivers. The old school stuff though, might be best if you have old capture hardware.

 

[M76]

What device and what software have you tried?
Have you tried this device and it's software? I have heard people say that this is a pretty decent one, although a bit pricey.
https://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Video-Capture-Digitize-iPad/dp/B0029U2YSA

I have a PCI-E add in card, but had no luck with getting it to work properly, the original software was only good for XP. So I bought a similar device that you link, probably the exact same inside only different branding. But it behaved the same as my old card. And the software that came with it doesn't work at all, the developer's page doesn't even exist on the net anymore so no updates available.

I've tried these 3rd party software:

• OBS: Doesn't support 25FPS, which is literally everything analog here in Europe
• VirtualDub: preview doesn't work, only records video, no audio at all, in WDM mode preview works but only records at 15 fps
• AMCap: preview works, but audio and video are out of sync when recording
• AmarecTV: preview works, but doesn't record at all

That's all the software I could find downloadable on the net.

 

[cjcox]

Warning: Linux user ahead

Pretty sure my old USB Hauppauge capture units still work (they are also TV tuners, one is old NTSC though, but I think they both work for composite capture).

I use an HDMI PVR Rocket (standalone) frame grabber now. Used to use a standalone AverMedia Gamer prior to that.

 

[Zepher]

I have a PCI-E add in card, but had no luck with getting it to work properly, the original software was only good for XP. So I bought a similar device that you link, probably the exact same inside only different branding. But it behaved the same as my old card. And the software that came with it doesn't work at all, the developer's page doesn't even exist on the net anymore so no updates available.

I've tried these 3rd party software:

• OBS: Doesn't support 25FPS, which is literally everything analog here in Europe
• VirtualDub: preview doesn't work, only records video, no audio at all, in WDM mode preview works but only records at 15 fps
• AMCap: preview works, but audio and video are out of sync when recording
• AmarecTV: preview works, but doesn't record at all

That's all the software I could find downloadable on the net.

You don't happen to have an old MiniDV camcorder lying around do you? I know most of them had analog AV outs and some could do AV in as well which meant you could play analog video into the camera and out of the DV port in the computer.
I bought some Apple adapters to play with a couple of years ago after watching a video on how to get DV capture on a modern PC with USB-C Thunderbolt.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GASIuX1mqwE
EDIT: Oh, looks like there is an updated video for capture without the adapters.
EDIT2: This video talks about using older hardware since the adapters are being discontinued.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXXSZdOZb-k
It was a Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 adaptor and then a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter.
I don't have any USB thunderbolt hardware so I wasn't able to try the second adapter but I did test the firewire to TB2 adapter on my MacBook Pro with DV capture and it worked perfectly.
So if you have a DV camera that has Analog In and a PC or Mac with Thunderbolt, you could try that.

 

[M76]

I don't have a DV camera. I used to have a DVD recorder but got rid of it a while back. Wouldn't want to use that anyway due to the lossy mpeg-2 compression.

 

[toast0]

Warning: Linux user ahead

Yeah, I'd guess v4l would still work with my capture cards, I used to record NTSC OTA, but I think my (PCI) cards did support s-video / rca inputs as well. I think I had some PCI-E ATSC tuners before I moved to network tuners, but I can't remember the details so much anymore.

I'd suggest you suffer through it and figure out to use Linux or FreeBSD. But you can probably also just find the Windows XP software that works, and dedicate a machine.