Video-Capture Reviews

Let me be clear: I'm giving Videoh! a one star rating because I cannot go below that. Otherwise this product would get a big donut!

I'm trying to replace my 2-year old Nvidia capture card that came with my desktop thinking that there should be superior products in the market today, primarily on the quality of the video. After trying Videoh, I changed my mind. Not only this pruduct is far inferior to my Nvidia producing bad quality highly interlaced MPEG2 video, it is also greatly limited in features. For example, it comes with no universal WDM video capture and A/V crossbar drivers, thus making it impossible to use it with feature rich software such as iuVCR or Windows Media Encoder. It only works with the bundled Sonic MyDVD software it came with which I personally dislike. MyDVD has no scheduler for recording video at predetermined times and even worse you cannot set a time limit once the recording started. Also unlike iuVCR you cannot set video encoding options or even use a software codec like MPEG4 or DivX!

One other annoyance I had with Videoh! was that while capturing with MyDVD there was a one second delay between real time video and captured video. This does not happen with my Nvidia capture card.

I also tried the Videoh!PCI version but it's the same think (what was I thinking!). After the fiasco of trying Videoh! including some other hardware around the same price range such ConvertX™PX-M402U from Plextor®, I thing I will shell some more money and buy a semi-professional video capture card probably by Canopus or Matrox.

After reading the horribly negative reviews about this product, I feel somewhat compelled to chime in with a different view. I've had the Videoh DVD capture device for about 4 or 5 months and it has provided me with adequate DVD's from my old VHS tapes. I have not experienced the problems described by other reviewers (error messages, failure to capture) and have churned out about 20-30 DVD's that all record and play very well. I've yet to ruin a DVD disc. Yes, the video quality could probably be better, but most of the DVD's I have burned using this device have been with VHS tapes that are 10-15 years old, so I expected that the video quality to be compromised because of the age of the tapes, but the result is fine for me. MyDVD, the software that is included with the unit, doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but if you do a decent job in capturing the video, it works pretty well.

I have found that best quality allows about 1 hour of footage to fit on a DVD, better quality around 1 1/2 hour and good quality around 2 hours, a little less than expected reading the literature. I use better quality most of the time because it is close to best quality and much better than good quality.

I've seen these devices come down in price a fair amount since I made my purchase, so I recommend it as an relatively easy solution to video capture and burning, but it looks like it can be buggy, so make sure it has a good return policy, just in case.

I'm not sure why so many people give this product a bad review. The reason I bought it was because I wanted to convert some old home videos to DVD. The installation process was extremely easy. I was capturing content in less than 15 minutes and I had my first DVD burned within 2 hours (including creating menus, etc). The burned DVD looks better than the old VHS tape. The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is because nothing is perfect.

so far I have good experience with MSI products, I installed 2 Cards 1 AGP Titanium Series TI4200 and 1 PCI TV@nyware, I also have 1 MSI Motherboard and never have any problems, I heard so many bad thing about PNY, I just recommend MSI Electronic Products

I do not have this specific model but I have one of its siblings, Verto GeForce4 Ti 4200 with 64MB video card. After four months after I got it, it just stopped working. I have been trying for a week to communicate with PNY to get their much-boasted 'lifetime replacement warranty' service but couldn't get a hold of them. First of all, their customer service does not have any email addresses. Only phone line always leads to a voice mail. I left six voice mails for last six days and they're just not getting back. Their customer service is just unacceptable.

If you're considering any of PNY video cards, be aware that you'll be left alone with your fried card when something bad happens to your card.

This isn't a review but to inform that there is a newer model available which may have corrected the problems encountered by reviewers here for the old version. The new model is listed under Amazon as: PNY NVIDIA GEFORCE4 MX 440-8X (VCG4M44A8PB).

The new model is AGP 8x but is also compatible with 2x or 4x. It has VGA and S-Video (TV-out) ports but no DVI port, supports up to 2048x1536 @ 75Hz.

I bought the ADS Tech Instant DVD +DV after reading some great professional reviews in some of the online magazines. I was really excited to get this product. I now wish I'd paid more attention to the actual user reviews, as near as I can tell the people writing the magazine reviews must have never actually tried to use this product. Put simply... it doesn't work. Believe the user reviews, this is a bad product.

I wanted to transfer some old VHS videotapes to DVD, and I also got the +DV option thinking that it would be a nice way to add Firewire capabilities to my USB 2.0 based system for use with my new Digital camcorder. The Instant DVD box failed miserably to deliver on either of these goals.

Using the DV input with my digital camera I had strange artifacts start to appear on the screen. There were weird blotchy sections that started out small, but then grew as the capture progressed until half the screen was covered. While transferring my old analog VHS tapes, certain sections of the tapes would cause the box to completely lock up. When I could get a capture that didn't freeze, I couldn't get a capture where the audio and video would stay in sync. I tried multiple tapes, multiple DVD mastering programs, even multiple computer systems, nothing worked. This was simply making DVD's straight from the captured footage, I wasn't transcoding anything. The only thing that worked for me was taking a nice clean analog signal from my digital camera (since the digital DV capture didn't work.) That was the only thing that stayed in sync, any input that was less than perfect, like 10 or 15 year old VHS tapes, forget about it.

I sent several email queries to the ADS Tech support, after giving up on their telephone support after waiting forever on hold. Other than the automated "Well get right back to you as soon as possible" responses, I've heard nothing else from them. That was six weeks ago... and I'm not holding my breath. If you buy this product, you're definitely on your own.

I've long since returned my box, and chalked it up to a learning experience. Here are a few things to think about, first of all, do you really want a box that converts straight to MPEG2 format? If you want to change *anything*... clip out a few scenes, add a title screen, join several clips together... you have to reencode the file anyway. By uncompressing then recompressing you're sacrificing quality, and not gaining anything from the built in compression. Also, I didn't realize at the time, but you can get a Firewire card with a cable for almost the same price as just a cable... it's cheap, and much better than spending all the extra money for the +DV option.

I now own a Canopus ADVC-100, it's more expensive but worth every penny. More importantly... it actually works! That's much more than I can say about the ADS Tech Instant DVD.

I would have rated this minus 5, but that was not an option. This is neither instant nor is it DVD. It took 2 weeks of intensive work to try to get it to work--it never did! I even had to reinstall Windows XP! Tech support NEVER got back to me, and by the time you finally give up, its too late to return. This will make you homocidal! Don't waste your time and energy.

Quite a contrast from other reviews, but honestly, this box works wonderfully! I've been using it for the last six months transferring all my old VHS tapes to DVD video and burning them to disc with my DVD-R. Reccomendations I can give to other owners or those considering purchasing it: Go straight away to their website and get the latest driver and the latest version of CapWiz for maximum performance. Also, ensure that you plug it directly into the machine and not a hub, and make sure NO other USB devices are plugged in with it. It's a beautiful box but it eats up almost all of the USB total bandwidth when you use it.

Beyond that it's worked perfectly for me every time at a standard rate of 4Mbps and I can't reccomend it more highly. Setup is easy if you follow the wizards in the updated software, and you can't go wrong with it.

Do your self a huge favor and do not buy this product. The tech support is awful, purchase a MAC or if you have a PC get the CANOPUS ADVC-100 it is much better and will work with Windows Movie maker.

Like all video editing equipment for your computer, you'll need a state of the art system. If not, expect to run any rendering overnight. The software is much slower than other programs out there for video editing. Also, make sure you've striped your tapes before EVERY record, or else the box will lock-up frequently. Once you've got everything in place, a systematic way to create your projects, and know how to overcome the poorly designed GUI, the box works great! Oh, and once you've got a stable version running, don't upgrade! This is a flawed product for a hefty price, but if you want to save your VHS tapes to DVD, it works (I've been using it for about six months now).

I bought this product hoping to edit my home movies and it was fairly easy and intuitive. I'm happy I got it and I'm sure I'll be using it a lot more to start editing my movies and burning them to dvd.

stay clear. it is the worst software I have ever purchased.

I was really excited to try this product, but after hours and hours of frustration, I finally gave up. On the surface, the GUI interface is very slick and it seems like Studio 8 could do everything I wanted (record analog video, edit, and create VCD's). It has nice editing features that are fairly intuitive. However, the application locked up or crashed regularly (I installed v8.8). You can use the auto-save feature to help minimize loss of work. When it was running, I was constantly encountering little quirks and made the user's experience frustrating. Plus, it was painfully slow on my PC (P3, 1GHz, 384MB RAM, WinME). Pinnacle should reduce the GUI 'fanciness' and work on making it run faster and smoother. It seems that it would be a great product, if it worked as promised. My recommendation: Wait for Studio 10!

The card and software installation went smoothly. I burned my first test cd within 30 minutes. (about 10 minutes in length)
There is a few seconds pause when I click on a drop-down box, but other than that everything worked fine. My machine is a 1.73 ghz Athlon, 640 mb ram, Windows XP Home. I would suggest reading the manual and using a pretty fast computer.

HP continues to live off their printer reputation by engineering over-priced products that are riddled with bugs and incompatibility issues. I spend most of my time manually unplugging the set from the power supply because the system continually wigs out and locks up, and removing the power cable is the only way to reset it. Their search feature is archaic at best. What they don't tell you is that this device can only read certain bit/sampling rates. If you've copied your CDs using the Windows Media Player's WMA Lossless format the songs will not play on this device. By an XP computer and use the Windows Media Player with a good sound card and you'll be much happier and have a lot more functionality.

The box seems incapable of handling any network unreliability which can happen in a wireless network. If I shutdown my WAP, the connection to the server is lost, but when I bring it back up the EW5000 does not reestablish the connection--you either have to power cycle or re-apply the network settings in the config menu.
Secondly, the unit has a tendency to get behind on button presses from the remote. When accessing things on the network, the user interface hangs until it is complete. Then all those button presses are processed. My unit has had a tendency to hang(requiring power cycling)--especially when I make the network unreliable by walking near the unit with my cordless phone(2.4Ghz). The unit also seems a bit deaf. I get 60% only 15 feet away from my WAP. My laptop gets full strength signals all over the house including downstairs. HP, to their credit, is sending me a no-hassle replacement, but they didn't sound to hopeful that anything significant will change. The support team, however, spent a great deal of time with me to try to solve the problem. I give them very high marks. Oh yes, in case you are wondering, I did update the firmware to the latest release. It helped slightly, but did not fix the problems.

On the other hand, when it works, it is a nice unit. Easy to choose the music, pictures, etc. A nice feature is to assign a music play list to a photo album. Also, when making changes on the PC, the unit seems to pick up the changes without rebooting. The song title/info is in a small font. I wish that they would display the song in the screen saver instead of the HP logo.
The only major drawback is that you need to serve the files from a Windows PC. You cannot use Linux/Samba or any open standard file sharing system. I was thinking of adding a network harddisk to my network. This is no longer an option. I notice that Sony is also using a proprietary solution for their network server. I was also surprised that I could not control the unit via a web page.

I currently own a TurtleBeach Audiotron which is a far more robust and versatile unit. If it had a TV interface for music selection I would not even consider the EW5000 which is a toy by comparison.

I have read a few bad reviews of this product, but I had to verify it for myself. I added the media receiver to my existing wireless network. The unit was placed about 15-20ft (through 1 wall and around 1 corner)from the access point. Upon initial setup of the software it was unable to connect to the router. After repositioning the media receiver (2-3 feet closer to the router and standing the unit on its side)it was able to locate my router. It played for about 2 minutes then lost connection again. I then updated the firmware, which was supposed to improve wirless performance of the device, unfortunately after the update it seemed worse! It took about a dozen tries before finding my server, and after it was up and running, it would drop signal after only a few minutes. I know my wireless network is not at fault because I use a laptop that is double the distance of the media receiver and it gets a good signal. This device may be ok if you are going to use it wired, but for wireless systems, I would wait a while until these type of products become further developed. It seems HP released these way too soon, and possably with inferior hardware!

had trouble with it right from the start. an error message when i rebooted.it stated (messenger has encoutered a problem and needs to close).went to ati for help and only got automated feed back from them that lead me no where.the software came with a system compatibility check.it told me Directx components and capture drivers were not installed.i tried restalling everything from the install disk and going to ATI for all the update's.i even went to microsoft and got Directx 9 and still the same problem.i gave in and called ATI by the way they are in Canada so you are going to pay long distance to another country.they told me that there are some incapability when using Windows XP PRO.i thought this to be funny because on the box it said works with XP.My system is set up with XP Pro Athlon XP 2100 a Gig of memory and a ATI 9600 vidieo card. i thought installing this card would be a snap be it became a night mare.this is the last ATI product that i will buy

I'm heading off to college next fall so I purchased this card to do two things, #1 play Xbox and Playstation games on my PC monitor, and #2 to watch TV.

In regards to playing console games, even on my 3Ghz Pentium 4 computer with an ATI Radeon 9800pro that I bought only a week ago, the Picture and Sound were delayed a second. This rendered playing video games impossible since you could only respond to actions a second after they had passed.

In regards to watching TV, the picture quality is decent, but not impressive. However, several of my favorite TV channels didn't even work with the card (USA and Discovery).

Not only is the TV Wonder card hard and lengthy to install, never does ATI tell you to install the drivers for the Remote control or install the program for the TV Guide. Even with the newest drivers from the ATI website, the programs used to watch TV crashed frequently especially when trying to close the program or setting up the TV guide.

Overall, this product is slow and buggy even when used in a brand new top of the line computer with the latest drivers installed. Game playing is impossible, and I didn't even keep the card long enough to test the VCR aspects of the card.

I have a Dell 8200 1.7 ghz with 256mbs of RAM and a Sony Trinitron CRT 17" monitor. My operating system is Windows XP Home Edition with all the updates completed as required.

The card was quite easy to install on my last available PCI slot and I also had no problem installing the software which consists in the various capture drivers and the ATI multimedia center installation files. I installed it using a DVD-ROM drive.

I then immediately went on the ATI website where I found the most recent drivers and updated software files with easy to follow instructions. They recommend that the Windows files Dxwebsetup.exe and WMencoder.exe be installed first and then MMC-8-1-0-0-DAO-MDAC.exe, tv_wonder_pro-WDM.exe and MMC-8-9-0-0-.exe in that order. After a couple of reboots requested by the wizard along the way everything was working fine.

The color and the clarity even in full screen is remarkable. You'd almost swear you're looking at a digital TV. I didn't install the remote control feature yet as I do not plan to use it. The setup menu offers a large choice of video encoding and compression formats and if you want more you can create your own additional formats. So far I've recorded stuff mainly in AVI, MPEG-1 and WMV with very satisfactory results. When you push the record button you see your clip exactly as it will look like when you replay it. What you see is what you get. I haven't used the scheduled viewing feature and I don't plan on using that feature a whole lot either. I also connected my VRC on the SVideo connection with the supplied adaptor and the stereo sound is even better. You must then select composite instead of tuner on one of the menus. All in all, I'm quite pleased with my purchase.

Initially I thought the editing process was easy to use with the drag and drop timeline and individual picture advancement setting. It also made the addition of audio easy to coordinate with pictures. Preview process always looked great but I could never get the final slideshow to advance on DVD player. It was a waste of time and countless CDs just to try to get a slideshow to work. As far as tech support, the company is non-existent. Get it if you want to be frustrated.

I got this software free from purchasing a Dazzle 10 in 1 reader/writer.

I do agree with one of the reviewers about requiring patience in using this software. It does work once its quirks are discovered.

1. Slideshow does not advance - I had this issue and I think the cause of this is that the first frame gets inadvertently highlighted before burning the CD. In effect, this makes the frame/picture, the only one viewable. Now, I make it a point that no frame is highlighted before burning the VCD by clicking out of the timeline.

2. 200 picture file limit - When pictures are imported into the project, a physical copy of the picture file is brought over into the project directory. My workaround to ensure that 200 files were actually being used was to actually copy the files physically into the project directory.

3. Writing VCD - After a few coasters which seemed like finished products, I slowed down the write speed on my DVD writer from 16X (max speed of my writer) to 8X. This produced good VCDs that actually play to completion. The coasters do not play to completion and on my DVD player that plays most every format, it just does not play at all which was surprising to me. This hinted that something was amiss with how the VCD was burned.

The downsides of this software:

1. Pictures cannot be moved in blocks when in the timeline. Pictures have to be moved one by one.

2. Auto arrange cannot be applied to a certain block of pictures with respect to audio. It's all or nothing.

If your looking for an EASY way to make a DVD picture show and a GREAT price, ONDVD is for you. You take your pictures, you import them into ONDVD (very easy to do either 1 picture at a time or the entire directory) and your all set! You can even import music (MP3 or Wav files) and insert them in your picture show. One important note - it's probably better to use a CD RW blank CD when burning your picture show. Most DVD's will accept a CD RW and not a regular CD R. You can't beat the LOW PRICE and EASE of use!

First of all. Are you wondering if you should buy Pinnacle (8 or 9, the same thing)? Are you looking for a functional or at least friendly editing software? I can give you the answer!

STAY THE HELL AWAY FORM THIS TREMENDOUS CRAAAAP!!!!

Pinnacle made me cry, and I'm not joking or exagerating. It made me cry, when I lost my 43-min project when I'd just reached half of it... Also when I was doing the final render, and WITHOUT MY PERMISSION it'd just change the audio tracks, turn one song into another, repeat video files I didn't even include (sometimes I was just wating for it to include video files I hadn't even captured!), it goes wacko, crazy, mad, lunatic...it's frustrating. Not to mention all those times where I just layed too much of my trust on it, didn't saved every single thing I did and it'd just crash and end itself.

Why oh why, did I EVER thouhgt of buying this? Please listen to me, listen to us all and don't make the same mistake we did. DIE PINNACLE.

The good: Pinnacle Studio is packed with features and is quite easy to use.
The bad: It's JUNK. Full of bugs even with the latest updates. It's slow too. STAY AWAY from this product!
Version 9 is even worse.

Studio 8 has much to recommend it conceptually. It is one of the most comprehensive video capture, editing, and burning programs, and it offers a user-friendly approach to all of these jobs. That is, it would be user-friendly if it worked reliably, but it is the "buggiest" program I have ever owned. One has only to read the "forum" on Pinnacle's Web pages to discover some of the many flaws in the program. The version 8.0 that I purchased about a month ago has a new Beta revision that is numbered 8.5.20. I am still using 8.5.18, which I would not consider ready for Beta testing. The audio capabilities of this program were one of my reasons for purchasing it; however, the version I am using was presented with a disclaimer acknowledging that audio was disabled in the new version, and this most recent Beta version does not purport to correct the problem.
In the process of creating a one hour DVD, I experience - on average - 6 crashes. There are few internal error messages, however, that might suggest corrections.
And worst of all, there is no voice support. There is, ostensibly, an e-mail support system. I received one response from them. That response was not useful, arrived too late in any case. The first response from their support pages, as well as the e-mail I received, is a string of suggestions about problems with other programs, the system, or the user. For a program in this price range and with this many bugs to offer no options - not even paid - for voice support is inexcusable.
I strongly advise that no one purchase this program until these problems have been addressed.

This review is simple to write because all I was able to do with this cheap analog-digital converter was take it out of the box (which is very cheap packaging by the way!) and plug it in to my PowerBook G4. In Apple iMovie 4, it could not recognize the device. So, I called ADS and they told me "We're sorry, but currently ADS cannot support iMovie 4, Final Cut Pro 4, or Final Cut Express 2... Please return it and buy another brand." I wish I had known that before this! ... I rate the ADS with negative stars, to be honest! So, if you own a new Mac with 10.3 or iLife '04, Final Cut Pro 4, and/or Final Cut Express 2...DON'T BUY ADS TECHNOLOGY EQUIPMENT!!!!! And if you are using a Windows machine, why are you using Windows-based PCs when you all know Apple is the best for video editing?!!!!! All movies produced, or at least the best movies are using Final Cut Pro...Cold Mountain, Lord of The Rings, to name a few of the many!!!!!!! DO NOT BUY THIS, YOU WILL SAVE YOURSELF THE EXTRA SHIPPING TO SEND IT BACK... ...

This product cannot reliably capture from an analog video source. It will skip frames every so often. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT if you are capturing an analog video source such as VHS. ADS knows about the problem but has not yet fixed it. If you are capturing from a digital source such as TiVo or a DVD, this product can do that.

This product does NOT work as advertised. Do not buy this if you want to capture anything from an analog video source, such as from a VHS VCR. It will skip frames seemingly at random.

It does capture nicely from digital sources though such as TiVo or a DVD.