Hi8 to DVD: Which Capture Card?

I have a Hi8 Camera with an s-video out , I will be converting about 10 or more of them to DVD. I have no problem converting any file format to DVD or creating Menus (I need to have my own meus and chapters for his so I can't just do it straight to dvd recorder)and all that, its just that capturing it requires me to get a video capture card. Can anyone advise me on which one to get? I'm looking at a cheap Pinnacle one (i hear pinnacles have sync problems) but have no clue as to whether to get it. Help would be GREATLY appreciated as this is a gift for someones 50th which is coming along soon. I have a 6800GT but it only has TV out.

Thanks

Anyone? Or am I asking in the wrong place?

We use this at work:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=66293

Mainly for the DirectBurn function, as the stuff we do doesnt need menus...

crapshot's selling his WinTV Go card in the FS forum, that should do the job.

I've used the Hauppauge WinTV USB2 card which, although costs around £100, does have hardware mpeg2 compression on board. So you can essentially run it on a medium spec PC as long as it has USB 2 support.

Once you have your content in mpeg2 format, you can then create menus and all other DVD parafernalia seperately with a DVD authoring program. Once you have all your source material, it's just a matter of multiplexing it all into VOBs but you won't have any video transcoding to do as you recorded it in mpeg2 to start with...

If you go for a cheaper non-hardware-compression platform such as a winTV go, then you'd need to find a realtime mpeg2 compressor (don't know if they're available FOC) or alternatively, record in high quality divx or other format and then transcode into mpeg2 at a later date.

Have a look at www.doom9.org there are some excellent guides there :)

Thanks all, I'll be looking for one that does built in MPEG II encoding as the 6800GT is ****e, CPU usage goes right up to 100%, is there a fix on this yet or is it hardware?

Video encoding is usually a very heavy load.
Not certain but don`t the All in Wonders have hard mpeg encoding in the Theatre chip?
Just seen some on Retek for pennies. Oldish 8500Dv but I`m still running one and it`s OK.
Look here http://www.retekdirect.co.uk/acatalog/Video_Cards.html

If you want MPEG2 encoding, then I only know of the hauppauge wintv pvr usb2. Can be purchased from ebuyer for under £100 here
If you're on a real budget, then you can buy them used. As long as you have the transformer in the box, then there's no other dongle, and drivers can be downloaded from the net... Only prerequisite is Win2k / XP with USB2 for mpeg2 capture. There are loads of compression options so you can chose VBR up to 9.8Mbps to create a valid DVD video format.

edit - if you wanna discuss the hauppauge card, you can ask me questions (in French if you want :P). Catch me on xavier_de_lucq @ hotmail.com