Capture it

Once you've decided on a digital storage format, the next step is getting the video onto your computer's hard drive, or capturing it. Capturing video requires one of these three choices:

• An external USB capture box, such as Adaptec's VideOh, ADS's USB Instant DVD 2.0, or Pinnacle Systems' Studio MovieBox USB
• A video capture card, such as ATI's TV Wonder Pro or Pinnacle Systems' PCTV Pro
• A combination graphics card/video capture card, such as eVGA.com's e-GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, an Nvidia Personal Cinema card, or ATI's All-In-Wonder series

Prices vary from less than $50 to much more than $400, and many products feature TV tuners that let you view and record your favorite shows, so consider carefully before buying.

One feature that's absolutely essential to getting the best results is an S-Video input. Transferring via S-Video connectors almost always gives you better results than recording via the composite-video (yellow RCA) and stereo-audio (white and red RCA) jacks. If you don't already own a VCR with an S-Video output, get one.

Also, take a hard look at your computer's available disk space. VCD requires about 700MB of disk space per hour of video, SVCD about twice that, and best-quality DVD about 5GB per hour. About 10GB is enough headroom for the CD formats, but 20GB will be more comfortable for DVD. However, it's a long-accepted fact of video editing that you can never have enough disk space, enough memory, or a fast-enough computer. Upgrade till it hurts.

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