> I went through this recently myself. Since I needed a video card for my new
> computer anyway, I got a Gigabyte X600 with video in on e-bay for about $80.
> However, if you are already satisfied with the video card you have, it may
> be better to get an external (USB) video capture device. You can find some
> on e-bay or vendors such a newegg for a fairly reasonable price (under $75).
>
>
> One of the external devices that seems fairly well rated is a Plextor model.
> Here is a link for info:
> http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/multimedia/Plextor_ConvertX/
>
> There is one caveat that Mark Rode warned me about. Expect to use up a WHOLE
> LOT of disk space! My computer now has almost 800GB of storage in it. My
> video files alone are up to 175GB, and I want to back them up - so the
> needed drive space grows.
>
> Peter

Eventually the question of file size would come up.

Now the Hauppauge card is very inexpensive and good quality. But your file sizes
will be HUGE! If you go this route, I recommend you get VirtualDub (
http://www.virtualdub.org/ ) for your capture software.  I also recommend you
use the Huffy CODEC
(http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html#Requirements )
which is a very fast, lossless Win32 video codec. "Lossless" means that the
output from the decompressor is bit-for-bit identical with the original input to
the compressor. "Fast" means a compression throughput of up to 38 megabytes per
second on a 416 MHz Celeron. I do believe that VirtualDub can transcode captured
files into the new DV codec which will reduce your file sizes significantly.

If you convert your VHS to the DV format your file size will be about 13 GB per
hour of video. Of course if you go that way, expect to pay at least $200 for a
capture card. The best analog to DV capture cards are made by Canopus. See the
following link for their DV converters:

http://www.canopus.us/US/products/Index/product_index.asp.

Believe me it will make life easy for you to go this route, especially if you
plan to edit. Also you won't have all the synchronization problems common to
editing "uncompressed" video. Finally your hardware system requirements are
significantly less demanding than that required to encode VHS to a uncompressed
or motion JPEG format.

HTH

Olushola Sowande

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