The VideoLAN Forums

Hi.
Is there any review about the video input cards that work best with VLC? Hauppauge? Pinnacle?
Has someone tried a USB2.0 card?

Thanks.
Ramada

Your operating system?
Are you looking for just a framegrabber (something that takes a composite or s-video signal; from a camera), or do you need a tv tuner card?

I am planning to use WinXP.
I want a card with composite or s-video input (if it has a tv tuner, no prob ). My idea is to have a portable PC box with a 15'' TFT to connect a camcorder and transmit the workshops via unicast to a central server that uses VLC to multicast the video to all the campus. Can you give me an idea of the HW to use?

Thanks in advance, Mark.

Ramada

For a PCI card, the Viewcast Osprey 210 is a decent, reasonably priced item with good performance, 640x480 resolution, full 30 fps. I use this one myself, both Win2K and WinXP.

For a USB frame grabber, the thing is to make sure that it has DirectX (directshow) support, as that's what VLC uses under Windows.

If I could live with 320x240 resolution, 15 frames per second (at best), I would probably try the Osprey 50 USB; based on what's in the manual, I expect it is a directshow device, though have not personally veified this. Alternately, stay with the 210 but pick up a Magma box -- it's an outboard PCI card holder, with PC card that goes into a laptop. I have not used either of these two approaches (I have, independently, used the Magma box, just not for this application; at near $1K, it's not cheap, but can be much simpler than schlepping around a full size PC if you just need 1 external PCI slot.)

Other vendors make fine products, too, just that I've had good luck with the Ospreys.

Be careful with compressors.

they have delays upper than 3 seconds when streaming live video.

Hauppauge PVR 350 /250 is not a good option if you want to stream live video.


No way to reduce the video delay....

I am thinking maybe to buy pinnacle movie studio 9 USB. But I am wondering about a av/dv card... usb external box is more portable to install in another PCs... well I have to think a little more!
I think it sure has Directx 9 support.