If I can do live streaming by plugging a firewire DV cam into my computer, why do I need a Digital Rapids or Osprey card?
A10. High end video capture cards such as those from Digital Rapid or Osprey often have more encoding options and also do more than just encode. For example, using these cards you may be able to do the following: pre-processing on the signal, de-interlacing, color correction, cropping, apply various filters, capture and stream multiple feeds at once, etc. In addition, because the cards typically have chips specifically designed for vido pre-processing and encoding, it takes resources off the central CPU and moves it to dedicated, optimized processors. This will provide better performance and hence better quality video.
