Vidac VMagic Capture Card

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Capture Card

Features

Compatibility*

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Vidac VMagic

Tv Tuner
Analog VideoIn
MPEG1 hardware
MPEG2 hardware

Win95 Win98 Win2K WinXP
Vista? ~~NT4~~ ~~MAC~~ ~~Linux~~
*based on user reports.

PCI

$300

9.0/10
19 votes

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Description (from the manufacturer site)

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Comments

22 comments, Showing 1 to 22 comments

For English info go to http://www.gallacher.net/index.php

Comments posted by nick13 from Other, December 02, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

New Homepage: http://www.vmagic.de

Comments posted by Ancius from Other, November 28, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I have this card for 14 days. Installation easy but the poorest card I ever had. Poor quality, a lot of artefacts and block-errors. Tried all quality ranges - it sucks. I've send it back after 14 days. Vidac set off a service charge of € 105,-- although they have a free return within 14 days.

Vidac - never again.

Comments posted by bb from Other, June 24, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 1 of 10.

I'd like to know if this card is available in the UK. PAL is the standard format here, so the card's lack of NTSC support is no problem.

I've had a look at the company's website http://www.vidac.de using a translator http://babelfish.altavista.com . Most of the site is readable although I'm not quite sure what an "auxiliary plumb bob sheet metal for VMagic" is. :)

With so much Hauppage based crap on the market in the UK, a card like this sounds like it would do well here. Here's hoping they start producing a model with english docs for the UK. Otherwise I may have to mailorder one.

(I've rated this card 10 out of 10 only because putting no rating seems to adversely affect the average rating)

Comments posted by Olly from Other, April 23, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Have not brought this card yet as it only handles PAL but from what I have read about it on the net it does appear to be superb.

Was going to buy it with PAL support only until Vidac told me they are releasing a mutil standard version (PAL/NTSC) in the summer (2003) so I will wait until then.

Comments posted by Dan from Other, April 06, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I bought this card (Vmagic TVplus) directly from Germany as there no card resseler here in Greece. It' s an amasing card. The support is excellent, they helped me alot with the installation. The quality of the video i 've captured is amazing, the best i 've ever seen. Also the tv tuner is very strong, now i can watch channels wich have so bad signal quality that i couldn't watch them on my tv. Also i had never watched before tv programs with so good picture quality on pc monitor as with this card.
(Sorry for my bad english.)

Comments posted by chris from Other, March 03, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Excellent capture quality, timed recording, good software that also allows tweaking for those who want to. Captures system stream or separate .mpv .mpa/.wav files. Allows transcoding of AVI with mpeg-hardware.
It's everything i ever wanted.

Warning: PAL ONLY.

Comments posted by elpedro from Other, February 25, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

hi!
phantastic card!!
transcoding from dvd to xsvcd, svcd, vcd -> directly with the hardware encoder, no problem, and very good quality!
recording from the tv-tuner: very good quality and possibility to re-encode it with lower bitrate and several filters e.g. deinterlace, boxing, cropping, greyscale ... directly with the hardware !
i never had a problem with audio out of sync.
before i got this card i had a win-tv pvr. this card was realy shit compared with the vidac !!

Comments posted by jj mclure from Other, January 08, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

To Gizmoz : www.vidac.de

It's a real great card for capturing and transcoding but works not on all hardware. See vidac-site for compatibility.

Comments posted by benbun from Other, December 17, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

I am writing a full review with screen shots etc for the VMagic TV Plus card.

The review can be found at the following url:

http://www.gallacher.net/modules.php?op=modload&a ... t&id=3

Comments posted by Chris from Other, December 12, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95 Win98 Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC ~~Linux~~ - Rated: 9 of 10.

I use it mostly to convert DV tapes to DVD mpg
it works great, no problems at all, reald Hardware transcoding and Good quality I have created severall Profiles from 90,120,180 and 240 minutes on one DVD
all give Excellent to good Quality and give no problems burning to DVD It is a great card
with speeds up to realtime converting in DVD format on a PIII-600

Also TV recording on the fly works great. and give no problems at all.

another advantage, it can use VOB files as input files for the transcoding!!!

Comments posted by isr001 from Other, November 28, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

I bought this card a few weeks ago in Germany. Unfortunately this card is not available in the Netherlands. I had to drive a few hours for it, but it was worth the effort.
Great card, just plug into the PC, install the software and it works at once.
I have dozens of old VHS-videotapes that I want to transfer to DVD. The captured pictures really look good, as long as you use DVD-quality.
I bought the version with TV-Tuner, and the results of recorded programs really look amazing.
The cutting software is easy to use and very intuitive, I was completely used to it within 1 or 2 hours.
Support from the manufacturer is really good and fast.
For me the German documentation is no problem, but an English and/or Dutch manual would be very helpful for many people. The English and German computer dictionary are defenitely very different.
The reviews of VCDHelp.com have been very helpful to me for my buying decision. No one complains about cards that are not working, and everyone talks very positively about the helpdesk. These 2 things made me decide for Vidac. And I'm still convinced it was the right decision.

Comments posted by Jan van der Straaten from Other, October 22, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Captures to MPEG1/2 from external source or built in TV tuner(TV(+) version).
Produces seperate video & audio(WAV or MPEG) streams or a system stream.
Built in hardware transcoder that can also handle VOB files. (all models)
Good picture quality.
Timed recordings.
You can have the app minimized on the sytem tray when capturing or put your PC in standby mode have have it automatically woken up just before capturing commences.
Built in bitrate calculator.
No audio sync problems, even when using the editor app. to cut out commercials etc.
On the '+' models you can use the hardware transcoder to re-encode material edited with the editor.
Doesn't mind sharing IRQ's.

There is no English documentation as yet, it is easy to set up though. The application can display menu's in English.

Vidac support are very helpful, they have replied to all my questions within one to two days.

I'm glad I took my WinPVR 250 back to the shop :-)

Comments posted by ItsMe from Other, October 09, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

great Card!

I use it for realtime MPEG2 capturing with my old 400 MHz Celeron. With the integrated VCR and the Internet TV-Guide I recorded more than 1000 hours of my favorite TV-Series, mostly at nigth with less comercial brakes :-)

good german and engish speaking e-mail hotline, very fast response.

Also great for hardware accelerated transcoding of video.

hc

Comments posted by hc from Other, July 31, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Capture Card with Hardware MPEG2 Codec, TV, FBAS and S-VHS Input.

Easy to Install, works out of the Box (see www.vidac.de for troubleshooting).

The problems with my Hauppauge Cards in mind I can`t understand why I can live without this card in the past :-)

Hardware Codec can be used for Transcoding of all MPEG and AVI Sources to MPEG, incl. VOB files.

Depending on the MPEG parameters i get up to 50 FPS with an XP2000+ and up to 30 FPS with an P200.

Very frendly and useful hotline and e-mail support.

The Quality of the Hardware MPEG Encoder ist compareable to OnePass TMPGenc.

No WVW support to capture with alternate programms.

All in One (timeshift) programmable VCR, Transcoder, Cutter Software.

Comments posted by KayM from Other, July 19, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP? Vista? ~~NT4~~ ~~MAC~~ ~~Linux~~ - Rated: 10 of 10.

Really difficult to get this thig running on some hardware, but then the card is great.
The quality is far away from CCE, but better than TMPGEnc. Btw, the quality of a Hauppauge PVR is nothing compared to the VMagic!
Hint: first capture using DVD Profile, then transcode to SVCD (runs on a XP 1600+ and 7200RPM HD with about 35 fps)
Transcoding VOB to SVCD is working, will be improved (eg 2 languages)
TWO Versions of the card do exist, one with tuner, one without. The card without tuner is about 350€ (!), but the hardware transcoding will be used when cutting and so on.
PlugIns for Adobe Premiere are in work ;-)
Software is update every 2-3 weeks, very very firendly hotline, wishes concerning the usability of the soft or other features will often be fullfilled. Try this with a Hauppauge PVR *lol*

Comments posted by Andreas M. from Other, January 31, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? ~~Linux~~ - Rated: 10 of 10.

Good quality on captures and transcoded material, but doesn't work with all HW. Elitegroup ECS K7S5A motherboard does NOT work! :-(

Works with low-end systems; I have used my old Pentium I 166-MMX and it was possible to capture TV to SVCD format (not as a complete SVCD stream, though - 1 video stream in mpeg2 format and 1 audio stream in wav format).

Comments posted by Anders Nystedt from Other, January 19, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 7 of 10.

Best Card for MPEG 1/2 and DV !!!
But the cuttprogram are not so good !

Comments posted by Sascha Misch from Other, December 17, 2001:
Compatibility: Win95 Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

With Mpeg2 Rwaltime Hardware

Comments posted by ugsch joerg from Other, December 07, 2001:
Compatibility: ~~Win95~~ Win98 Win2K WinXP? Vista? ~~NT4~~ ~~MAC~~ ~~Linux~~ - Rated: 10 of 10.

The Card software can read and the hardware then can transcode ripped DVD VOB files directly in superb quality to any of the given or self made quality stages, e. g. SVCD.

Comments posted by anonymus from Other, November 24, 2001:
Compatibility: ~~Win95~~ Win98 Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? ~~Linux~~ - Rated: 9 of 10.

Great Card.

Comments posted by Andreas Funkhänel from Other, October 22, 2001:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

It's a PVR with a timeshifting function and VPS.
Only german documentation.
Audio-MPEG-Compression runs in software.
Predefined settings from VCD to DVD quality.
Settings are customizable.
Software for editing and for (hardware)transcoding.
Convert MPEG2 to DivX with DVD2AVI, VFAPI and VirtualDub.

Comments posted by Modder from Other, July 19, 2001:
Compatibility: Win95 Win98 Win2K WinXP? Vista? ~~NT4~~ ~~MAC~~ ~~Linux~~ - Rated: 8 of 10.

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Feature
What kind of main capture features it supports
Analog VideoIn = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input
Video Card = If it is a Video Card/Graphic Card
Tv Tuner = Built-In TV-Tuner
Digital TV = Built-In Digital TV-Tuner
DV/Firewire = DV/Firewire/i.Link input
DV Converter = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input and converts to DV video
MPEG1 hardware = Capture directly MPEG1(VCD) video using hardware*
MPEG2 hardware = Capture directly MPEG2(SVCD and DVD) video using hardware*
MJPEG hardware = Capture directly to MJPEG using hardware*
MPEG4 hardware = Capture directly to MPEG4(DivX,Xvid) video using hardware*
* = Most capture cards can capture to this format using software but it usually requires a very fast computer, if it supports realtime capturing it uses the capture cards hardware and it doesn't require a very fast computer and you may get better quality but less options/settings than software capturing.

Compatibility
What Operating System our users have reported that it works on, Win95=Works ~~Win95~~=Does not work Win95?=Not tested This is user based.

Cnx = Connection
What type of connection the capture device has to the computer, PCI, AGP, USB1/1.1/2, DV or PCMCIA.

Price
The price in US dollar.

Rating
The first rating is based on a weighted rank (the true Bayesian), it requires at least 5 votes to get a weighted rating.
The second rating between the ( ) is a normal average rating.

Comment
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