S-video in?

Stuh505

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 15, 2004
Messages
488
I'm looking for a cheap video capture / TV card that has at least S-Video in, which I can use to save high quality loss-less video files. I've searched around a bit but everything I find has bad reviews. Any suggestions?
 
The moment you use the S-Video cable it stops been loseless, no matter what encoding compression you use. And no, there is no recorders with digital connections that i can think of, and if there are, they cost a pretty penny I'm sure.

Anyways, here is a tuner/video capture card with S-Video: Hauppauge HVR-2250 ($112.99 + Free Shipping).
If you don't need the tuner part, and only care about recording, then check this one with Component connectors: Hauppauge HD-PVR 1212 ($204.99 + Shipping - $30 MIR).
 
The moment you use the S-Video cable it stops been loseless, no matter what encoding compression you use.

Are you sure about that? I'm talking about receiving from a S-VHS camera. Both are analog signals so there would be some analog noise but I don't think there's any intentional compression. If there is compression, I think it's only in color-space, and doesn't result in any spatial artifacts. My entire reason for wanting to use S-VHS / S-video is to avoid spatial / temporal compression.
 
I'm sure, because you need to convert it to digital to be able to store it in your computer, and the process itself will degrade the quality. Sure, you can encode it in a bit-rate high enough that you can't see the blocks, but the quality will ultimately depend on the converter in the card.

And even if the tuner/recorder allows for lossless encoding, of course after the conversion itself, I can assure you that you won't be saving your files that way. Lossless video will eat up your entire hard-drive in a matter of hours, if not minutes. The best you can hope for is to record it in the highest bit-rate the software allows, and then convert that using H.264 or something more efficient, and then deleting the original.
 
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