Video Transfer camcorder to PC

[fjs559]

Hi all, I have driven another forum to distraction with my questions but this one seems to speak my language ie simple/down to earth. My overall quest is to transfer some old analog home videos directly from a camcorder to my PC. I do also have a Sony digital tape camera which is my main one , with around twenty 60 or 90 minute tapes to do which I am transferring via a firewire set-up which is slow although this is due to poor processing power of my PC (AMD Athlon 2800, 1.24Ghz) Onboard graphics also feature so I realise I'm up against it from the start.
However it's the analog tapes I'd like to address as I have not successfully transferred one yet. I bought a (cheap) PCI TV Card with video capture , (SAA7130AA WDM TV Tuner Video Capture in Device manager) and when I eventually got the PC to recognise it, managed to connect a video lead to it and an audio lead to line in due to poor connectivity on the (also cheap) camcorder bought specially for this purpose. The best I managed was one tape which has the sound lagging around 10 seconds behind the video, ( and thru only one speaker although not too concerned about that).
Why has the sound come out like this, any answers please?
Thanks, Frank.

[Gabriel Torres]

Hello and welcome to our forums.

The lag you are experiencing is typically due to a low-performance PC being used, as the process of converting analog video to digital is very processing-intensive. Please try again using a more powerful PC. For example, try it on a friend's computer just to see if the problem is really being caused by the use of a slow PC.

PS: Defragment the hard disk drive before starting the process.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

[fjs559]

Originally Posted by Gabriel Torres

Hello and welcome to our forums.

The lag you are experiencing is typically due to a low-performance PC being used, as the process of converting analog video to digital is very processing-intensive. Please try again using a more powerful PC. For example, try it on a friend's computer just to see if the problem is really being caused by the use of a slow PC.

PS: Defragment the hard disk drive before starting the process.

Cheers,
Gabriel.

Hi Gabriel, thank you for a quick reply which I only just found, decided to have a break and lost where I'd saved the site! As it happens I spent most of today trying to organise the array of video clips I have and noticed that I had made two other (much shorter) clips where the sound was in time with the video but would I be right in saying that the longer the video, the bigger the difference ratio? I suffer from lack of PC owning friends sadly but have a techy Father in Law who I may have to use! Thanks again, will keep you posted on my progress, if any!