by Bill Bernat
March 27, 2001

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ViewCast’s Osprey 500 DV Pro is a veritable Swiss Army Knife of video capture capabilities, supporting pretty much every format known to mankind — or at least to video engineers. Developed in conjunction with Microsoft, this versatile tool is also the first professional video capture hardware that is designed specifically to work with the Windows Media Encoder (WME). This support is particularly useful when feeding a live Windows Media broadcast. Weighing in at a noteworthy $2,495 list price, this card will be a godsend for some people, and overkill for others.

When you don’t know what tools you’re going need, you may very well wish to carry them all with you. When it comes to inputs, the Osprey 500 DV Pro is quite comprehensive, accepting all of the below:

• Balanced Audio, professional analog audio, 2 XLR inputs
• Unbalanced Audio, consumer analog audio, 2 RCA inputs
• S/P-DIF, pro-sumer digital audio, 1 RCA input and 1 optical input
• AES/EBU, professional digital audio, 1 XLR input
• IEEE 1394 DV, pro-sumer digital video and audio, 1 6-pin input
• SDI, professional digital video (audio coming soon), 1 BCN input
• Composite, pro and consumer analog video and audio, 1 BNC input
• S-Video, pro-sumer analog video and audio, 1 S-Video input

However, this is a Windows-only product at present. Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4 are fully supported by ViewCast, and even the latest beta drivers are available for both operating systems. Windows ME and Windows 98 are not supported — but that’s understandable in light of the heavy lifting for which this product is designed.

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