Choose Video Capture Card For Your Editing System

The process of video production is something like this:

Capture the video to your computer using a capture card
Edit the video in a video editing software
Download edited video to tape or burn it to VCD, CD or DVD

Video capture card is the device that transfers videos between your computer hard drive and camcorder/VCR. A video capture card should carry either analog or DV in/out, or both.

Video capture cards use hardware and/or software compression (CODEC) to digitize the video onto your hard drive. You can the edit the video and play it back to tape or display the finished movie on your computer screen.

The most popular type of video capture cards on the market today are FireWire or DV cards. You can find inexpensive OHCI FireWire card for under $100. Many computers come with FireWire ports already included. All you need to do is add video editing software and you are ready to edit videos. However, these cheap FireWire cards won't support real-time editing features.

If you want to capture analog videos you'll need to add a video capture card to your system. You can find inexpensive capture cards for under $500 that support both analog plus FireWire inputs and outputs.

Most of the video captures cards are bundled with video editing software so you don't really need to buy software seperately.

Some of the reputable video capture card manufacturers are:

How to choose video capture cards for video editing system

Choose Video Capture Card For Your Editing System