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Videoguys' Hands-On Review and Round-Up of the latest capture cards from Fast, Truevision and Miro.

This article has been changed since it was first published in Camcorder Magazine to include all the current products in 1997. I have updated the results for each card based on the latest drivers, and expanded the round-up to include the new miro DC10 and DC30. I have also added a section for Power Mac users. Archived article from Feb 1997

Phenomenal Video Capture Cards for Under $1000

Over the past year enormous gains have been made in the price/quality ratio for digital video production. Fast, Miro and Truevision have all introduced complete non linear editing bundles that will let you capture, edit, and playback beautiful video from your computer’s hard drive. Better still, the fierce competition between the 3 has driven prices even lower!! These cards all take advantage of PCI bus technology that lets your computer move through and process huge amounts of data. I have been fortunate enough to get to install, test and experiment with all the latest cards. I will now share the findings of my research so that you to can begin editing your videos digitally. Video production will never be the same!

Why do I need PCI?

The PCI bus is the magic key that lets video producers unlock all of the potential and power of today’s Pentium and PowerMac PCs. In order to take full advantage of the PCI bus, you will need to make an investment in storage technology. A PCI SCSI host adapter will allow you to use an AV tuned Fast SCSI hard drive. These drives have three important features that we need for handling video:
  1. They are very large, up to 9 gigs with capacity expected to double in the next 6 months
  2. They are very fast. For video, we do not care about seek times or maximum burst data rates. We need lightning fast sustained throughput.
  3. They can run continuously at very high transfer rates without skipping or needing to recalibrate. The drive must be able to work at peak performance, so we don’t have to worry about dropping frames or jittery playback.

The system I used to test the new boards was a multimedia Pentium 90 with 16 megs of RAM running Win95. For storage, I have an Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller card hooked up to a Stream Logic Microdisk external 4.3 gig Micropolis AV Gold Fast SCSI-2 hard drive. I highly recommend this storage solution for anyone doing serious digital video work. For around $2000, it is an excellent investment. The total cost for my entire system including PC, storage and capture card came to a little over $5000.

Overview

The cards I tested for this article were the Fast AV Master, Truevision Bravado 1000 and the Miro DC10, 20 & 30. First, let me tell you about what all the cards did great. All let me capture video from my Hi8 camcorder, edit it, add really cool transitions, digital effects and 3D titling. I then output the video directly off my hard drive back to a SVHS recording deck. The final output quality differed from each card, but they all gave me excellent results that would impress even the toughest critic. With digital video, there is one golden rule: The better the video quality, the more space you need. All three boards capture the video at full speed (30 frames and 60 fields per second) and full size (640x480) and use Motion JPEG compression to squeeze the digitized video onto your hard drive. The more squeezing, the more video you can fit on a gig, but the lower the final video quality will be. I consider VHS quality to be MJPEG compression of 15:1. At this compression you will be able to store about 15 minutes of video per gig. At 10:1 you will only be able to fit 8 or 9 minutes of video. I consider compression of 10:1 or lower to give you similar video quality to a stand alone SVHS editing system. At 6:1 and below, you are getting video quality that only a trained professional can differentiate from the SVHS/Hi8 original. AT 5:1 you will only get 4 minutes of video per gig. You will also need a storage system that can pass through data at almost 4 megs per minute. I will now give you the results of my survey.

Fast AV Master

I was able to get the highest video quality and lowest compression with the AV Master. Without any tweaking I was able to capture both audio and video at under 5:1 compression. This kind of performance puts the AV Master into a league with much more expensive cards like the Perception.The AV Master has bus mastering and audio capture hardware built into the board. This yielded excellent results for both audio and video captures, plus I never had any problems with audio drift or lip sync.

Fast also includes their own custom video capture and playback software for the AV Master. This software lets you fully utilize the 32 bit capabilities of Win95 and it is what sets the AV Master ahead of the competition. There FastCap video capture program is by far the best video capture interface I have ever used. Not only is it simple, but it catalogs all your AVI files, automatically bench tests your hard drives, and lets you play back the video without having to open up another application. MediaCache creates a RAM buffer that gives you beautiful, smooth playback at every compression. The latest drivers available on the Fast website include Direct Draw Video Overlay, so you can view the video full size, full motion on your VGA screen (with compatable graphics card).

The AV Master ships with Ulead Video Editor. This is the video editing portion of Media Studio Pro 2.5. The Video Editor is a good non linear editing package, but I really love the full version of Media Studio Pro. For $150 I think it is worth the upgrade, which includes Morphing, cooler transitions and a whole suite of useful multimedia production tools. AV Master also ships with Crystal Flying Fonts LE, a great tiling program that is super easy to use.

Truevision Bravado 1000

This board also gave me great results. I was able to achieve 5:1 compression without audio and 8:1 with audio. At 7:1 with audio I got good video, but every once in a while the playback jerked. When I substituted a Turtle Beach Fiji sound card with on board Digital Signal Processing for my Sound Blaster clone, I was able to get the combined A/V capture down to 6:1, very impressive! The PCI bus mastering combined with the DSP sound card gave me excellent audio quality with good lip sync and no audio drift.

The highlite of the Bravado is its software bundle; for starters, you get the FULL Version of Adobe Premiere 4.2, a $600 value. With the Bravado now selling for under $600, you are practically getting the card for free!! . You also get Crystal Flying Fonts LE and Photoshop LE software in the bundle.

If you are getting started in Non Linear Editing and looking for an inexpensive card that can grow as you do, Bravado is the best choice. It is very flexible, and you can easily change a wide range of video capture settings. This means you can optimize the Bravado for video capture using an EIDE drive. You won't get the best quality possible, but it will be practically SVHS video quality. Later, when you upgrade to SCSI, you can reset the Bravado to deliver the spectacular video quality it is fully capable of.

Note: When the Bravado first shipped, there were some problems with faster Pentium processors over 133 MHz. The latest drivers have solved this problem and I am happy to report that the Bravado is now rock solid with pentiums at any speed!!

Miro DC30

With the introduction of the DC30, miro has given the AV Master a run for its money. The DC30 is a tremendous performer. I was able to capture video at compressions below 4:1. Unfortunately, the drivers that ship with the DC30 did not include the miroAVI Cache software, so my playback was not smooth. I downloaded the version 1.04 patch, installed it and now I get perfect jitter free playback. The DC30 supports Direct Draw Video Overlay, so I was able to preview, capture, edit and playback my video in a window on my VGA screen in full speed. Not all graphics cards support this feature, but my Diamond Stealth 3D did a great job. The DC30 also ships with the FULL deluxe version of Premiere (includes Photoshop LE and Crystal Flying Fonts LE) just like the Bravado. miro also includes Asemetrix 3D/FX software for basic animations. This makes the DC30 the best performing Premier bundle for under $1000!!

Note: The DC30 is still pretty new, and the drivers are being constantly upgraded. I recommend downloading the official 1.04 release and installing it, rather then the 1.00 included on the CD ROM. 1.04 is the version I used for my tests.

Miro DC10

For under $400, this is the absolutety the best video capture card for getting started. Don't let the cheap price tag fool you, the DC10 delivers remarkable video quality for the price. Because it captures video at 1/2 frame (320x480), the files created are half the size and you can easily capture, edit and playback using a Fast EIDE drive. The output is better then VHS quality, full screen and full speed. The DC10, like its big brother the DC30 supports Direct Draw Video Overlay, so if you have a compatable video card, you don't even need a TV monitor to edit!

The DC10 is Plug & Play, a breeze to set up and install, and works great in any multimedia Penium. miro has also created their own capture and playback utility called miro MEDIA Manager for even easier operation. Best of all, you don't need to invest in expensive SCSI storage. The DC10 is perfect for students, hobbiests, and video enthusiasts who want to make super cool looking home videos with all the incredible special effects and capabilities of the more expensive systems at a fraction of the cost!! Starting this spring, the DC10 will also include the award winning Power Goo software from MetaTools.

MiroMotion DC20 &Truevision Bravado 1000 for PowerMac

Up to this point, Macintosh owners either had to settle for half speed poor quality video or spend thousands on a high end capture card. Now PowerMac owners with PCI slots can create S-VHS quality videos at an affordable price. Better still, you have a choice. Both the Bravado 1000 and the DC20 let Mac owners capture and output full screen, 640x480, full speed video. Both cards are super easy to install. Because the Mac was designed for AV from the start, and Premiere was originally designed for Mac, everything just seemed to go smoother and work a little better. I was able to capture and playback video at 9:1 using the regular SCSI drive included in the Mac. When an Adaptec 2940UW for Mac and the StreamLogic 4300 drive were added, both cards easily delivered compressions below 6:1. I found both card to give near equal performance. In fact, I could not tell the difference in video quality between the two.

If you already have Premeire, as many Mac owners do, then save a few bucks and get the DC20 (DC20 ships with the LE version). If you don't own Premiere, get the Bravado. You may even find that you can get the complete Bravado 1000 Mac bundle, with the FULL version of Premiere 4.2, cheaper then you can find the software alone!!

Video Capture Card Survey
Now that you know about the latest cards, take our multiple choice survey and find out which one is best for you!!

Here are jumps to the websites for all of the DTV products mentioned in this article.

If you have any questions, you can E-mail them to our Techguy.