Capturing TV to your computer

[Visionray]

I have a question, I've done some searching around but I think I need some help.

I want to capture footage from regular TV so that I can import it into Final Cut Pro or Adobe After Effects and just play around with it. I'm trying to practice editing and I want to work with some good footage, like CNN news footage for example.

So I assume I just need a TV card. I have a Mac. Does anyone know what is good, and if you are able to download stuff from the TV, would it be easy to convert to a quicktime file for easy editing in FCP?

[Markp.com]

Just need a capture card or one of the new DVB-T cards, which I have... its great... captures video in MPG2 format and I think you can edit it direct... like you can normal DV footage... not 100% sure on that though as I've not edited any of my recordings yet

[Visionray]

cool thanks yea Mpeg 2 is good, looking at those now.

[gesteves]

I was looking for the same thing a few months ago and found this. It was one of the Mac compatible products listed in the Apple website (I can't remember the address, though). I never got around to buying it, though.

[Ask The Geezer]

I bought one of these a couple years ago;

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...4&Sku=A03-7038

Works great and uses USB to go into the Computer. You don't need any special card. It captures anything on the TV, TV broadcasts, VCR or DVD from a player.

[el-Ignoramus]

I bought one of these a couple years ago;

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...4&Sku=A03-7038

Works great and uses USB to go into the Computer. You don't need any special card. It captures anything on the TV, TV broadcasts, VCR or DVD from a player.

looks nice, and the price is nice as well

how about dropped frames?

and does it support only the Hardware converters in it, or it can utilise other software encoders? liek Divx and Xvid?

[Visionray]

thanks for the links guys

[Ask The Geezer]

El-ig, the one I have is an earlier version. It came with all kinds of software for capture. Essentially, you plug it in, attach the cables from the TV to the box and from the box to the PC, open the program and you see what's on the TV screen. You can set the data-rate for capture, I use 9Mbps, and when you start recording, it saves to the hard drive as MPEG-2.

It doesn't matter what is on the TV screen, a movie from a DVD or video tape, or a program coming over cable, if it's on the screen, it captures it.

Actually, it does a very good job. I have recorded some old movies off of VHS tape, and the quality actually improved when I burned them back to DVD. Something I didn't know, but I guess the quality is in the signal on the tape itself, and poor quality comes from the kind of equipment your running the signal through.

[Visionray]

your link looks cool iaskwhy, I like how you can use it to capture whats on dvd too.

As for tv, how exactly do you hook it up? I don't see an input on that box for a cable line. Do you go rca or s-video out of your cable box into this box?

[Ask The Geezer]

You can use either. Right now, mine is hooked to an old VCR who's innards eat tapes now, so I can't run tape in it anymore. But my cable comes into that, cause I use that for channel surfing. I also have a Pioneer DVD player that feeds into that and then to the TV. The Box is hooked to the VCR with the RCA cables that came with it, cause I didn't have an s-video plugin on the VCR.

I have had it hooked up to another TV through the s-video cable though, but that TV died.

And the price has gone up since I bought mine, which was $89 from Tiger.

But yeah, it captures anything, VHS, DVD, TV, doesn't matter if it's encoded or not, that of course doesn't come through.

[Visionray]

nice dude, thanks.