Recommend a capture card for Linux?

[cocoapepper]

I use both Slackware and Ubuntu, and I'm having tons of problems trying to get ffmpeg+VLC to compress and stream realtime, live video input using my Osprey 210 capture card. VLC itself doesn't even see the card as an input source. After several days of trying to get this working and tons of searches, I'm ready to seek a known-working configuration and process.

What analog capture cards (PCI or PCIe) have you been successful with for realtime compression and streaming? I am hoping for 640x480x30fps AVC compression, to stream on the LAN to 2 or 3 clients at most, and save the stream to the local hard drive at the same time. I have a 2.6 GHz Core2Duo processor so I think I should be good for even AVC compression? What capture card do you know will work for certain? And what's the proper way to get VLC to see it? Am I missing a step? Thank you kindly for your help.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You don't have a v4l2 device?