I've been struggling to use the PC-VCR tool that came bundled with my Matrox Marvel G-200 TV card and been looking for alternative solutions for a long time. Finally I came across with AVI_IO, a tool that has very plain GUI, it's less than 200kb of size and does all the tricks that I really need from the capture tool.

Program is a shareware, but the demo version has virtually no restrictions and registering the program only costs $25 which is cheap in all terms.

AVI_IO supports video capture card's internal compression modes (normally M-JPEG) and external CODECs (yes, you can use DivX codec as well). You can also freely set the framerate and image size. Program also supports scheduled recording, which is nice feature if you want to use your capture card as a VCR alternative. AVI_IO's internal capture buffer guarantees synchronized capture even with long recordings (some cards/tools tend to get audio off-sync if/when capturing drops frames).

Overall the tool is excellent piece of work, providing all required functions while maintaining small size and simple user interface. Maybe only problem with the tool was to set up all the required settings -- but after that was done, I've never used my OEM capture tools since.

AVI_IO supports currently (at least) these cards:

-Pinnacle PCTV
-Pinnacle DC10 / DC10
-Pinnacle DC20
-Pinnacle DC30 / DC30 DC30pro
-Pinnacle DC50
-Pinnacle DV Studio
-ADS Pyro
-Exsys
-SIIG
-IOMEGA "buz"
-Matrox Marvell (all models)
-Matrox RR (all models)
-FAST AV master (all models)
-Dazzle Multimedia Snazi
-Broadway Beginner MPEG-1 Capture Card
-Winnov Videum AV and Videum VO
-all brooktree based TV tuner boards