rca to ?X?X?

[Avery4jc]

Hey guys and gals, I'm on a team at school called SLI and we design, construct and launch high powered rockets. Not your average estes rockets but ones literally 4-6" in diameter upwards of 6 feet tall and fly to over a mile (yeah 5,280') in altitude.
One aspect of our project this year is that were using gyros to control the assent of the rocket and in doing that we are also using two on-board cameras to keep an eye on everything and to help us guide it back (parafoil recovery).
Anyways what I need you all to help me with is something on the computer side of things. The recievers for the cameras use rca outs which isn't a problem at home because we just use a tv/vcr combo to watch and record, or we use a camcorder. A few months from now we are going to Huntsville, Alabama to launch for the Marshal space flight center (supplied funding for project this year and last year). What is the best way to convert the rca signal to something that we could use with our laptops? They are the school's laptops so a new video card is out of the question but I'm sure there's something like what scan converters do that would work for this. And what program would be our best option (or I should say your personal opinion) for watching and recording.
Thanks!

-Avery Henderson
Edison High SLI
Fresno, Ca.

 

[Avery4jc]

Come on guys and gals.....Please

 

[Jamxx]

Well... If you have firewire on your laptops you can do it that way, but I'm a little doubtful that there will be any other way unless your laptop has an S-Video out or something. Most laptops don't have video inputs, however, if there's some converter out there that works through firewire that may work. You capture video from a camcorder with firewire, and you can watch it live, so I don't see why there wouldn't be a way to do this.

 

[MarxSoccer]

You could use some type of USB device, as seen here: http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/product.cfm?pid=4130

I'm sure you can find something cheaper however.. first thing I found with google

 

[Feircepc]

actually lots of labtops have s-video and some have the yellow jack rca wich is the visual but u wont get ne sound sadly. i think you can possibly just have some kind of camera port if its connected to ur camera..... is it a digital camera like does it use a disc of somesort or a tape?

 

[MarxSoccer]

What about this, little cheaper.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814144308

 

[TreeHugger]

what ports do u have on ur computer firewire usb s-video ?????

 

[Avery4jc]

I checked today while I was at school and the laptops only have usb 2.0, and I believe a serial port but I do like Marx solution. I'll have to do some research on it to see if the software that it comes with not only allows us to view but also to record.
Thanks a ton to you guys, if anyone else has suggestions please fire away.

Oh, by the way don't worry about $$, just let me know.

 

[MarxSoccer]

Didn't take note that you wanted to record. You could go with Pinnacle, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814144026

I'd say if you'd like to record video to your PC for under $100 with good quality, this is your hardware!

 

[Avery4jc]

Hmm that might not be necessary as the Prolink unit you first posted states;
"Capture and Record as Standard Format (ex: AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4). "
Which to me means that it will be able to record whatever is streaming on the screen right onto our hd.
What do you guys think?