Pinnacle TV Tuner for Video Capture from Old Analog Camcoder

I have an old (circa 1998) Panasonic Camcoder that record on VHS-C tapes. I used it a lot till about 2002. After that the battery died and I didn't bother replacing it. Also I have always wanted to be able to digitize my recordings to DVD but didn't have a solution till recently. The photo studios in Hyderabad offer a solution for this but their rates are more than I am willing to pay.

Anyway, I borrowed a Pinnacle PCTV internal TV Tuner card from a friend (Raghu Patri) last Sunday. Plugged it in and after some fiddling around manged to capture my old tapes! Now I am digitizing all my tapes and burning them on DVDs.

My Setup:

1. Pinnacle PCTV TV Tuner Card: Internal. Plugs into a PCI slot.
   
2. S-Video adopter (S-Video to RCA): My Camcoder takes a RCA cable for Video as well as Audio. The adopter came with the Pinnacle card.
3. RCA to Stereo Male Cable: This is for the Camcoder Audio jack. Connects to the Line-In on my PC Sound Card.
4. Windows Media Encoder: Free download from Microsoft. Captures from the Pinnacle card and the sound card. Writes to WMV format. Nice set of controls. I have not researched other solutions at this time. There might be better products out there. Particularly from ULead.
   
5. WMV to MPEG2 (DVD) Conversion: The neat little conversion software from Cucusoft. Works for VCD as well as DVD.
6. AVI/MPEG/RM/MWV Spiltter: For cutting out portions of the MWV file captured from the camcoder.
   

I will go buy my own Pinnacle card this weekend. No idea how much it costs in Hyderabad.

(Posted via Thinga Web)