[thelist] Video Capture/Hardware/Software

[James Aylard]

Gina,

> Short question, what hardware and software (besides Adobe Premeire--i
don't need
> that 'big') do you use for video capture, burning to CD/DVD and web
> presentation?

    You might take a look at Pinnacle Systems Studio [1]. There are several
variations of the software, but one -- Studio AV -- is specifically designed
for analog video input, and includes a PCI card. I use Studio DV (the
digital-video version) and find it reasonably powerful, although a bit
quirky. The final product, though, is usually quite impressive. Version 8
allows you to burn directly to DVD, unlike prior versions, as well as to
Real Video and Windows Media formats for the web. You'll find hardware
requirements on the Pinnacle web site.
    Also, if you are running Windows XP, it comes with Windows Movie Maker
[2] that is supposed to allow import of analog video, as well as output to
DVD (although a commercial add-on is required for DVD output). WMM version 2
is now in beta and freely downloadable, and is supposedly a marked
improvement over version 1.x, although I've only lightly dabbled with
version 1.x and haven't even looked at version 2. But if you have XP, this
might be the cheapest and easiest alternative.

1. http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage.asp?Product_ID=577&Langue_ID=7
2. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/

James Aylard