Product Reviews

If you have an old analogue camcorder and you want to get video footage onto your PC, you'll need some type of video capture device. Many of these are internal PCI cards - but if you don't have any PCI slots free, or your computer is a laptop, this isn't an option. The Plextor ConvertX is a box that plugs into your PC's USB 2 port, and is designed to do the same job. On it are mounted an S-Video input footage and two phono connectors for stereo sound. Unlike many video capture devices, the ConvertX doesn't just capture to MPEG-1 and 2 - you can also record to MPEG-4 and DivX, which provide decent quality with much smaller file sizes.

The ConvertX comes with Intervideo's WinDVD Creator 2 software for capturing and editing video. Intervideo WinDVD 5 handles playback. The ConvertX has two capture modes: MPEG 1 and 2 mode; and MPEG 4 (which also includes DivX, a modified form of MPEG-4). DivX is a super-compact format that only uses between 128KB and 512KB of data to store a second of video, compared to around 1MB

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for every second of MPEG-1. At the top MPEG-4 settings the quality was excellent, and the ability to handle DiVX is a rare and extremely welcome feature.

When in MPEG 1 and 2 mode, five different levels of DVD quality are available, plus just one VideoCD option, but it isn't possible to customise the settings for any of these. MPEG 4 mode offers numerous quality presets for both DivX and non-DivX MPEG-4, plus the choice of MP2 or MP3 audio.

WinDVD Creator 2 is a fairly simple video editor. It includes limited facilities for editing clips on a timeline. They can be trimmed to length, and a choice of 67 animated transitions can be used to move from one clip to the next. Titles can be superimposed over the video, and you can add music and narrative soundtracks. If your PC has a FireWire connection, you can output the edited video to a DV camcorder. Otherwise, you can save it as a video file or author a DVD, SVCD or VCD, which is WinDVD Creator's main function. The program has a selection of menu themes to choose from, and some button options, plus a small variety of chapter icon frames. Strangely, the ConvertX wouldn't let us capture from any application other than the bundled WinDVD Creator. We tried Ulead Media Studio Pro 7, Pinnacle Studio 9 and Roxio VideoWave 7. None of them worked. If you need to, you could capture using Creator, then edit in another program.

The ConvertX works fine, but even taking into account its ability to capture straight to DivX, it's expensive for what it is. You can buy a decent video capture card for about forty quid and a USB capture box for about £90.