lately i've been struggling with some troublesome vhs transfers (i'm not too happy with the result i'm getting this time with my usual "tricks", for some reason the result runs out to be not as good as it used to be... :smt017 or maybe i am just imagining things)
anyway, i'd just be curious to know what sort of path everyone uses to make vhs -> dvd-r transfers & especially if anyone has experience with straight-from-vhs-to-dvd video converters? with a converter one could skip one step from the usual chain of vhs -> dvd-recorder (transfer) -> computer (authoring) - at least this is my usual chain...(?). i've heard some people have been praising the results with these converters, but i've been hesitant to get one since they are pretty expensive & wouldn't have any other usage.
i've also been told that the same can be done by using a digital video camera instead of the converter but i haven't tried this since i don't own such a camera. & i'm also uncertain if the quality is as good with using a digital camera as it is with a special converter - does anyone know?
There are two ways to go as I see it. Either get yourself a good capture card to use with your computer, or get a good standalone DVD recorder, preferably one with a hard drive. On-the-fly recording to DVD sounds risky to me.
Video modes could be having an effect on the difference you're seeing in quality. I would never go below 4000 kbps for bitrate when using 720 x 576 standard resolution. However, it's best to keep well above this when possible. I try to shoot for at least 5000, and even higher when possible. I'm now going in the direction of doing everything in dual-layer format so I can keep the video bitrate even higher and sometimes use uncompressed audio.
Every little bit in your signal chain counts too. The quality of your VCR, your cables, etc. will all play a part in your final result. As for a specific capture device, I won't recommend one at the present time because my current setup is in a rut... :oops:
Whether or not you're imagining things, it's possible. I know that the more experienced I got with transferring things, the more bad things I noticed. You definitely will get more critical over time, so it's best to not take any shortcuts.
Using a camera to transfer videos? That sounds like crazy talk. :? Unless you're transferring your own DV tape or something, I'd definitely stay away from that idea.
The idea of "skipping a step" might sound intriguing, but direct-to-disc DVD recorders aren't much of a solution. DVD recorders are notorious for making terrible menus. If going in that direction, I would get a standalone machine with a hard drive, then burn the video to DVD. Then I would copy it to my computer and use something TMPGEnc (Tsunami) DVD Author to make your final version with menu and chapters. This can all be done without re-encoding the video or the audio.
Of course, that's actually adding another step. I still haven't found the perfect computer capture card, so again I'm going to stop short of recommending anything at the present time. In a few days I might have a better answer.
Finally, you have to remember that if your source is garbage, your transfer is going to be about the same. A good capture device will be able to clean up some of the video noise, but beyond that there's not much that can be done. In the end, I really think you get what you pay for. If you buy entry-level gear, you're likely going to get entry-level results. I've spent way too much money on my setup, but all in the name of Cure fanaticism I suppose.
I hope my rambling has helped you a little bit. I don't think I really gave you a conclusive answer. :roll:
thanks, any "ramblings" are welcome and i don't think it was just rambling...
first of all, already know that i'm probably the only one around here who uses mac and not pc so the software differs... but since there are corresponding software widely available, any hint that pc users might give me is useful.
(then why i stick to mac? well i'm not a apple freak in principle or anything. it's just that i need some software in my work on a daily basis that is available for mac only so there's really no choice. i do have an old pc too but i really cannot afford to buy a new one that would be up to this sort of tasks.)
what i meant with 'skipping one step' was definitely not to use some direct-to-disc recorder (i agree that something like that is out of the question here), but a converter that would let me transfer straight from vhs to computer hard disc. that would skip one step but i am not sure if that itself might improve the quality or not. and it looks like it would cost me about 350 euros to try so... well i guess i'll stick to my standalone recorder. :wink:
and yes i am well aware that if the source material if crap then it isn't getting any better by digitalizing it & that it's not the cheapest (although certainly not the fanciest either) gear that i am busying myself with at the moment.
what has really bothered me recently is that after i got a new standalone dvd recorder some time ago (which should have been better than the old one), the quality i get simply isn't as good as it used to be (the dvd recorder isn't somehow as compatible with my vhs (which is pretty good, i'd say)? i don't know...). i've also checked & exchanged all the cables once without any improvements. but since the step between vhs -> dvd recorder should be the only step where major quality loss occurs, the problem should be there. so could it just be that my new dvd recorder could simply somehow be less compatible with my vhs than the previous recorder? sounds weird but this sort of thought (even if it's pure heresy ;-)) surely starts to creep into my mind. or maybe this sort of differences between same sort of hardware but by different manufacturers is entirely normal, but it just surprised me a lot, i have to say. :smt017
(what was also new to me was that the difference between fine & sp recording mode qualities seem to be much greater with this device than with the old one...? i always thought these were standard things)
well, it looks like i'm once again off to the store to spend some more money on this... but hey, it's only money & like you said it's all in the name of the noble idea of cure fanaticism so... :lol:
(hey just noticed that i've become a curefan master! wow, this really makes my day! :-D )
I'd say the answer here is quite simple. Your new standalone recorder isn't as good as your old one! As well all know, just because something is newer or more expensive doesn't mean it's better. Any chance you still got the old one?
I've never used standalone recorders, so I can't tell you what's good and what isn't. And I don't know the exact technical specs of fine and SP modes ? It probably varies between brands and models. But SP should be really good quality. I wouldn't think that "fine" would be much better...
I'll keep this short because I don't think it's a compatibility issue. Either something is good or it's not. I'd suggest you either use your old unit or get something different! :P
P.S. Congratulations on your new "status". :-D
you might well be right & i've thought about this too but i have to say that i have been hoping for some other answer... i wouldn't like to believe it since i actually tested a couple of recorders before deciding on this one & it clearly seemed to be the best then (although it even wasn't the most expensive)... (a couple of quite reliable reviews did praise its 'outstanding recording quality' - i guess it could still really be outstanding, only that my old one must have been even more outstanding then :wink: )
sadly the old unit isn't with me anymore... so i guess i'll start negotiating over refunds with the store that sold the new one to me... :evil:
anyway, thanks again caley!
I understand. I wouldn't want to believe it either. Do you have any way to "prove" that your old setup was better? For example, a recording you made with it? Nothing would be better than to do a back-to-back comparison of recordings you've made with both units. If the only thing different you were using is the recorder, I'd have to say that your new unit is at fault.
Do you know the model of your new recorder? I know a few people who might know more than me about these things. I'll see what I can find out. And if you know what the old one was, that couldn't hurt either.
Best of luck with everything. :-)
it's panasonic DMR-EH50, it's not their flagship device or anything but should be decent enough i think. and unfortunately i cannot remember what the old one was (siemens something...) & i know it sounds pretty amateurish that i can't remember but i didn't put it on to my mind then & sadly the situation now is that it's out of my reach to check it.
i think i'll run some tests again & contact the seller/manufacturer if it still stays the same.
Hmmm... Seems this may not be a perfect unit:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1395746&highlight=dmreh50#1395746
The flickering, macroblocks, "poor video quality when transferring from VHS source", etc. That last one seems to hit home....
Just food for thought. The only real way to judge things is by personal experience, but I can't help but wonder about this one. :?
thanks for the link... & well, i don't want to be just deliberately stubborn, but i am a bit wary of these sort of thread comments sometimes. because i can find others that say quite the opposite on this matter (sorry, they are in finnish so it doesn't do much good to post them here i guess :wink: ) + i've actually gotten some misleading information from some of them before. but surely i agree, it's food for thought as you said.
(about the flickering thing they mentioned: at least i haven't countered anything like that. so it could also be that they are talking about some special lot of these units that has been somehow flawed or about a flaw that has been fixed since - of course can't be sure, but i personally have encountered something like that before.)
i'm still suspecting the problem might be with the very unit i have at home, because i did run some tests on this model before i purchased it but unfortunately these had to be done with another unit & with another vhs model. anyway i didn't notice anything this serious back then. that's why i started with suspecting the compatibility with my vhs & now i'm starting to suspect it might some sort of problem with the input system of my unit(???).
i've also contacted some people who are vastly more experineced on these things than i & i hope to get some comment from them soon. let's see how it turns out.
anyway, thanks again for all your trouble with this. :D
Yes, I agree not to believe everything you read. It's hard to say in this case. I suppose you could see if they'll exchange it for the same unit (they should), and you could see how that compares. If it's still the same, I'd say that it's not a very good unit. Maybe it is something to do you with your VCR, but why would it have looked ok with your old recorder?
I've had my own frustrations with things like this, so I know what you're going through. Just keep trying, and don't settle for anything you're not completely happy with! :!:
Best of luck. :-D
ok i got a bit too tired today (it's a busy time at work & i cannot stay up every night trying to search clues whether my recorder is flawed or not - i need some sleep too :smt108 ). i took the unit back to the store (but they refused to give me full refunds because they have a get-your-money-back-within-7-days policy and i was overdue = crap!). i'm still a bit confused by this because i don't consider myself a random buyer... so where the problem actually was will remain a mystery to me, but let it stay that way. let's just say that i've had enough of standalone dvd-recorders for some time :wink:
so i'm pretty much back in square 1, but like you said one shouldn't settle with something that is only partialy satisfactory - thanks for reminding me about that in a crucial moment ;-)
and i've got some good tips & i think i'll go for something like this next:
http://www.canopus.com/products/ADVC110/index.php
thanks for all your support caley! :smt023
(i'll be in touch)
Ah, Canopus. I know a thing or two about their products, to say the least. :wink: I think their stuff is good quality, but there are two things you should know about the unit you mention. One, I'm almost positive that it doesn't work on its own. In order to get it to work with a computer, you will also need a compatible internal card. And actually, this unit has been discontinued. They still list it on their site, but it's being phased out. They used to advertise the Edius DV pack, which included a similar internal part along with the internal computer component (for more money, of course). This always seemed complicated to me, and I don't have the extra room inside my computer for both components.
The other thing is that it only captures to AVI, which is not a bad thing, only more time consuming. It also requires a lot of disk space, as it captures to DV-25 format (25 Mbps bitrate - huge!). Then you will have to convert this to MPEG-2, which will take approximately the length of the video. It seems the ADVC series has been superceded by this now:
http://www.canopus.com/products/ACEDVio/index.php
A bit more expensive than the unit you had in mind, but this only requires the one unit itself, and does exactly the same thing. You can also get it for less if you purchase it without software.
Something is to be said about the quality from doing this slower and more tedious AVI method, but if you get a good enough direct MPEG-2 capture device, it should be about the same.
I decided to forego this way, and after trying numerous capture devices by other brands (with great disappointment), I settled on this:
http://www.canopus.com/products/MPEGProMVR/index.php
Going up a little in price here. This one did a pretty good job, but since it's a Japanese unit, it's geared for an input of 0 IRE black levels. I really don't want to get into explaining this at the moment, because it's quite confusing and complicated. But basically Japanese NTSC and PAL are based on IRE 0. We Americans had to be a little different and decided to use 7.5. To sum it up, when you capture American NTSC video with this unit, the black levels will come out a little screwy if you're making a DVD. Since you are in a PAL country, unless you plan on doing some American NTSC transfers, it won't be an issue.
They could have easily made a toggle for this, but they didn't, so... Now I sprung for this. All in the name of Cure fanticism, you know... :oops:
http://www.canopus.com/products/MVRD2200V/index.php
Not exactly an inexpensive product, but the quality is truly mind-blowing. Like nothing I've ever seen before. The catch? Well, it could be this... Since I had a previous Canopus unit in my machine, I believe there might be a driver or software conflict that makes the capturing process crash all the time. I can't get it to capture for over 20-30 minutes without crashing. This makes it impossible to do anything worthwhile. The other possibility is that it was a faulty card, and soon I'll know for sure. I've already sent my unit back for an exchange, and very soon I'll be testing the replacement to see if that will fix the problem. I really hope it does. :?
If there is still a problem, that means there is in fact some sort of conflict caused by the previous card. And believe me, I have tried EVERYTHING to erase any remnants left by the previous unit. I've gone combed through my registry and all the Windows system files to get rid of anything related to the original card, but it didn't seem to do any good.
If it is a software conflict, the only remaining solution would be a complete reformat of my computer. I just reloaded a few months ago after a hard drive failure, and it's just not something I want to do. I have my computer really customized with all kinds of programs, and it would just be a horrible thing to have to do again so soon...
So basically, the search for a perfect capturing solution has been eluding me for a very long time ? well over a year. I've thought about just giving it up, but that would make the hours and hours of trying worthless. So I don't think I will ? yet. Soon I'll know what I'm going to have to do, but in the meantime I've gotten curious about this standalone recorder. It has every feature you can imagine, including PAL support. A little on the expensive side, but it sure seems cool!
http://www.world-import.com/dvr-530h.htm
You might want to call or e-mail Canopus and to make sure that the original device you mentioned can work on its own, but I'm almost certain it can't. If that's the case, buying the two necessary units to make it work would likely exceed the costs of some of the other solutions I've mentioned.
Soon I'll know where I'm standing as far as my setup goes. In the meantime, I can only hope. :roll:
You'd probably be very happy with the MPEGPro MVR, however. I just sold mine for a cut-rate price on eBay. The person who won that was quite lucky. I lost a good deal of money there. :(
I'll leave it at that for now. Good luck to both of us, I guess. :lol:
thanks for such extensive comments again! :D
actually it looks like being a mac-user is pretty helpful in this matter, since i've been told by a couple of people who've been using ADVC110 with mac that no extra internal cards are needed - the data can be captured straight with iMovie which is a software that comes with every mac so one doesn't have to buy anything separately. ADVC110 seems to be a device that mac users widely praise, but i am actually still waiting for someone to comment on the other one you also mentioned, ACEDVio before settling with anything.
i'm aware of the slowness of ADVC110 (and after getting well used to the high speed dubbing possibilities of my previous standalone recorders i'll really have to do some learning on waiting i guess :wink:)
but still, i'll skip the standalone models for a while at least... at the moment i especially find their lack of the ability to compress the data very limiting. 60 minutes isn't very much if that's all one can fit into one disc if one wants to retain the best quality. surely among the best recorders the differences in quality between different recording modes aren't very notable, but since i have had quite the opposite experience lately, so i wouldn't really count on anything anymore before i see it.
hm, MVRD2200V certainly looks good, but it also looks like it's for Windows so it's out of my reach....
and yes, the amount of frustration with computers/hardware/software sometimes... :smt091 all those problems you are having! i hope it turns out the best possible way (but to be honest it warms my heart that i'm not the only one who's temporarily stumbling here ;-) )
now i absolutely do not want to make any deliberate 'pro-mac' speeches here (because that would be simply stupid), but i have to say that i've been really relieved to find that i never seem have any sort of software conflicts with mac. and with my old pc they seemed to be a source of daily annoyance and they really used to drive me mad - but i also have to add that my configuration wasn't the most clever one then...)
i think i just saw an extensive review on a finnish site about that pioneer DVR-530H - it caugth my eye too because it surely looks good. i tried to search for it again, but cannot find it anymore... anyway, it would be nice to know how it really performs.
yes, the best of luck for both of us
& thanks again ;-)
Although I am not a Mac fan myself, I can't aruge that it's awesome that you can use the unit alone. I really hope that's true!
I neglected to notice that the direct-to-MPEG cards are Windows only. I wonder why. And you can always to the AVI to MPEG conversion overnight or while you're away from home if time is an issue. I'm really interested to hear how that works. I just don't understand what comes out of the device that connects it to your computer... :?
I agree that it's silly to start a PC vs. Mac debate, but I've never had much problems with PC's until this little ordeal. Yeah, the versions prior to XP were a little buggy, but I think they've come a long way in that. Anymore I'm worried about my hard drives crashing more than anything! :x
Anyway, I don't think you can go wrong with one of the Mac-friendly Canopus units. Another thing to think about ? I see the models go up from 110. 300, 500, 1000... I'm sure the sales people would say you get better quality for the higher models, but it's hard to say to what extent that's true. I just checked, and there's a definite price jump just between the 110 and 300 (more than double). Then beyond that, well... :shock:
If you know people who are doing well with the 110, that just might be the solution. I hope it works! By the way, I've just received my replacement MVR-D2200V. In a couple of hours I'm going to put it in and see what happens. I'm a little scared... :smt105
The verdict is in: There must be some sort of driver conflict. My new replacement card crashed in 3 seconds! :twisted: And again and again and again...
I tried more crazy stuff to try to wipe out anything from the previous card, and I even managed to really screw up my computer for a couple hours. Thank goodness for the system restore feature! 8)
I was really thinking hard about my next step. After doing things in the computer domain all this time, I don't think I want to go the standalone route. So I might just be doing that dreaded reformat in the coming days... :(
oh well, that sounds pretty boring&tiring - i hope it'll be resolved somehow...
the act of reformatting.... i still recall the times that i was forced to do it with my old pc with angst-stricken fear... :smt120
yes, the fact that no capture card is needed with mac & ACVD110 is really true! i was also a bit doubtful at first because many sites do not mention this compatibility at all (they actually state it's compatible with iLife but they really should mention iMovie too). i have been able to confirm this now from many sources. for instance:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1370283&highlight=canopus+imovie#1370283
(+NB: this thread also mentions the possibility to use a dv camera as a converter. the more i look into this, the more it keeps popping up as an option - so i really think it can be used with mac at least. some sites i consulted said it depends on the model of the camera, not all are capable of it, but that once it does work it does the job as well qualitywise. it's an interesting option, but unfortuntely i don't happen to have such a camer a so that i could test it. but i can imagine that it would be really practical since one wouldn't have to buy a converter which of course has rather limited uses when compared to a dv camera).
i'm still not sure about ACEDVio, i haven't received any comments on that one so far so if nothing comes up i think i'll go for ACVD110 then.
(and yes i was also "marvelling" the price jump in other canopus models from 300 up... i would really like to know what justifies it because the jumps are pretty huge.)
about standalone recorders: i used to be wondering about the absence of a possibility to link it straight to a computer with firewire etc. i started to wonder about this already some years ago, because it would have sounded like a practical thing to do & have. now i've noticed that some newer models have it though, so it might be worth trying too sometime.
good luck again! :wink:
I guess I'll have to recant my suggestion that using a video camera for conversion was "crazy talk". :oops: Seems Apple is much more universal and flexible about accepting video into the computer. Heck, you could probably connect a garden hose to it and get results! :-D
And I think I know what you mean about standalone recorders. I just wish you could output the video as data directly to your computer rather than burning a DVD. It would save a lot of time and wasted discs. You also wouldn't have to worry about fitting the exact size. After all, you can always trim stuff down on a computer. I like a little margin for error.
I'm pretty sure I've just decided against going the standalone route. The Pioneer model we were talking about has just about every feature imaginable, but I discovered one key thing that I don't like. It will only record to uncompressed PCM audio in the "fine" 1-hour quality setting. So if I want to capture a 2 1/2 hour Cure concert using that mode, I wouldn't even be able to get that onto a dual layer disc! :x I don't have a problem with compressed audio per se, but the thing about PCM is that you can edit it without recompressing the audio ? then as a final step convert it to something smaller if you wish to. As we all know, many bootlegs are far from perfect and can often using a little touching up in the audio department.
So now I'm down to two choices I think. I can wipe out my PC and just hope that the D2200V works, or I could try something else. The ACEDVio has always been intriguing to me. I know it's the same brand, but the whole platform seems entirely different, so I don't think a conflict would arise in this case. Just like what I said above, the advantage to capturing to a lossless (or near lossless) AVI format is that you can edit the video without re-encoding anything. While the D2200V is surely "good enough" as is, you could get a bit more "professional" with an AVI and do some additional processing. However, this is probably something I should stay away from with my perfectionist attitude. I could end up spending way too much time!!!
The other advantage of the ACEDVio is that when using the right software, you can select the audio input from your sound card rather than the one built in to the unit. I've got a really nice card for recording that has digital input, and it's great for doing laserdisc transfers. The D2200V only supports the built-in analog inputs, so if I use it to transfer laserdiscs, I'm going to lose the digital sound, which is a pity. I've thought of some clever ways around this (not tested as of yet), but doing an AVI capture would be easier.
There are some advantages to the AVI method, but I still don't like the giant file sizes and the fact that I have manually convert everything to MPEG-2. It's just so much easier to have a nice MPEG file ready to go. So yeah, my mind has really been racing with these thoughts for the past day. I'm really not sure what's going to happen. Definitely some pros and cons on both sides.
Now I'm downloading a program that works with the ACEDVio. If I like it, that might have an influence on what I decide! :D
But enough about me for now. I think you're going to be up and running with good results much faster than I ever was. A lot of people don't even know about Canopus because it's a bit more "high end". I was trying out a lot of junk before I even heard that name! :roll:
By the way, I'm surprised no one else has jumped into our little discussion here. I know there are some other technical wizards out there...
This is getting to be one long thread! :shock:
yes the certain flexibility that macs seem to have sometimes is really a blessing here. i've noticed that i could actually even fully edit & burn the data on dvds by using only software that comes with every mac with purchase (iMovie, iDvd). iDvd has pretty good editing possibilities, but its compression abilities aren't too versatile so i'll probably use something else. i've got the latest version of Toast which should work fine with iMovie.
anyway, i think i've made up my mind to try ADVC110 since it's a device that almost everyone in the mac circles is recommending, i guess i cannot go terribly wrong with it - let's hope so. and let's see how i'm going to handle my patience with all those AVI & MPEG conversions :wink: but yes i am happy that i stumbled on it before wasting even more money on something that would probably be not so reliable.
(however it'll take some time to receive it since it looks like it's most practical to order it - or whatever one wants to use - from germany or uk. the prices around here are just ridiculous. us stores would actually be even cheaper but i guess i won't take any chances with the customs again - they have busted me once in this sort of situation & it was a rather crappy thing. :evil:)
i'd be very interested to hear how ACEDVio works, if you decide to go for that.
the variety among standalone recorders is pretty enormous & that's what seem to make them pretty difficult to predict and to judge their performance & especially all the detailed things etc. i've especially been annoyed by the variance i've noticed in recording mode settings, so i am not surprised that you found out something like that PCM thing about that pioneer model. a shame that it seems to have such defect.
and yes i've been wondering about the same thing: where are those wizards hiding? yes i've been wondering about the same thing: where is everyone else? (or have we really been that boring? :-D ) that's why i originally posted this one here anyway.
It looks like the ol' PC is gonna see a reformat here in the coming days... :x
I just checked out the Edius software that comes with the ACEDVio, and it's just too much for me. I'm sure I could figure it out in time, but I'm not certain it will help me. My D2200V produces an amazing picture if I can just get the darn thing to work. And I'm pretty sure I just figured out a little trick to paste in digital audio without re-encoding anything in the DVD authoring process ? and keeping it perfectly in synch! :wink:
I haven't mentioned this, but I have an ATI All-In-Wonder capture card built into my computer. I've had some "ok" results with it, but after using Canopus stuff, there's a huge difference. All my laserdisc transfers were done with the ATI. I guess they're still good, but they could be much better!
I've been toiling at this stuff for over a year and have never completely happy. I honestly didn't mind doing the AVI to MPEG thing at one time. I did it for a few DVD's I made. But after this endless frustration, I'm seriously lacking patience. It's time to get things done here!!! Going direct to MPEG with good results is something I deserve, I think. :oops:
You might as well go for the ADVC110. If others you know say it works, that's a good sign. Unfortunately, I had to figure almost all of this crap out on my own. :roll: Seems you're much newer to the whole conversion process, so you'll likely have the patience for a few extra steps.
This has really been draining me. Like you, I can't stay up every night thinking about this. It's not good for a person. And well, if for some crazy reason the reformat doesn't do the trick... I think that might be a sign to give up! :twisted:
I'm sure by now that anyone just discovering this topic would find it utterly boring unless they were having similar problems. I have to admit I'd much rather being doing the actual capturing than talking about it, but things aren't always that easy.
By the way, what happened with you and customs? I didn't think it was illegal to order products from another country. Definitely strange!
Well, I'm beat. I think I'm going to put on a little Cure and wind down for the night. The days ahead surely could be interesting... :?
i hope you get that D2200V to work in the end. and good luck with that reformat :smt023
so i really made up my mind & i'll actually have my ADVC110 mailed to me soon, just have to wait some because the seller wouldn't take a credit card & foreign money transfers take a few days to clear. i'll try to be all set when it arrives... ;-)
well yes i admit i am just a beginner on these matters, previously i've mostly aimed my energies on these sort of cure activities at some other areas. so there's a lot of learning to be done... :roll:
i've heard some people say good things about ATI before, but i've never known how it compares with canopus - so it's interesting to know.
ok, have to go now, unfortunately work calls... :smt086.
(about that customs incident: it's just that when one orders something outside the european union one has to pay a certain procentage of the value of the stuff both for the customs and for taxes then, and the latter one goes up to 22%. i once ordered a rather big lot of dvd-rs & cd-rs without knowing this & they gave me lots of trouble. because when the customs opened the parcel (at my presence of course) they got really suspicious because of software piracy of course (i could already picture them gringind my disc with a heavy steamroller, you know the way you see them doing it in the far east on the news :smt087). and they really gave me some hard time about it before they let me have it & i had to pay considerable penalties :evil: ). so that's why i keep away from ordering anything too expensive from the us. the value of the shipment is generally stated on the parcel so the customs can always check it and bust you. :( )
[/code]
It sounds like you've been through a lot with the customs incident. I didn't know they took things so seriously! :shock: Seems as if they are trying to discourage you from buying overseas by throwing on a heavy tax. Also funny how they thought a bunch of blank discs were pirated stuff. :-D
I think you made a great choice going with the ADVC110. I just got off the phone with a Canopus tech support guy in a last ditch attempt to fix my issue before reformatting. He gave me a few more ideas, but still no luck. Looks like that dreaded day is nearing... :(
But at the end of our conversation I asked him what the difference was between the ADVC110 and ACEDVio, and he said that they're both basically the same internally, using the same encoder and whatnot. He went on to say that if he had to pick, he'd choose the ADVC110 because the fact that it's an external unit makes it more portable. Moreover, he said that all the ADVC models are basically the same, suggesting that the more expensive ones didn't give much of an advantage. So looks like you're in luck. :D
About the ATI, I just don't think it's that good. It's ok sometimes, but it has some serious flaws. For example, it cannot handle dark scenes very well at all. It adds this extreme dark and dull tint to everything. It has nothing to do with IRE levels and it cannot simply be adjusted by using the color controls. If you try to brighten up the image, it will look washed out. I think these two pictures will prove my point. Both were using default settings to accept an IRE 7.5 input. This is from my Galore VHS tape.
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/ATI.jpg)
Canopus MVR-D2200V
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Canopus.jpg)
You obviously don't have to be an expert to know which one of these is better. ATI can handle brighter scenes ok, but Canopus always looks better. I called ATI to ask about this problem, and they claimed that no one else had ever complained about it. But I've talked to them about lots of things, and it's no secret that they aren't the smartest people. :lol: If you ever download videos off the web, you can always spot ATI captures ? They always look too dark in low-light scenes. And just look at the difference in clarity. It's pretty big! For the record, the 9600 is one of their "high-end" cards, if you can really call it that... :roll:
So I'd assume the ADVC110 will have a very similar look to what my card produces. The only difference of course is that you will have to do the MPEG encoding as a separate process; however, it is a crucial step you must consider. Some MPEG-2 encoders are excellent, and some are not. You could have a perfectly good AVI capture and destroy it by using a substandard program. Unfortunately, I'm not really in a position to offer you advice because I can't even name a program for Mac that does this kind of thing. :oops: I'd really suggest you do some research on this...
Well, I think that's all I got for now. :-)
yes, maybe the customs thought that they had succeeded in getting on the tracks of some major software piracy network... so i surely must have been a complete disappointment to them in the end :-D
hmm, one really starts to wonder that price jump (on the canopus converters from 110/300 up then) if they own tech support says the devices are basically the same?! sounds a bit puzzling.
actually the portability of ADVC110 was one reason i gave up searching for more info on ACEDVio. there's actually someone else around here who might also need it (but for other purposes than the cure... :wink: ) and i gave a little thought about the "rentability" of the device too.
thanks for the comparitive images for ATI/Canopus - there's really a huge difference, i wouldn't have thought it to be that big really! it's really worth paying attention to it.
i guess that maybe some people have praised ATI just because they've simply run no comparisons or because they don't really use for any serious archive purposes at all - i mean it's certainly 'ok' for some daily usage but... (it's a little bit same as this 'anything will do' sort of attitude that i've recently run into a lot: while i've been asking around about the converters i've been told a number of times things like 'well this one's good enough - for you'. in one store they really started to annoy me because they refused to believe that i wouldn't like to settle with just about anything & they thought i was just a bothersome customer who wants to waste their time by asking too many questions - it was a bore, i'll never buy anything from there for sure :wink: . well i can understand if they don't have all info right there when i ask about it but the reply should be more like 'ok we'll find out & be in touch' than 'now could just please take that or leave that, we don't want to bother - bye'. some good service :smt011 . )
anyway, back to the images: about the same sort of distortions with dark/light areas and even more so with colors in general was what started really to annoy me with those standalone recorders that i tried. some models really changed the colors a lot, mostly for unnaturally brighter direction (which the manufacturers themselves of course called 'fantastically & naturally bright colors!' - well... ). and this just couldn't really be adjusted like you said. and if or when the source tape itself had some distortion already (not uncommon with older VHS recordings as we know) then the outcome was pretty weird, i'd say almost completely ruined in some cases.
about that AVI/MPEG conversion/encoding: what has really started to puzzle me now is that none of the mac users i've consulted regarding ADVC110 have mentioned this at all(!). the instructions have simply been 'plug it in -> open iMovie for capturing & pre-editing -> take it to Toast for editing & compression & burn. and to my knowledge iMovie doesn't do any encoding itself (i know because i've used it before & it's a little bit picky on the stuff you can import), so could it be that the encoding isn't needed on mac? :shock: this would sound even too good to be true, i don't know if it's possible. i guess i'll have to try it and see, i'm certainly looking forward to it!
(this thread is really starting to gain some award-winning proportions :smt107 :D )
Seems we have much in common with our video-related endeavors. :D
As for the price jumps, it's quite strange. There is always contradictory information floating around out there. Let me tell you a little story. The Canopus tech guy I talked to the other day about the ADVD110 and the high-priced models also told me that the MVR-D2200V is better than the MPEGPro MVR (my previous card, also called the MVR-1000). So in that case, he was recommending a higher-priced model.
A while back I asked him if I would get better results use something like the ACEDVio to capture an AVI and later convert it versus using the D2200V. He said the 2200 is a very good unit, so there is not really an advantage to going to AVI first. So it's clear that he's not make his recommendations based on profit for the company ? He's just telling what he really thinks. I mentioned this in the Canopus forums, and one of the admins (who seems to know a lot) said that the D2220V and MPEGPro use exactly the same technology and should not be any different. Well, I had already done my own comparisons, and while the MPEGPro is still certainly better than ATI, the color accuracy and clarity was noticeably better on the 2200. I'm not sure that guy knows what he's talking about! :roll:
It's really a pity that so many units offer less than desirable results. I mean, all we're really asking is for it to be the same as our input source. How hard can that really be? I find it strange that VCR's do a really good job of "capturing" accurately from the TV, but the whole analog to digital process is so different. Everything gets mangled... :x
In response to this statement:
open iMovie for capturing & pre-editing -> take it to Toast for editing & compression & burn. and to my knowledge iMovie doesn't do any encoding itself (i know because i've used it before & it's a little bit picky on the stuff you can import), so could it be that the encoding isn't needed on mac?
"Compression and burn" is the key phrase here. The compression mentioned means either going to MPEG-2 or VOB. VOB actually is just MPEG-2 in DVD structure. A little-known fact: If you copy a DVD onto your computer and change the VOB extensions to MPG, you will have MPEG-2 files. I just discovered that a few weeks ago. So it seems this program might be doing this conversion "behind the scenes" without overtly stating it. I've heard the same thing about using Nero to burn DVD's from video files. I've never used it personally, but it seems that it simply imports the file and does "processing", then your final product is ready.
I'm a little wary of this method. I think that a program specifically designed to do conversion would yield higher quality results. There are several good ones I know for PC, but as I said I'm pretty clueless about Mac. However, I did speak to my friend and he told me that QuickTime Pro does this sort of conversion. I know he's right as I now remember seeing this feature, but considering the program only costs about $30, again I have to question the quality. :?
It really is a pain dealing with people are are selling these devices. Some are pushy, others don't really have a clue what they're talking about, and the rest just can't wait to get rid of you. I get this feeling a lot if I call a company to ask about their products. Sometimes it seems like they can't wait to get off the phone with you. While I'm still upset with Canopus about my little issue here, I have to admit that they've been really helpful when I've talked to them. They always do a good job of answering all questions and giving good advice. And oddly enough, it seems both of us want to use their products. :D I guess we can safely say they must be doing something right.
You really struck a few chords with me in your last commentary. "It's good enough for your purposes." In other words, "You're just a dumb amateur, so it doesn't really matter if you get great results or not." Ah!!! It makes me so mad. I just want something good. And sorry if I want it to be correct, not all crappy like most of things out there produce. Is that too much to ask?
And archival purposes ? That's the reason why we want our stuff to be good. ATI has some handy features like a TV tuner so I can easily record stuff. The quality isn't perfect (as I showed you an example), but for a simple TV program that I'll eventually delete, it's good enough. And for brighter stuff, it's actually not bad. But for concerts and music things, which tend to be dark, it really sucks. I feel stupid for spending so much time on all my laserdisc transfers using the ATI and now realizing that I can do much better with the Canopus. And I will end up re-doing them if I can ever get this damn thing to work! :twisted:
You obviously have a good eye for things if you've noticed all these differences. Apparently a lot of people don't, and they keep buying up all the crap that these companies are putting out, and sometimes making poor recommendations to others... :(
I think we're getting close to what we want. In your case, you just need to find the right software for MPEG conversion and DVD creation. Maybe Toast is good after all, I don't know. I guess you'll see...
For me, it looks like REFORMAT is the missing element. So much fun, I'm surprised I haven't started already! :smt120
An even more revealing comparison, I think. Bet ya can't guess which is which! :lol:
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Mint%20ATI.jpg)
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Mint%20Canopus.jpg)
uuh that was really hard to guess which one was which! :wink: quite a difference once again.
oh yes, the attitude of some people selling hardware/software... it's simply amazing :shock: . because you go in there prepared to pay considerable amounts of hard-earned cash and still they don't even seem to bother with you. one wonders how they can keep their jobs sometimes... if i did my job like that i'd be laid off in a minute! and if you start asking about things in more detail, some of them almost panic or something and start throwing some pretty weird jargon at you - i'm sure they don't even understand themselves what they are saying sometimes... :smt101 when i was searching for a suitable standalone recorder (which didn't turn out to be a success as we know) i always asked to see the manuals for every model: now you wouldn't believe how hard even such a simple thing was! most sellers were pretty annoyed by this, and some sellers refused it completely with 'no, we don't have any copies for display'. so they were actually telling me that i have to buy the device first to be able to just go through the manual! and at the same time they were unable to answer my questions about the device, so there was every reason for me asking to see the manual...
but your experience with Canopus' support is reassuring - it's good to know they take their job seriously & don't seem to leave people in trouble.
oh yes, what is it that can be so complicated in analog -> digital transfers? beats me. because after all these problems lately i've noticed that i've almost started to love my VCR again! i used to think it's a complete dinosaur and ready for museum, but it still beats many of it's digital counterparts, or at least isn't that far behind in every respect.
but back to the issue:
i guess i'll try first how this "behind the scenes" conversion with toast turns out. because i'm pretty sure there is such a built-in feature available. i'm not sure if it's good enough, but it might be worth checking out. i talked to this guy on our local mac forum who's done quite a lot of work with the ADVC110/iMovie/Toast combination, and he hadn't ever used anything extra for conversion. and he told me he had done some 'serious archiving' as he called it - well of course one can never be sure if that 'archiving' meant what i think it means, but if it does then it cannot be totally crap. at least i want to see the outcome first before i make any further moves. i'm aware that Quicktime Pro does this sort of conversions, i've actually thought about that too, but if i had to guess which one's better then i'd put my money on Toast at the moment... but well it remains to be seen.
by the way, i happen know some people who work at the national finnish broadcasting company (YLE) for the tv. now you can imagine that i have been toying with the idea that they could slip me in to the YLE studios some night with my tapes... i'd say that would produce some pretty per-fect transfers...! but unfortunately it won't happen, since they are not allowed to use studio time like that (even for their own projects) & considering the tightness of their security i would be busted in a second... :oops:
(how's the reformatting going? :smt120 )
Well... I decided to exhaust every single option remaining before I go ahead with the reformat. I just wasted too many hours that I could have used to finish up my backups!
I updated my BIOS and some other settings as well. Some spooky stuff, I tell you. If you don't do it exactly right, you can do some severe damage to your machine. And it's not just as simple as reformatting to fix it. In that respect, I was fortunate. But as for the MVR, the problem has gotten worse. That seems to happen the more I fiddle around with it. Now I cannot even open the capture program. It simply says "Failed to initialize capture device." It's never been THAT bad!
When I reformat I'm going to go once step further and write my hard drive to zeroes using gwscan. That way there will be NOTHING on the drive when I load up Windows again. The evil little Canopus bugs won't stand a chance! :lol: And if that still doesn't work, it's either find a new unit (which I don't want to do), or give up... :cry:
Back to your point about the stupid salespeople. It's true that they often have no clue what they're talking about, and when you throw them a curveball, they'll just change the subject and start babbling some nonsense. They think they're so smart, but you just know they're full of it! :twisted: After all, it shouldn't matter for "us" because anything is suited to "our purposes". :roll:
There is something about analog to digital conversion that is very tricky. Someone tried to explain it to me once, but I don't remember very well now. It basically came down to the fact that it's a rather complicated process and that it's easy for things to get messed up along the way. I've been searching the net for more info on Apple encoders, and it's quite vague. I'd bet that Final Cut Pro's encoder is among the best, but as you've said it's not exactly cheap. But I might have a solution for you in the works! :wink:
That is quite a tease about knowing someone who works in broadcasting. I'm sure that gear could easily produce the desired results, but places tend to be fussy when it comes to using things for personal use. Some of that gear is very, very expensive. I heard that professional movie studios use capture devices worth about $50,000. Totally insane!
Actually, the Canopus rep once told me that a lot of broadcast stations use the MVR-D2200 to archive their footage. If that's true, my unit can't be all that bad. I'm really pleased with the results, but as we know all too well, the stupid thing doesn't work!!! :x
With all this effort I've been putting toward my PC all night, I really thought I might have a chance of getting the Canopus up and running, but quite the contrary.
The dreaded day is coming soon... And more surely than ever! :smt085
Happy New Year's, Marika. :-D
Well, the verdict's been in for a couple days now. I wrote zerores to my hard drive, reformatted it, and reloaded Windows. MPEG Station (the Canopus capture program) was one of the first things I loaded up. I was so excited. Ran it for about 5 seconds... CRASH! :smt091
Also, it wouldn't allow me to select certain settings. The same problems as before. So having nothing to lose, I reformatted and reloaded again. Tried it... Nope! I noticed I made a stupid error in loading Windows (somehow H became my primary drive, haha). So I reloaded it for a third time. They say third time's a charm, right? Not this time!
What a waste of time. And a lot of unneeded stress too. I've got my PC back to my liking, but there's been no performance gain or anything positive to come out of it. Just a big waste.
I'm really about to give up on Canopus. As I've mentioned, I've been fussing around with this kind of thing too long to do AVI captures and more manual processing, conversion, etc. I'm out of patience. I suppose I could cut down on eating or something and try the MVR-D4000 model, but it seems to be more than I need. But most of all, I'm very upset with Canopus. It's simply a matter of poor programming on their behalf. I don't think I mentioned that I was able to succesfully make a capture with a different software program of theirs. The only problem is that it doesn't provide any access to the good processing features! :(
I'm really thinking about getting the Pioneer 530 standalone model, but direct to computer is something I've always wanted. Yet it seems I've had no luck with that after trying about 5 or so different things over the course of a year. I'll have to think about this one a bit. I don't think I'm ready to give up after all. :wink:
So... How is Canopus treating YOU? 8)
happy new year to you too caley! :D
i almost can't believe what you told :shock: all that trouble & still the canopus doesn't work! oh i can believe you must be really disappointed with them, i've always thought them to be a trusty brand!
so back to standalones... that pioneer model is probably a very good one, actually a couple of people in this digital video forum have recommended just it to me too, although i'm totally wrong person to recommend any standalone recorders to anyone after my experiences with them :wink: but i also really understand what you meant by wanting to stick direct to computer transfers, because that's what i too have been wanting to do - it's surely a pain sometimes (and even lots of it! :smt075 :wink: ). because doing it with computer can make it all so complicated as we have seen..., but then again IF one would get it all to work i believe it would give so much more control over things which would be just awesome...
i really hope you find a way to solve all that, since giving up shouldn't be a real option, that would be sad & bad - but to be honest i probably might have given up already at some point & settled with some possibly mediocre standalone recorder without this conversation we've been having here, so i'm really annoyed at myself that i have no concrete ideas to offer here in return since i'm simply far too inexperienced :(
it really bothers me
and how is canopus performing here on the other side of the atlantic? i've just made the first tests with my ADVC110 today: i did have some weird trouble in capturing the audio at first (it looks like it was something that just got fixed by itself somehow simply by turning the devide on and off a couple of times, i felt so stupid because of that!). now it seems to work perfectly with iMovie. and the quality of the DV files that they togetherproduce is really nice, much better than the quality in the corresponding clips that i've made with a standalone unit - BUT as we know the trick is how to keep that quality so there's really no room for any loud hoorays yet :?
(+ it's clear that i really have to get is a program that does a proper noise reduction like you said)
and the rate that the capturing "eats" the space on my hard drive... it's really a hungry thing as we know :wink: i have a lousy 55 GB internal hard drive which is already bursting all the time so i'm a bit stuck at the moment. i ordered a new 250 GB external drive before christmas and i was expecting it to be here now when i get back from holidays: what i got was an email telling me that they have some delivery problems & it might still take 2-4 weeks to arrive! :evil: that was surely a disappointment, and i really have to start looking for it from somewhere else, since i cannot wait that long. but of course one can get those easily from many sellers so it's just a small delay - but an annoying one still...
and last but not least, something that might be news but i'm not sure yet if it's going to be: i've managed to download a couple of versions for both Final cut pro and Dvd studio pro + even something that should be a complete(?) Final cut studio 5 package :shock:. due to my lack of space on hard drive i haven't been able to test them yet, so i'm not yet sure if they work/how complete versions they might be (the entire Final cut studio 5 needs an impressive 29,9 GB for installation only :roll: ). i'm also a bit afraid that even if they do well i might have a graphics card problem anyway since i don't have G5 but only G4 ibook. let's see... anyway, i also downloaded a couple of older versions (3 and 4) of Dvd studio pro for testing/as backups if the Final cut studio pro lets me down as i fear it might do - i'll do some heavy cleaning on my hard drive for clearing up some space & start installing some of these after i've written this.
which reminds me that i really have to find the manuals too from somewhere... :smt087
(i really wish i would have some luck with these programs now - purely because that Final cut studio 5 package took me a mighty 14 hours to download :shock: and it couldn't even be done by leaving the computer running overnight or something like that because it was an awfully unstable connection that had to be watched practically all the time. so i'd hate it to turn into nothing now...)
Well for one, don't feel about about not being able to give advice on my Canopus issue. Even three tech support people and the entire Canopus forum community have been unable to help me! :oops: It seems troubles like these have followed me all my life. I must be a difficult person!
I've lost some respect for Canopus, but you'll probably end up having better luck than me. I've had that feeling all along. Out of sheer curiosity, I am going to call Canopus tomorrow and ask some questions about the MVR-D4000. I think it's way overpriced, and I also suspect it may not be as high quality as the 2200. It also does on-the-fly DivX encoding, so I feel it might be a good all-in-one tool, but not particularly high quality for individual applications. Just a suspicion by reading the info on their page...
Maybe I'm wrong, but I honestly can't really afford that (and don't want to!). I think the 530 would be great if the quality is really good. I think it has all the features I want, except for PCM audio in all formats. That was a major downer for me, but I just got to realizing that although Canopus allows for PCM recording, it doesn't support digital audio input, which I would want to do for laserdisc. Therefore I would have to edit in the audio track manually afterwards. In sum, I would have to do this anyway, so I guess the Canopus never really had the advantage there.
Keeping everything on the computer would be great, but it's starting to seem unrealistic with my needs. I guess it's something I could get used to. The hunt for something new shall begin tomorrow! :?
I forgot to respond to your statement:
it looks like the editing process for mac can be a bit different than for pc, at least with some software combinations. if iMovie is used for capturing/editing, then everything you want to do editing-wise has to be
done before the MPEG-2 encoding, and the encoding takes place just before the burning process.
No, I think we must have been confusing each other. You are absolutely correct, and that's what I was trying to say. :lol: That's what I liked about the MVR-D2200. It did some great pre-processing (noise reduction, IRE correction) while it was capturing, thereby eliminating the need to do it afterwards. Re-encoding MPEG video is not an ideal thing!
That's where the cheap MPEG capture cards fall short. They don't have noise reduction, etc., so the only way to clean the video up is to re-encode the video. That's not something you want to do if you're going for top quality. Well, maybe it would be ok for "our purposes". :smt042
Ah, the other thing I hate about AVI captures ? the huge file size. I have big hard drives, but I always seem to keep them filled. AVI's can really start to eat them up, espcially if you have "before" and "after" ones due to filtering. Then if you want to make permanent backups of the original, you would have to make split archive files on multiple DVD's. Too much work for me! :roll:
I think you might be better off just getting bigger internal drives. I don't know the speed requirements of the ACEDVio, but external drives are always slow by comparison. ACEDVio uses hardware encoding (meaning that the unit itself does the work), so I'm asssuming the pull on the hard drive would be minimal. In my experience, internal drives also tend to be cheaper.
If you don't mind the noise, I don't think 400 GB internals aren't very expensive anymore. But for me, too loud! I've got a couple whisper-quiet 250 GB internals, but sometimes I still wish I had more space! It's crazy, I know. :roll:
I really wish you luck with those programs. Some things on P2P networks are fake, and it's a real pain. Nearly 30 gigs? Wow! I wish you some big luck on that one. :-D For VHS, noise reduction is a must. If you can get these "deluxe" programs going, you should have no problems there (providing you can figure them out). :wink: Find a good MPEG converter, and I think you're about set.
I'm also curious, what do you think of the color quality of the ACEDVio? Does it look natural to you? That would be a big plus for me. There are color correction filters you can apply, but of course this is more work and hassle. Best to have things right from the start!
I didn't know you had an older Mac system, so I wonder if the new Final Cut Pro will work as you mentioned. I don't know anything about Mac, so I can't say too much. But I think version 4 would be plenty good if you can't get 5 to work.
I really hope you can work things out. Back to the drawing board for me... :x
hmm of course i know i couldn't possibly have anything to add if the whole canopus community is speechless with your problem - silly me. i guess one just sometimes hopes that one could do something else than just stand and stare, if you know what i mean :( :wink:
well i can say that every other minute i do feel like i should have settled with some standalone anyway, and that this is all completele madness since i don't really know how everything is going to turn out. but i guess for me 'computer-only' has been something that i've wanted to try for some time already, so even if it fails then at least i bothered to try it. even in the worst case - which would be sticking to the iMovie/Toast combination - i still think the results would still be somewhat better in many respects than what i was able to produce with my old standalone (even with the best one i had). and i might be just a stubborn idiot but there's simply something that i like in the 'computer'only' idea/notion, so i guess i can even happily live with the huge AVI files if i just don't have to back to where i started from (you can say that i'm just saying this bbecause now i have to live with them ha ha :smt042 )
otherwise i really don't have too much to tell yet (it looks like there's probably some portion of Final cut pro that needs to be installed for the capturing to work out, i just really don't know what it is. or then i'm just missing something else... + the noise reduction gives me hard time, since it strangely looks like the thing called 'noise reduction' is associated with sound only(?)... in any case it looks like i'll be spending another night (x100) reading the manuals then :smt108 ). so it's a bit complicated at the moment.
i really became curious & took a quick look on MVR-D4000 on the canopus site: it looks certainly impressive, but so does the price... :shock: it's really hard to make yourself 100% comfortable (or even 80% or so) if one hasn't got some magical unlimited funds to use... hmmm i wish the canopus guys would have some sudden brain disorder tomorrow and give it to you with half a price :wink:
about the technical specs on Final cut studio 5 (it's also here if you want to take a look:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/specs.html)
so it just was my own mistake, i looked to it a bit more carefully & actually it seems like my G4 should do well enough, it's just the graphics card that might give me hard time. my G4 is pretty new, it has a 1.42 GHz processor and the latest version of OS X Tiger operating system, so that should be fine (only PowerMacs have G5 at the moment and i would have been really surprised if that would be a minimum requirement for Final cut studio).
i was thinking about it whether i should get internal drive, like you said it might have saved some money too. but i'd really need a portable drive anyway because i'd really need a drive that could be used on both my mac & pc if i needed to so i decided to settle on external (it's a LaCie 250 GB Extreme Firewire 800/400/USB 2.0). i was worried whether it would be too slow for my purposes but got some recommendations fro that specific one from a couple of people who said they've used it a lot with video editing (together with Final cut studio) and it performs well - so i just have to hope that i wasn't fooled. that really should be the last thing to invest right now, unfortunately i'm really running out of euros/dollars/pounds/yen/you name it here... :(
you asked about the colors of ACEDVio (i guess you meant the colors with ADVC 110 and not ACEDVio?): actually among the first things that i was happy to notice was that the ADVC110 colors seem to be very much ok - i have different sorts of test clips with four different standalone models & the canopus seems to beat the most if not all of them so far. this was really a relief for me since the color distortions was one of the major pains i use to have with standalones! :D
(i know i shouldn't even think about it now because i have absolutely no more money to spend on any more hardware, but it's really tempting to think how much better a really top class vcr player would possibly still make it - my vcr isn not at all bad & it's pretty new too but still ... )
the best of luck with your search, i hope the drawing board isn't needed for long...
(+ once again thanks for that package, it was really nice to visit berlin wuhlheide today... :smt035 )
Just a few quick notes while I catch up on some work here. I really can't express how much time I've wasted with these video issues. Probably days and days if you put it all together, and with no results! :cry:
Yes, I'm well aware that I'm calling your unit by the wrong name. I was going to edit my post, but then you replied. ACEDVio is stuck in my mind for some reason!
After much frustration, I think I've figured out how to use Edius. I was playing around with the filters. I simply wanted to find a good noise reduction tool, and no luck at all! I did however find a filter that can add noise to the picture and another to make it blurry. Oh, and one that makes the picture green. So I guess you could say I know how to make my videos crappier with this software! :oops:
What are the people who design this stuff thinking? I definitely need to call Canopus tomorrow and discuss many things with them! :!:
now i bet you are going "love" this:
just finished an simply-too-many-hours long session with Final cut pro 4 and ADVC110, and just guess what the outcome was? yes: CRASH! so nice... everything seemed to behave very well just as long as i didn't try capturing anything with FCP. i thought i did everything right as best i could for the capture, i didn't have too much space on my hard drive but surely enough for some test clips (about 10 GB at least). before i started the program also confirmed me that this would be enough for about 30 minutes, but what happened then was that two seconds after clicking 'import' i got a message that my hard drive is full & then it all froze! :( somehow it always managed to produce an appr. 10 GB file in a few seconds and after that: crash... after the first crash i did some corrections because i thought i knew what i did wrong the first time but that didn't help at all - actually it was almost on the contrary, since for a moment i got my computer really messed up :smt087
well, maybe it would have been all too easy if it had worked just like that, and i was of course prepared that things might go wrong - simply because we know what the origins of my FCP were, but still it was a disappointment. i'll try to look for some answers to this but i'm afraid that i have to ditch at least that particular copy of FCP and maybe try to get another one...
so far Dvd studio pro 3 still looks ok, but i am really annoyed if i cannot get FCP to work since i cannot use the Dvd studio pro's MPEG-2 encoder without FCP :cry: :smt090
well i'll look into all this again tomorrow, right now i am a bit too annoyed to continue (yes you're absolutely right: because one could spend all these ours wasted on this struggle for instance on simply enjoying the very tapes that one is trying to figure out how to transfer... it just makes no sense at all sometimes...)
about limewire in general: yes there're so much fakes etc around (just guess how many of the serial #/password files i downloaded were... hmmm... let's say something completely different :roll: ) but what comes to the fear of viruses, i guess mac is again a blessing since one really hasn't have to worry about that (at least not yet & i hope it would stay so). it looks like the people who design viruses really aim their effort on microsoft or then there's simply something else in the systems that just make pcs much more preferable.
(hey those Edius' filters sound really revolutionary! they should get an award or something! :wink: )
well decided to come back with some good news: got FCP capturing working after all after some more work :D
now it runs beautifully with the canopus unit BUT: strangely the capture i made earlier with my iMovie HD looks better than the one i get with FCP 4! while i was wondering this i only just completely realized something that i should have noticed in the beginning, which is that files captured with iMovie are really encoded differently than those captured with FCP (the first one uses DV, the latter one Quicktime). so this is why i cannot for instance open my iMovie HD projects in FCP 4, but i need an update to FCP 4.5 HD at least to be able to do that. and even if i didn't need the iMovie/FCP compatibility i still really wouldn't mind the extra quality that HD might bring - so i guess it's back to limewire.... ppfff! :smt108
but at least i've gotten somewhere now (maybe?).
(about the noise reduction filters: i went through the rather impressive & endless lists of FCP video filters a couple of times only to notice that no video noise reduction was included... the one called 'noise reduction filter' is really for audio only. i thought this to be totally strange at first but then i found out that the video noise filter does exist but it's included with the Compressor application, not with the main body of FCP - so it is there for sure.)
Ahhh... I'm so exhausted now, so I need to keep this short before I fall asleep. Should I be surprised that both of us continue to encounter problems in our endeavors? I'm not so sure. I think I'm permanently branded for bad luck, but I just hope it's only beginner's bad luck for you! And it was strange to hear that you discovered you were capturing in MOV format. That's terrible! :oops:
The only format you ever want to capture with the ADVC110 is the Canopus DV codec. That's what the unit's designed for, and anything else will not take full advantage of the "special" Canopus technology. Believe me, it's a bit hard to for me to say positive things about Canopus at the moment. :oops:
Canopus is still "on holiday", so I have yet to speak with anyone. They reopen tomorrow, so let's see what lies ahead. However, I did give Pioneer a call, and wow, they are definitely a bunch of geniuses. First of all, the guy seemed boggled when I mentioned the model number of the DVD player. Then I asked him about the audio formats it records in. He said, "It uses 2-channel stereo." I said "Yes, but what format?" ... "Well, it's 2-channel stereo." I was already getting agitated. I told him I read that it generally uses Dolby Digital except in the "fine" mode. He said, "No, I can assure you that it does not record to Dolby Digital; however, it can play Dolby streams."
I then explained to him how I had just read the manual and I was sure that he was wrong. He then said, "Well, I don't doubt you." Arrghh. :x So I knew this was going to be fruitless. My forthcoming question would not be answered. "So... What bitrate does it record in?" A long pause ?"Bitrate? Please hold." 5 minutes later... " I wasn't able to find that information, but I see here that it records in 2-channel stereo, just look on page 9". I asked him if there was anyone else I could speak to that knew more than him. He replied, "There are other representatives I can transfer you to, but I can't guarantee they will provide you with a satisfactory answer." I was tired of waiting and my hopes of getting my answer were low, so I just politely told him no thank you.
I made a post on videohelp.com, and someone confirmed to me that the audio bitrate is 256 kbps for Dolby Digital. Was that so hard??? What a great first impression from Pioneer! :roll: I don't know though, I still have a good feeling about the unit itself. I'm used to people being ignorant about everything, and it seems you've had much of the same experience. I'm really leaning towards giving it a try. And hey, I can always take it back!
As for your problems, you're still a lot earlier in the game compared to me. I'd just keep trying new programs or versions, and hopefully something will click. Don't let me bring your confidence down. I'm prone to disaster with these things, so don't confuse that with your own situations :-D
Maybe you will have some good luck between now and the next time we speak. But I can't stay awake any longer. It's been a LONG day. :smt104
As always, best of luck. But maybe I'm not the right person to be offering that. :?
hooray for those pioneer geniuses! :roll: such amazing professionality!
it's crazy: either you get that sort of nonsense & i don't knows from people who SHOULD know what they are selling or then you are being told off like i just was on the Apple discussion forum (just as a was starting to think it's a good forum - now i think they s*ck). i asked about the possible reasons behind the quality differences i've noticed on my iMovie & FCP captures and about the actual capturing formats and i was literally being told 'now ilsten closely: this program is not for diletanttes' & 'this program demands greater understanding!', all in CAPITAL LETTERS. geez, thanks a lot... but oh it was all my fault because forgot to stick to some solutions meant for "our purposes" :smt082
it's crazy because one knows that there are people who clearly could give me some advice but i'm somehow stepping on their shoes at the same time - hmm i guess they must have gotten all their knowledge as a birth-right then :evil:
but back to the facts: about the capturing format in FCP, i've found out a few things (now just simply skip this mac-section if it bores you! :wink: ). anyway, iMovie captures in DV and FCP does basically the same thing BUT it takes the DV stream and separates the audio and video into individual streams in real time. so it doesn't capture in .mov as i thought (which would have been crazy for a program like that really), but the decrease in video quality that i noticed may be caused by a bunch of other things: first of all, separating the streams is a rather heavy operation and it could be a reason why my G4 cannot actually keep up all the time, causing it to crash with certain settings, and it might also start dropping frames etc (this is very annoying since if one looks at the actual technical requirements of FCP by Apple then my computer should perform well enough, but the reality might once again be a bit too different...) .
but there are other possible explanations too: it could also be that what i see on my computer screen isn't exactly what i get in capture since i see only the playback image of the capture - if the computer's performance abilities are on the limit the quality of the playback can be lowered in favor of other things. so it's maybe better to keep the playback in max. average in order to get the best results - and then i'd actually need another monitor hooked to the converter to monitor the actual incoming video/audio stream in real time... and that's somthing that i don't have at the moment, and even my TV is not up to the task since it's way too old unfortunately.
so it's all rather complicated and i think i just have to do some test discs, both short and long ones to see how it does. and since my new external drive seems to be delayed forever (thanks to mehappening to buy it from a seller who seems to be unable to deliver what he promises) i can do nothing at the moment.
but in any case i still fear that what i said earlier about FCP being unnecessarily heavy tool for what i'm doing might be true. and this all unfortunately predicts bad for my still uninstalled Final Cut Studio 5 package - if it doesn't have a possibility to some sort of partial installation only then i probably won't be able to run it without problems (but i also read a few reports that apple's old version of the FCP Compressor is better than the new one - so maybe it's not a problem as long as my computer manages to keep up with the old one...)
but some good points/finds about FCP too:
- i did some short test clips with FCP's QuicktimeMPEG-2 encoder and i think it looks very good. and luckily i've also found a way to import my iMovie captures straight to FCP (actually the manual said that it won't work but it looks like one can override it). so if FCP fails me as a capturing program i could probably do the capturing with iMovie and still be able to use FCP in editing & take advantage of the MPEG-2 encoder. the only drawback is that this adds one more step in the chain & makes the already pretty long process even longer... :smt085
i'll just have to try to stick with what i have now and make the best of it somehow i guess.
anyway i am continually taking too much of your precious time with this crazy thread! :D (sorry :roll: )
i hope you are feeling better :smt006 talk to you again
I'm much more rested now, thank you. I called Canopus today. Figuring it would do no good to further talk to the tech department, I called the sales line instead. Sometimes the hold times for support can be excruciating! And there's this British guy who has this schpiel about Edius. I think I've heard it about 1,000 times, no exaggeration. It could drive me to kill someone, I think. :smt096 So anyway, I opted to call sales and got through right away. I talked to a really nice guy who I've spoken with several times before. He's quite smart, and I'm sure he would make a good tech support representaive. He informed me that the MVR-D4000 (the "million dollar machine") does not do noise reduction or record in uncompressed PCM audio. Phew, I was afraid I was going to go into debt just because my stupid D2200 didn't work. So probably a good thing in the full scope of things.
I then brought up the question about noise reduction in Edius. He said that it "should be in there". Apparently he only works with DV material, so noise is never an issue for him. I encouraged him to look again, and surely enough it wasn't there. He couldn't believe it either. I told him I was considering an AVI card, but I didn't like the idea of having to edit, then create a new AVI, and finally make my MPEG. Too much work for a person who has spent too much accomplishing nothing over the months! :(
He said, "Have you considered the ADVC-300? It has noise reduction." "No kidding?" I said. He assured me that it's true, and that it also has a built-in time base corrector (TBC). I don't think I've brought that up here. A TBC can do wonderful things, such as stabilizing the picture picture and breaking copyright protection. There was one built into both my MVR-D2200 and MPEG Pro units, and I didn't want to part with this feature. I actually own an expensive standalone TBC, but my experiments show that it degrades the picture a bit. I think this is because it's just another loop in the signal chain (more cables, etc.) I've been holding on to it for a while, not knowing what to do with it. But once I'm sure I don't need it, I'd love to sell it. I've spent way too much money on everything! :oops:
So... Built-in noise reduction and a digital time base corrector? This is too good to be true, right? After all, don't the ADVC's require that another card be in your PC? No! That was an older setup, he explained, and I simply need to connect it to a firewire port. Good thing I bought a firewire card a few months back. :wink:
And to top it off, it can be toggled to select between IRE 0 and 7.5 black levels. This isn't something you need to worry about unless you start working with American tapes, but it's important for my purposes. What does this all boil down to? I can capture a DV AVI and NOT have to edit it. This saves me from creating another big file and a lot of time as well. All I have to do is convert it to MPEG-2 and import it into my trusty authoring program. Been there, done that. 8)
This is the MPEG-2 converter I plan to use:
http://www.visiblelight.com/mall/productview.aspx?pid=9
Nice price, eh? Well, let's just say that I got the "LimeWire discount" on this one. :lol: A lot of studios use this, and it is incredibly fast. The only thing is that I seldom had a use for it. It only converts AVI and MOV, so on occasion I used it for DivX conversion. I tried using it with some of ATI AVI captures, but we all know about ATI... :roll:
I'm pretty sure I can record with the digital input on my sound card when capturing laserdisc too. Another step and hassle saved. And the captured audio is always uncompressed, so I can do as I choose with it at a later time, not what format the recorder tells me it has to be in!
To sum up my side of this, I just sent back my MVR-D2200 today, and I'm ordering the ADVC-300 tomorrow. I think I may have found my solution. The only thing is... Will it work??? There's no reason it shouldn't, but you know how things go for me. :smt011 And you know, I was soooo close to deciding on the Pioneer standalone. But as you know, I'd like to stay in the computer domain if possible. Maybe it is possible after all!
Well, I hope you enjoyed my little PC-related rant there. I've also got to thinking that it does seem a bit pointless to do all this conversion when we simply could watch the tapes. Of course there are advantages to having everything on a nice shiny little disc, but where does one draw the line? I can't count how many times I've watched some of my videos while trying to make a good capture, especially my laserdiscs. Show, Orange, Play Out... I really haven't had the desire to watch them in months. I think I've seen them enough to last a lifetime. Hopefully my attitude will change if I can get a system going and make better versions. As I've suggested, my Play Out transfer isn't really that bad, but there are flaws, and I'm perfectionist!
Back to your setup... I think I would recommend making an exchange for the ADVC-300. It would probably save you a lot of hassle in the long run. I know it's more expensive, but it might solve some problems. A personal preference, I guess. It's not really my position to tell you, "Hey, spend more money."
About your crashing issues, I'm rather puzzled. I don't see how "splitting" the audio and video streams would cause more strain. I'm not actually sure there is any so-called splitting going on. The streams are coming in independently, and I believe it's just a capture program that combines them. If anything, I think putting them together would cause more strain. And I don't think you need a really fast computer to be doing the capturing. The ADVC unit uses a hardware chip that does the encoding, so the strain should be on the box itself, and not the computer. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it something doesn't seem quite right.
Previewing can pull on the CPU, so that's something to consider. With the programs I've used, I would always disable the preview/overlay mode when possible. No point it taking any chances. Of course you need to make sure everything is set up and adjusted correctly before you turn it off! Unfortunately, I don't know how your Apple stuff works, so I fear I may not be of great help here. I'd just keep on trying different things. :oops:
I've been meaning to ask you this, but don't you actually have a PC? I recall you saying the only thing holding you back is the lack of a monitor. Perhaps you could make use of your PC for video tasks after all (provided you could see what you were doing, haha). I can't remember if there was another reason this wouldn't work...
But the last part of what you just said sounds promising. If you can at least make partial use of the various programs and trick it when necessary (I know what you mean), maybe there is a workable solution. Again, sorry if I haven't been very helpful. The last time I worked on a Mac (many years ago) I couldn't even figure out how to use the recycle bin. I got frustrated and haven't touched one since!
It will be interesting to see what pans out for the both of us in the next days... For me, it will be one of the following:
:smt041
:smt073
good news that you found out that about canopus ADVC300! :D :D
and just when i was secretly hoping that i would find the greatest VHS->DVD transfer method in the universe & so i could proudly just recommend you to get a Mac :wink: :wink: :wink:
a joke... but i have to say that now you've made me reeeeally nervous... :( :? :smt087
i mean all that picture enhancement info :shock: now i really can't believe i missed it/had somehow completely forgotten it - i guess i must have dismissed ADVC300 in the very early stage simply because of it's price (well it's about double compared to ADVC110), and that i have more or less intentionally tried to go along the lines of 'basic converter-fancy capturing/editing software' idea so far. but now i'm really starting to sweat with fear that it should've been the other way round: to get a more advanced converter like ADVC300 & save the strain to the computer by maybe using some lighter software... oh no...
this noise reduction thing actually makes me doubly nervous now, because like i said i should have found that included on FCP's Compressor filters. it should be there i know, but the Compressor's filter list is actually completely empty on my "Limewire purchased" FCP... now i thought i probably just forgot to install something but looks like the filters are really missing... surely something to think(panic?) about... :smt120
i became curious & checked the Canopus site for ADVC300's technical specs just a minute ago to see what it might have for me. i found out that it actually doesn't say if it's compatible with iMovie like ADVC110 is. so i might still be forced to use FCP - which causes me some trouble as we know. i actually emailed Canopus support a question about this (god it's a curse to live where i live in the situations like this: the closest they have to finland is UK... :( so i don't know when or if i get answered...).
anyway, the noise reduction & TBC are really built-in, hardware features? did the canopus guy you talked to give you more info about what's left to the picture enhancement CD-ROM that comes with the package then? this is probably a stupid question but i've just gotten a bit careful of all this sort of things because i've unfortunately found out that in some cases the CD-ROMs are often Windows only and Mac users must try and purchase the same software by their own, the best they can... sometimes this happens even when the device itself has been stated as 'Mac compatible' like here - the same doesn't always apply to the software. now i'm not saying this is how it is with Canopus but i'd like to be sure before i even start imagining planning anything further.
hmmm, in any case i cannot help feeling that i've made nothing but bad choices all along so far. i already wasted too much time & money on hassling with those standalones alone, now i might be stuck with a possibly unideal converter(?)... :cry: but i guess that's the way it goes like you said...
about PCs: any rant about them is always enjoyable for sure :wink: and of course i don't expect you to find the answers for me so no worries if you have no tips for mac to share - in any case i find this conversation very useful.
and switching my iBook to my old PC? well the only thing holding me back was not the fact that i funnily don't still have a monitor ha ha (but that was the reason why i couldn't print you the video list sooner some time ago). that computer is simply not up to the task here - even thinking about starting to update it (both hardware and software) for this makes me see an endless flow of 100 Euro bills flying by my eyes, because that computer is really a way too much in a stone-age for any serious usage here (now you would laugh if i gave you the specs on it so i'll save you ha ha ;-)). and to be honest i really want to stick to my faithful mac... ;-) :wink:
finally, about the possible reasons behind my iBook's freezing problems with FCP: after so more thought i actually agree with you now that it shouldn't be the stream separation that causes too much strain - after some more conversation with the guy who suggested it i think he's actually a big jerk so i probably never should have listened to him in the first place :smt042 but there's a new reason that i've thought of which is simply connected to the current 'capture now' presets of FCP and the amount of available disc space on my hard drive: it looks like FCP clearly works best when one uses DV cam with timecode addressable tape (that's what it was designed for i guess): with that the system knows exactly how much stuff it needs to capture & how much space is needed. since this capturing option cannot be used with analog VHS transfers, the system is more strained because it doesn't always know how much disc space is going to be needed and keeps searching for more all the time. there's an option where you can pre-program the capture-time which should ease the strain on the system. it's an option that i only just found (= stupid me, i should have thought of that before :smt115 ). i haven't had time to check it yet but i believe(hope?) it'll make some difference.
(locating the recycle-bin on MAC OS 8) it's funny because i've actually always thought that the operating system on Mac is much easier and more user-friendly than Windows... but well i guess it's a personal preference of course)
now i will go and sweat some more with fear... maybe the probable option left for me at the present is to
:smt073
Sorry to hear you're getting nervous. I know the feeling, but in the last few weeks/months I think I've become numb. I'm so used to disappointment. When I reformatted my computer and reinstalled the MVR-D2200V.... I opened the program up and started it, and of course it crashed immediately. I just laughed and laughed. I knew it was going to happen. I really was expecting it. Not to say I'm happy about it, but you just get to that point where it doesn't seem to matter anymore...
But for now, I'm quite happy again with the prospect of success. I'm quite afraid for some reason my system won't like this one either, but as it's a completely different type thing. And to answer your questions... Yes, the card itself is capable of doing noise reduction and time base correction during the capture. This can all be adjusted with the Picture Controller software that comes with the device. And I always make sure to ask them now, "Does it work with Mac?" They said it definitely does. The ADVC-300 is the only AVI card they make that does these sort of pre-filterning processes. Even the "out of this world" priced 1000 and 2000 models can't do this. Again, I think it's crazy Canopus logic at work there, but I'm not going to complain. The salesperson insisted that the quality of these super expensive models is really no better than the 100-300 range. Rather, it's the strange connectors and outputs that make these units have that command such a high price. I don't completely understand it, but I'm not going to complain about saving money and getting the best thing! I think the true greedy salesman would say, "Oh yeah, there's a huge difference with the ADVC-9000000 (or whatever it is). It doesn't have any special features, but you won't need them, especially for your purposes. It's way better 110 or 300." I can almost picture it. Can't you? :smt013
So apparently (well, obviously), there are some big advantages to the 300 after all. This was contrary to what one of the tech guys said before. He made no reference to the addition of onboard effects. I guess this one isn't his specialty. So what was explained to me is: The Picture Controller can set up all the main parameters (color, noise reduction, Y/C separation, auto-gain, and some other things), and then you can still use any other capture device of your choise, and these settings will be retained during capture. I couldn't believe it, but he assured me it was true. I honestly think there must be some cheapo Apple program out there that simply does basic capture. I know there's plenty of them for Windows. The capture program shouldn't really matter. The quality is coming from the ADVC and the DV chip built inside of it. The capture program is simply a way of relaying that information into the computer. He suggested I could even use Windows Movie Maker, which I'm guessing would be like the the Windows equivalent of iMovie.
So unless I'm missing something, I think you could do this. Let's just pretend an ADVC-300 magically appeared on your doorstop tomorrow. You could plug it into you Mac, set up the parameters with the Picture Controller, and capture it into a DV AVI with iMovie. If you get all the settings right ahead of time, you won't have to do any editing. In that case you could use the QuickTime encoder feature that FCP uses to make your MPEG-2. And then whatever authoring solution you choose to use would be next. It seems rather simple. I really don't see why the capture program itself should affect the quality of your results. I could be wrong, but as long as you're using the native Canopus DV codec that the ADVC is designed for, I can't see how it would matter at all.
Now with the ADVC110, if you really want to clean up those VHS tapes, I don't know what in the world you would do! It's just mind boggling to me that all these "professional" editing programs have conveniently left this ever-so-crucial filter out. It's just so typical of my experience though that maybe I shouldn't be surprised. There are some rather odd and absent-minded people out there. I know a couple programs for Windows that do good noise reduction, but you've assured me that your PC is far too ancient to be up to the task, and I'll take your word for it. It wasn't so long ago (about a year and half) that I had stone age machine that I refused to upgrade (out of pure moronic stubbornness, looking back on it).
I'll tell you my specs here. Maybe you'll be better than me after all. Try 300 MHz Pentium II, 64 MB RAM, and an 8 gig hard drive. Fancy, huh? I don't see how I managed with it all this time. I must have been crazy, and no way I could go back now. It's still sitting in my basement collecting dust. I assume maybe someone would buy it for about $25... Do I hear a bid? :-D
Finally, I kind of figured you wanted to "show me how it's done" with a Mac, but it looks like I'm going to put up a fight (hahaha, don't take this too seriously). I really pressed the guy for all the info I could think of about the ADVC-300 and its abilities with different fucntions and operating systems, so I'm quite sure all I've said is accurate!
Here's the manual if you're curious to know more (and perhaps for all the silent people out there who seem to be enjoying this topic):
http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Canopus%20ADVC-300.pdf
I'd assume you can read Adobe Acrobat with a Mac. I hope so!
I really do wish you the best in whatever you decide to do and hope you can figure it out soon. No one said this was going to be easy... :smt009
hmm my "see how i do it with mac!" was really just a joke - i have no illusions whatsoever that i'd crack this any sooner than you since i only just got started here & i'm up to my neck in all this wonderful world of analog-digital transfer (more or less 'pretending to swim' at the moment... :smt083 ). but what i meant was probably that i am confident that if it all can be done properly with PC then i should be able to do it with Mac, switching the system shouldn't be the option since there really are so many possibilities still left, just have to find the right one....
...which might very well be ADVC300. thanks for all the info you bothered to look up - it must feel silly to you that i even worried about those compatibility issues but like i said i've been let down before so i've became a bit careful. (i still find it weird that they don't list iMovie in their technical specs since it's the basic program and i've noticed that on some other occasions not mentioning it means it simply won't work.) i also just got a reply to my inquiery from the Canopus UK support too (so they were actually pretty fast, sometimes one has to wait for days and days) and they pretty much confirmed everything you already said.
i really hope you are happy once you get your ADVC300 running - no more crashing i hope! & i'd surely be interested to know how it turns out.
i think that i need to sit down and think about this over now, in any case there's nothing i can do until monday. i can't reach my ADVC110 seller before that if i decide to start negotiating a change or something. anyway maybe a few days off are welcome...
and about my dinosaur-PC: well it looks like after all i'm doing somewhat better than your "basement unit", so maybe i won't start bidding just yet... :wink: i might start updating it someday, so it's not just that i'm a stubborn mac-freak here (regardless of my caferully chosen avatar ha ha ha ;-) ), but right now it'll just have to wait for some more favourable time.
Well, I guess I should be celebrating. :smt030 :smt041 I know I've been rather quiet lately, but I didn't want to speak too soon and later realize that I had another disaster on my hands. This has happened already! :oops: I've had the ADVC-300 for a few days now, and everything is going great. No crashes or other strange hangups, and better results than I've had with the previous 5 units I've tried!
I must admit that all this torture and trials has taught me a lot. It's given me an eye for details and a better knowledge of the whole editing process. I don't think I could have ever fully appreciated doing it the "long way" without seeing how much better it is compared to the the quicker methods. I've heard this way is better all along, but I didn't want to believe it. I always thought, "If I get good enough equipment, it won't matter." Well, I was wrong. The MVR-D2200 is close, but the "on-the-fly" nature of it can screw things up a bit. After all, it is rushed in that is has to encode everything in real time. I was comparing the skin tones of it versus the ADVC, and those of the latter look much more natural. The MVR gives a pinkish tone to everyone (you can see this in the "Friday" screenshot. And there's no real way to fix this with the basic color settings. I don't have a good screenshot at the moment, but I'll put one up eventually for you to see what I'm talking about.
Just got your e-mail. I think you did a wise thing. Looks like we're going to be "300 twins"! :-D Before I forget, let me give you a tip about the noise reduction feature on that. The unit features two types of NR: 2D and 3D. All my previous Canopus units had only 3D, which seems to be a more advanced method. But the default settings in the Picture Controller have both kinds selected. I thought "the more the better", so I did my first captures like this. I took a few screenshots and compared them to my MVR and was surprised that the image wasn't quite as sharp. How could this be? It then occurred to me that 2D noise reduction is a rather crude technique. I had read about this before. And what's more, straight out of the ADVC-300 manual itself: "2D noise reduction - removes noise by blurring the entire image uniformly by using the built-in feature". Blurs the image? Wow, that's great. Sadly, it's true, and I could really tell. This technique can smoothen a rough or grainy image, but it also erases the detail. Definitely not ideal for a lot of material. I always make sure to uncheck this option from now on! :smt017
3D noise reduction, on the other hand, is a more conservative process and simply removes noise by some sort of calculation. It really does a nice job of cleaning up VHS tapes. The "weak" setting will do just fine ? best not to overdo things, or you can end up destroying the original image. Other than that, the default settings seem to be generally quite fine, but I find that moving the color saturation up 5 notches really brings up the richness of the picture. This may vary from source to source, but it seems to look right on everything I've tried so far.
I hope I'm not boring you with technical details, but another great thing for me is that I can adjust the IRE black levels. As you live in a PAL region, you will probably never have to worry about this. Just set your unit for PAL and go. But for me, I'm discovering all kinds of crazy discrepancies on how these NTSC videos I have are mastered. I was analyzing some of my Japanese laserdiscs, and the levels are completely out of standard (way too bright so far). I have to go into my trusty VirtualDub program and re-edit them to look correct, which means creating a HUGE AVI file. VirtualDub doesn't understand the Canopus codec, so you have to use the standard AVI formats for it. Anyway, I don't mind doing this sometimes if it means a better final product. But for the standard PAL tapes you will have, I doubt there will ever be a problem ? especially for your purposes. :smt110
So to sum it up, the ADVC-300 is one fine piece of gear. I just hope you can find a program to easily capture with. Beyond that should be a breeze!
I guess Canopus ain't so bad after all... But whoever designed the MPEG capturing software for the MVR-D2200 needs to go back to training school! :smt102
simply great news! :D :-D :smt023 i'm glad to hear that you're completely happy with the 300 model, i believe there's been enough frustration for you already (and to be honest i'm also relieved because if you had said it s*cked i'd have had a "slight mess" in my hands soon too as we know... :wink: the only thing for me is that my seller is in germany & the shipping the previous unit back & the new one here takes some more time (once again... :oops: ) than it generally would. but i guess one additional week is bearable now...
thanks for all the noise reduction & color tips - that 2D noise reduction sounds like a bit too heavy thing to use for sure. and about what you said about the colors on ADVC300 captures compared to those of MVR-D2200. if the raw capture of ADVC300 looks the same as what i saw with ADVC100 (i guess they use the same technique at that point) i believe you, since i was especially happy with the colors on ADVC100 captures, like i probably mentioned (what i mean is that it looked "ok for my purposes" of course :smt043 )
about the capturing software i tend to use: if i can just teach my DVD Studio Pro to accept and read my iMovie HD capture files i shouldn't have any real worries left (i have an idea how to do it but i still haven't tested it fully, must do that on weekend). and if i cannot do that, well i'll use FCP then. it's still unnecessarily heavy tool but actually i already managed to get it much more stabilized by updating it to FCP 4.5 HD, so it really should do ok this time - i hope!.
so, have fun with the 300! i'll be back again with some news from the "twin" later.... :smt006
Well, I think it's passed the test. :-D
I tried some PAL capturing with my VCR last night. At first I had some problems, but they had nothing to do with the unit. I learned that my Pinnacle Studio software that I use to capture DV doesn't support PAL, so I ended up using Windows Movie Maker. It's the free program that comes built into Windows. I never really thought to use in all this time I've spent doing video-related stuff, but it's not a bad program so long as you have a decent capture device.
So I had that up and ready to accept PAL, and then I needed to adjust a setting on the bottom of the ADVC-300. Yes, there are some switches on the bottom of the unit (strange, I know). And when I did that, I had accidentally unplugged the firewire cable from the front of the unit. For a few minutes I was convinced that my unit had broken. I was almost freaking out. Then I discovered my error. :oops:
I finally ran a capture test on the PAL tape, and it was very good. As always, the 3D noise reduction on the weak setting did a beautiful job of cleaning up the picture. It must be the exact same thing they use as for the MVR series. You'd be surprised how many capture cards (and software!) lack something like this. It's fairly common for standalone recorders, but I guess we're both a bit afraid of those. :wink:
By the way, what did you ever end up doing for an external drive? I myself better start cleaning up my hard drives a bit so I can start loading it up with huge AVI files.
Anyway... I think you might be pleased with your new unit. :-)
Here's my latest test captures. I know, the same boring old pics (well, one new one)... But I'm so used to seeing these that it's a great reference. Refer back to the ATI screenshot if you want a good laugh. Unfortunately, I deleted a bunch of others I had. Just imagine a bunch of dull, dark, blurry images. :wink:
MVR:
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Canopus.jpg)
ADVC:
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Friday.jpg)
MVR:
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Mint%20Canopus.jpg)
ADVC:
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Mint.jpg)
ADVC:
(http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/Catch.jpg)
What do you think? I think the skin tones look much more natural with the ADVC. At least I know it's good enough for "our purposes". :oops:
very interesting to see the captures! i certainly agree with you about the skin tones: i've probably said this already before but that was one of the things i liked about the ADVC110 captures. a shame that i haven't got the unit with me anymore so that i could set up these appr. same images to check the comparison. but compared to the results i previously got with the standalones the Canopus captures were/are a pleasure for the eye: a few standalone models that i tried all seemed to have a more or less noticeable tendency to go towards yellow/orange... well you can imagine what that looks like :roll: even my old standalone did that, although i generally thought it was pretty good unit - i just didn't even realize the amount of this yellowish-ness until i got a chance to compare them with the Canopus captures! (a shame that i didn't save any of those comparison images, just looked for them on my drive because i thought you might have wanted to see some of them but it looks like i've deleted the whole thing... :oops: hmmm maybe i didn't want to keep any unnecessary remembrances of those cursed standalones... :wink: )
about the other differences between ADVC & MVR here: i don't know if it's just something caused by slight differences in your contrast preferences, but judging from these it also looks like the ADVC capture is slightly brighter & clearer. if that's so then it might not be bad, considering that lots of the live material is shot under rather insufficient light conditions.
in any case you bet i am getting a bit anxious here, sitting and waiting for the postal service to do their job & bring my unit... :smt090 :wink:
about the external drive: i was already giving up with that seller since they seemed to be the slowest of the slow with their delivery, but thankfully i got the unit yesterday. it was a bit more expensive model than i had planned (pppffff....) but so far i think i made a good choice, since it's amazingly silent and beautifully optimized for my operating system, one of these 'just plug it in and go' type of things. and it has both USB and FireWire connections, so if the first one turns out to be too slow with DV files then the FireWire should do it. USB 2.0 is said to be sometimes as fast as FireWire but i learned that this applies only to PCs, and it's actually somewhat slower with Mac.
anyway it feels good suddenly to have 200+ GB FREE !! ;-)
Well, hmmm... Still no unit? :(
I think we may have solved our problems. I'm not sure there's much more I can say, except that it would definitely help if you had something to use! :?
I'm not sure if the difference in those screenshots could be a contrast issue. Although I can't scientifically explain it, brightness and contrast have always been very similar to my eyes. Contrast is the one control I usually never change. The strange thing is that on some devices, the image gets brighter when you turn it up, and on others (such as Canopus), it gets darker going in the positive direction. Very weird, to say the least.
Color is a really complicated thing when it comes to video. There are so many variables, and most of them aren't really controllable during the capture process. You're pretty much left with the saturation control on your recording device. Everything else is built into the unit. I suppose that's where the ADVC excels. It pretty much gets it right without a lot of adjustment. I don't know if you'e ever looked at the color correction filters in some of these programs, but sometimes they are just a little bit more than I care to understand or bother fiddling with for hours.
I'm not surprised that the standalone recorders you've experienced produced some strange looking colors. All this on-the-fly stuff is prone to error because of its "rushed" nature. Even a Canopus rep admitted that aboutt the MVR units I had, but I didn't want to believe it at the time because of the faster way in which I could make things with it.
It would have been nice to see those old screenshots you had, but it's really just as pointless and me showing you my old ATI screenshots. Maybe good for a laugh. Robert with a yellow or orange face ? That would some something to see! Or maybe blurred and dark Robert. Oh wait, you can see above for that... :-D
I still haven't done much with my unit yet, but I should. And I hope you get yours soon! :D
yes it would be nice if i had something to use here... actually i contacted my seller to find out what the trouble was & got a quick response saying that the cannot ship my new unit because they still haven't received my payment for it (the 300 model was a wee bit more expensive than the 110 as you know). turns out that my bank had scr*wed up the transfer so that it was greatly delayed... :smt013 can't believe it...
i have to confess that i'm pretty much on thin ice here what comes to both the brightness and contrast issues since... well with the standalone recorders you just didn't "have to" pay attention to it :wink: so what i said about them was purely something based on what i simply assumed/wondered and not anything i could motivate any better.
about that 'blurred and dark robert' ("great! something that i always wanted to have, wow!!" :-D ): well even though i lost my old screenshots i just remembered that i do have some test clips made with a few standalones (i burned those to dvd, that's why they were not on my HD to be found). so it'll be interesting to make some comparisons with the ADVC300 results then, let' see (= NB: when the unit arrives...)
and then there's that firewire thing we talked about elsewhere... so far i've been informed that slight looping/chaining works pretty well with macs, even when dealing with DV... let's HOPE it's really so or it's back to :smt120
;-)
Hi, stranger. :-)
I'm going to call this "What You Won't Find in the Manual". :wink:
All these extra settings to choose... What to do? Try to stick to as close to the default settings as possible, the tech support guy says. Why? Because there is slight generation loss even within the circuit board when processing and capturing video. I really didn't know this. I thought generation loss only came through using cables and that type of thing, but I guess I was wrong. :oops:
A few things here and there won't hurt, but apparently they add up. Noise reduction and the time base corrector (TBC) cannot be turned off. Even though you can uncheck both the 2D and 3D noise reduction settings, a little bit remains on.
I asked the guy if it was normal that I saw a loss of image sharpness when using the 2D filtering, and he told me yes. He said that you should only use 2D and 3D at the same time when you're working on a very old and grainy (basically horrible) looking video. So I asked him why this was the default setting, and he explained that the ADVC series is geared towards people restoring old, crappy videos. Those weren't his exact words, but you get the idea. I'd like to think that most of are Cure videos really aren't that bad. Sure some are pretty rough, but what he was describing sounded awful.
So I asked if I were to only choose one type of noise reduction, what should I choose? He assured me that 3D was the most efficient and best general-purpose one to use. It seems my eyes were telling me the truth on this!
Ok, so the white peak adjust feature isn't selected be default. Isn't it a good thing? He explained that the reason it's not selected is because of the generation loss factor. While he said it's likely not going to make anything noticeably worse (there's a mathematical loss, but not always visual ? although it can add up with multiple filters selected), sometimes you need it and sometimes you don't. Sometimes brightness/white levels will fall into the proper standard, and sometimes they won't. This is kind of a judgment call.
I think I remember you telling me about an older Cure video that looked washed out by the lights. Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but the white peak adjust may come in handy there. For better and low gen recorded stuff, as well as professionally recorded material, it's probably not necessary.
Alright... What about this strange vertical and horizontal edge adjustment setting. What does it do? The support guy explained that it can eliminate unwanted video (lines, etc.) that may appear at the edge of your screen. I've never had this problem, except of course those stupid lines you see at the bottom of all VHS tapes. Do you know what I'm talking about? I used to never notice those when I was younger, but of course now I know too much to not drive myself crazy. :(
So I asked, "Can it remove those lines?" He said, "Maybe. It will attempt to mask them a little bit." "Will this hurt the rest of the picture at all?" He told me it would not. This sounded really wonderful, so and I just experimented with it a while ago. I tried the horizontal edge adjustment with all the settings (4 is the strongest), and compared a video with and without it turned on. The difference? None! Actually, I could almost swear it looked a little worse with the "adjustment" turned on. No removal of the lines, sorry to say. So I'm going to forget about that. It's not a huge deal to me, but I thought I had discovered a cool new trick. :roll:
Another curiosity of mine was that the volume level setting looks like it's not set to 100%. It looks like it's about 85% of peak level. I asked him if it was set below normal volume or if going higher pushed it above 100%. He explained that it's currently set at normal level and that there is a little room left raise it above the norm in case you have somemthing with extremely low volume. To me that means to just to leave it alone. If I want to play around with the audio, I'll do that later on!
Not forgetting that not everyone in the world is not fortunate enough to be using a PC (sorry, bad joke!), I asked him what he would recommend for capturing with a Mac. You'd never guess! iMovie and Final Cut Pro. We got talking about it a little bit, and he told me that it actually captures in MOV. I know you mentioned this to me before, but he went on to explain that it is simply a standard DV file (just like an AVI for PC), but Mac simply prefers to call it something different. So no worries there. I just hope the programs will work for you! :D
And last of all, but not least... "Why does the damn software keep forgetting my settings???" He couldn't really explain this one to me because he said it shouldn't. He explained that it's designed to remember the settings so you can move it from place to place without having to reconfigure things. Ok, that's nice... But I guess it's just my luck, right?
I just accepted the fact that I'm going to have to keep a very watchful eye on my settings each time I use the unit. But guess what? Ever since I spoke to him, it's always remembered everything perfectly. I've turned it on and off 10-15 times since then and no problems at all. I can't believe it. :shock: Really can't explain this one, but I'm surely not going to complain...
In summary, the unit seems to be setty up pretty well out of the box. I find that a little brigthness or color saturation adjustment is beneficial from time to time (the American Galore VHS is a bit dark), but not much more than this. Oh, and just remember to turn that stupid 2D blurring crap off! :lol:
While I'm babbling on here, I should also mention that computer monitors tend to look darker than television screens because of they way they were designed. Basically, computer monitors were made to be viewed in bright daylight, and TV's were meant to be viewed in the dark. So what looks dark on your computer screen might look fine on your TV set. So be careful not to brighten up your picture too much or you might be in for an unplesant surprise. :? I've found that I rarely need to touch his setting with what I've tried capturing so far. It still looks infinitely brighter than ATI. And that's plenty better than what I'm used to!
One other thing he really insisted on is monitoring your videos by connecting a TV to the output of the ADVC. That's the way to really tell how your results will look in the end. While I'm not going to disagree with this (it's what all the pros do), I have a really good idea of how things look on the computer. I know how all The Cure's official DVD's look and such, so if I can match things up, I'm sure it will still be close. And besides, the default settings are really close to correct anyway. I think my TV kinda sucks too, so this may not be the best choice for me after all.
Well, all of this info seemed really important to me. I hope you find at least one thing here useful for your purposes. Or should I say "our purposes"? ;-)
i guess this thread quickly needs some new boost... ;-)
ok, where to start then... oh yes, there was this problem i had with Compressor (which should do the DV to MPEG-2 encoding for me) - i was already tearing my hear out with it but it was solved by updating that program one notch. because some time ago i updated my version of Final Cut Pro but since Compressor comes as a separate package that wasn't being touched then. and the result was that it failed to recognize any DV files that i imported from the newer version of FCP :( - pretty weird but it looks like it's running ok ow so that's good. i couldn't really find this mentioned anywhere in the manuals or so, i just had a hunch that it might help - hmm maybe i looked carelessly, but maybe it simply wasn't there. it could have saved some serious amount of time if it had been clearly mentioned. but anyway i have to be glad that it was solved in the end. and after all i only spent one day trying to figure it out so i guess that wasn't too bad in the end.
about the ADVC3000 then: the 3D/2D noise reduction. that 2D stuff is certainly overdoing it with most tapes like you said (a bit too much like a Video Destroyer 5000 sort of asset :wink: ) but there is actually one tape that i might end up using it, it's a pretty good tape otherwise, not even very generated, but it does have this hugest amount of picture noise that i've ever seen. it's like it was snowing all the time behind the actual image. i did some test clips on that one today and i'm still somewhat undecided whether it's better to get rid of a bigger part of that noise and have a slightly less sharp image or the other way round. both have their advantages i guess. but that is just an exception. in general the 3D does a very good work - so i am very happy that i settled with this model and not the one i had before.
but it still doesn't remember my settings! i still have to make them all over the again every time. hmm, maybe it's just a slow learner... so let's give it a little time then :roll: .
about the Compressor's MPEG-2 encoding abilities. well i haven't done any larger files just yet, but with the smaller ones that i have produced i have to say it looks fine. keeping the audio uncompressed will probably force me to drop the bitrate somewhat but i'm pretty confident that it'll do a good job for me anyway.
i did a clip from werchter '90 and made some comparison with the version i made last fall with the panasonic standalone dvd recorder. i used the same vhs player on both occasions so i think these can be compared pretty accurately - although i have to remember that the new clip is done with somewhat better bit rates of course: first of all, the standalone version has some pretty severe pixelisation going on all the time, all over the picture. and only now i really noticed how problematic especially the dark areas were/are there. first of all the dark areas aren't really dark: black isn't really black but something oddly greyish and unfortunately with some pretty notable macro-blocks. and all this just couldn't be adjusted as we know. also the contrast seem to have been set very high on the standalone's built-in settings. because it washes out the bringtest areas way too much - which is very bad if you consider that we are trying to deal with a live show footage! and it enhances this irritating 'facelessness' that is often there especially on some older tapes because of the brightness of the stage lighting (well i do admit that robert is somewhat pale figure what comes to his complexion but i also know that he does have eyes and a mouth so i'd appreciate if i could pinpoint where they were 8) ). even in general i'd say that the wrongly adjusted contrast settings on that standalone do make the image rather irritating to watch for any longer period - even though the faces weren't destroyed it is rather tiring for your eyes really.
and then there's the huge problem with the picture noise of course which adds up to everything above very seriously. and i suspect that the MPEG encoding abilities of that recorder weren't really that top quality since the picture is notably more blurry all the time.
then again, my ADCV transferred/computer encoded version maybe does have some slight problems when and if the camera is very shaky and moves too fast, then i get a feeling that the capturing couldn't quite follow it the best possible way - maybe i'm just paranoid and trying to find something horribly flawed in it(?) but i guess i'll have to see what i can do for that. it might be a RAM related issue(?) - like i've said before i have 512 MB which should be well enough if you look at the requirements in general (specs!)m but it wouldn't hurt me to have that doubled and might have some effect on this one here, maybe.
ok, i guess i'll be back with some news when i get something of a larger scale produced.
see you...
(P.S. i saw you posted about the dvd authoring programs - well i know you'll just love it of course but i think i'd recommend that you get a mac ;-) ok, before you shoot me: i admit i've had some pretty annoying trouble with the FCP as we know, and even though it is now running very well i simply still find it a bit too heavy program "for my purposes" :smt109 - i could very well do with something more simple since i'm not exactly trying to edit a hollywood feature film here :roll:
but about the DVD Studio Pro i can only good things: well of course i don't have experience of any other programs as professional as that one, so i'm probably not the best person to pass any judgements. but anyway: it is really a pleasure to deal with. very easy to use, very flexible, offering very good menu editing possibilities. and i really love it that nothing's too "ready-made" in this "choose from these or get lost - yes we know these are crappy templates but it's the best you'll ever get!" sort of attitude that many other programs unfortunately come packed with. with DVD Studio Pro you can really do some designing of your own if you want to, and then on the other hand if you prefer to keep it more simple it also seems to be possible to make perfectly decent menus without spending a whole day with them. but i just spend a ridiculous amount of time just toying with the different sort of effects one can put in there on the menus and all the templates that they have in general - so you can probably expect to see some pretty weirdo-menued dvds in the future ;-)
i forgot to add a short comment on what you said about computer screens vs. TVs. yes you are right, adjusting the brightness takes a bit of a practise since TV seems to brighten up everything compared to what you see on the computer screen. i have a slight problem with my TV too since it isn't quite top quality thing and i'm not sure it can be trusted completely. i've been suggested a few times before on a couple of video/computer forums that getting a monitor plugged in with the converter would be an essential piece of hardware here - but still it's unfortunately something that i just don't have at the moment. :(
also, what i'm trying to decide now is whether to shoot with lower bit rates and keep the audio uncompressed or do it the other way round - or get both (high bit rates & uncompressed audio) but split the show in two then(?) none of these seems to be very satisfying, and i guess it depends on the quality of the source material too but still... :smt017 i mean i'm not entirely at home with the variations of CBR/VBR just yet.
and unfortunately i cannot go for dual layer discs since my dvd burner doesn't support those.
Yes, this topic has been rather dead lately. :? But maybe it's for the best as we both seem to have made great progress. It seems that some of those standalone models you used were pretty bad. So I guess neither of us fans of a yellow, blocky, faceless Robert? :oops:
That 2D noise reduction is really a mystery to me. I'm surprised it's on by default, but the weak setting isn't too bad. But when you use medium and strong it's just like a big BLUR. :shock: So yes, you can hide a lot of things that way. I also know what you mean in regards to the snow effect. The Mountain View audience video I was capturing had this problem pretty bad. I settled for leaving the 2D on at the weak setting. It blurred out the snow just a little bit and didn't hurt the picture quality much, which wasn't perfect to begin with. The stronger settings blurred the snow more but also the picture too much. And the snow was still there, just blurrier. I really didn't want to destroy the image quality any further, so I figured whatever little bit the weak setting did would be good enough (for my purposes). But for a nice clean video, I always triple check to make sure that setting is off! :!:
The 3D noise is always useful for me. All analog video, even laserdisc (yes, it is actually analog) has at least a little bit of noise. This wasn't something I always noticed much, but once I did, there's really no going back. I always use the weak setting for that. Although I haven't tested it with this unit, doing more extreme settings can often cause problems, like the blurring of the picture in fast motion scenes. I think it's impossible to get rid of all noise, but the weak setting really does a lot. I compared my Live in Japan transfer with my old ATI version, and the picture on that was just out of control noisy. Back then I didn't even realize it, but it just looks horrible to me now. The Canopus transfer is much cleaner and just looks much better overall.
I'm positive that the amount of RAM you have isn't going to affect the quality of your capture. Either it's going to get it right or it's not. That's how this type of unit is designed. The ADVC itself, as I've mentioned before, is doing over 90% of the work. And considering the data rate of DV video is 25 Mbps and FireWire is rated at 400 Mbps, it's clear that nothing is really being pushed to the max here. If it wasn't keeping up somehow, it would be dropping frames and automatically shut down.
But the actual question of if the unit isn't keeping up with the shaky footage, I'm really not sure. Again, this would be the fault of the ADVC itself and not your computer. Maybe you are just imagining things, or it could simply be a flaw of the lossy nature of DV. I'd really hate to think this. Of course just watching the original tape would be a clue, but sometimes people do start getting paranoid about seeing flaws. I think it's really easy for the mind to be tricked, especially when you've been through a lot of previous frustration as we both have. :x
Variable bitrate (VBR) is just a method to manage file size when encoding. For me, it would be ideal to encode everything with at least 7 Mbps, but when you're talking 2-3 hour videos, it's not that simple. I have a personal rule that to never go below 5 Mbps, but I still prefer to keep it higher. I don't know how the FCP compressor works, but I would think it should offer VBR. And better yet, it should offer 2-pass VBR or more. The extra passes help make the bitrate variations more finely tuned for quality and keep the final target size correct. Anymore I use 3-pass VBR for my files. It takes a little while, so I just start it when I go to bed.
So VBR kind of helps you "cheat". For example, I did my new Japan transfer (87 minutes) using this. I left the audio as uncompressed PCM and used an average bitrate of 5.5 Mbps. I set the minimum bitrate at 2.5 Mbps and the max at 7.5. The multiple passes analyzed which parts need more bitrate and which require less, depending on the scene complexity and so forth. I watched it with my DVD software that displays the bitrate information, and the bitrate generally stayed around 4.5 - 5.5 Mbps, and sometimes spiked up around 7-8 for zooms and scene changes. During really dark or still parts, it would occasionally drop down in the 3 range. However, it never went down to the minimum of 2, which I found reassuring because that seems way too low anyway. :lol:
For something like my Nocturne transfer (60 minutes), I used a constant bitrate (CBR) of 8.1 Mbps and left the audio uncompressed. CBR encodes a lot faster, and the need for VBR just really isn't there because you're already so high up to begin with.
And you raised an interesting question, whether to keep the audio uncompressed or not. It's really a judgment call. For official transfers, the sound is usually perfect so I figure it might be best just to leave it "pure". I've also made a rule that about 95 minutes is my upper limit for keeping things on one disc and leaving the audio uncompressed. If you have a pretty average video with pretty average sound, you can lower your standards a bit. I've also kind of given up on making dual layer discs on a large scale. Since I last mentioned it I did run into a compatibility issue with someone I sent them to. His machine can still read studio-made dual layer discs, but not burned ones. And they're not exactly cheap either. Overall, still not really ideal for trading. So I've decided to make DL format for myself but also author the longer stuff to a 2 disc set, as I did with the Berlin video. Before I go any further, I'd highly recommend getting this:
http://ftp.imaginary-lemurs.com/BitrateCalc.zip
This is a really handy tool for calculating exact bitrates. You should simply be able to extract that to a folder and run the main HTML file. It's in Java, so I'm pretty sure it's "Apple friendly". ;) I use this all the time for my conversions. So let's say you have a very good VHS of a standard 2 1/2 Cure concert. Even with a 224 kbps audio bitrate, it's saying that the video bitrate can only be about 3.8 Mbps. That's not very good. You certainly don't want to go down further with your audio either, not that it would make much difference. And it certainly would be good to go up from here. So... I would make the argument that you split this one to two discs. Now change the type of DVD in the bitrate calculator to DVD10. The DVD10 format is actually just a two-sided regular DVD, but it's an easy reference here for two separate discs. DVD9 is dual layer, and no, it really doesn't have quite the capacity of two regular discs. It falls about a gig short of that. But if I'm going to split to two discs, I still follow the DVD9 standard because it allows me to make a dual layer discs too. Let me scratch what I just said a minute ago and recommend that you also try using DVD9 as a guideline because it allows a little margin of error. If you followed DVD10 exactly, while it would give you accurate info, you might end up having to split the show in the middle of a song or something. Following the DVD9 gives you that extra breathing room. And the quality isn't going to suffer, because now we've got an allowance of more than we need. Ok, so let's see what it says when we change to DVD9.
Leaving the audio as it is would allow you bump the bitrate up to almost 7.2 Mbps. But you could also switch the audio to uncompressed and have it at about 5.8 Mbps, which is still quite good. Now let's see what DVD10 says. That would allow you to crank it up to almost 6.6 Mbps. So when you consider that might not be able to split the video perfectly in half, you could safely say that your ideal target bitrate is somewhere in between 5.8 and 6.6. I would simply guess that about 6.3 would be perfect, while keeping the audio uncompressed. Now you could get into some calculations to figure this out exactly, but I don't know how motivated you are. I probably would end up doing this. :oops:
Now let's say you have some sort of TV show that's good but really not perfect. I'll say it's exactly 2 hours. According to the bitrate calculator, maybe you might just want to compromise and use a video bitrate of 4.8 Mbps and do the audio at something like 256 kbps to fit all on one disc. There's just really lot of things to take into consideration. It's just too bad dual layer isn't more standardized and inexpensive, or these decisions would be a lot easier. And the Blu-Ray that's coming out now that holds about 25 gig per disc. If they weren't so damn expensive, we could just max out the bitrate for everything and still be able to cram quite a few hours onto one of those things. It would be nice!
I don't know how DVD Studio works, but my authoring program actually leaves me to convert the audio format when building the DVD folder. I always leave my audio uncompressed when making my MPEG-2. It just outputs it as a separate wav file. This makes it easy to edit or touch up before actually putting it on disc. And I'm glad that it's a good program. I've tried quite a few for PC, and some of them are pretty scary. I admit they don't make sense to me. And others, well... Are geared at 7-year olds or retards, much like you said. I think I've found happy-medium.
Oh, and that edge adjustment feature. The tech guy there clearly didn't know what he was talking about. It just tries to sharpen the profile of people or objects, as it says in the manual. This really just makes parts of the image sharper, which from what I see just makes things look a whole lot worse. In other words, it shows more flaws, such grain and noise. I'd stay away from it... :roll:
Well, I'm very curious as to how your work comes out! :D
QuoteWell, I'm very curious as to how your work comes out!
i was thinking the other day "isn't it about time to dig this baby up and put it back on the top of the world?" ;-) since the conversation has been going on every now and then so i was thinking why not put it back here, to be viewed (besides, our viewer ratings are going down if something isn't done! )
ok, a LOT progress since the last time, so it's rather impossible to comment everything. but a warning: i think it's going to be a rather looong account.
and in case you have forgotten ;-) and for possible new readers of this topic, maybe a word about the set-up used here. because it's been quite a while since this topic was active and well it's kind of LONG thread already in order to dig out the background info:
vcr -> Canopus advc300 video converter (a great little box that converts analogue signal to digital; comes with Picture Contoller software that is operable from the computer in order to adjust the image) -> mac ibook G4
capturing application:
Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD
- for capturing and video editing; could be used for audio editing too but if i want to make some of that then i prefer to take the audio files to some other application that i'm already familiar with, just to save some time since i work faster with those.
DVD Studio Pro 3
- dvd authoring application
additional applications:
Compressor 1.0 (mpeg-2 compressor)
A.Pack (audio compressor)
so, about a few things that we've recently discussed elsewhere: and the topic was "the fancy talk of muxing and demuxing " - in other words, whether to keep the video and audio files separate during the process or work sith a single stream. i guess different applications have different preferences for this and some have more options than others, some come with some built-in strategy. i don't know if it makes anyhow interesting reading but this is how it works for me:
when capturing with Final Cut Pro you actually have an option to choose whether your capture appears as one single .avi stream or in separate video/audio stream. i always do the capturing in separate files. one benefit which i found out some time ago is that this might actually be a good choice because of my set-up. you see i'm kind of forced to use external hard disc since my internal drive is way too limited to handle any sudden 20+ GB avi files (oh yes you need a LOT of space when capturing!). and then, my laptop has only one firewire port so i cannot plug both the canopus converter AND the external to my computer but i have to "daisy-chain" them (converter is plugged into the external which is plugged into my computer). i was a bit warned about doing this by some video editing people. it might work just fine without problems (in theory you should be able to daisy-chain several dozens of firewire devices, at least so they say) but sometimes it appears to be a tricky setup and if that happens it might also be hard to solve. it's one of those strange crazy things that just sometimes might appear out of nowhere and then you just don't seem to get rid of them (remember that reformatting thing you were doing back then - see WAY back in this thread...). anyway, i haven't really had much problems but occasionally it has happened that frames have suddenly been dropped and i have to start again with the capturing. and it's fun when it happens on the last minute of some 2.5 hour show :( . but it's maybe an understandable possibility that some problems might occur since a lot of data is actually going back and forth there, using the same FW to be feeded to my computer first and using the same route at the same time while it's been sent back to the external. i cannot really say i'd really had any major problems, the fram-dropping has occured maybe 4 or 5 times in all which isn't much at all but anyway the possibility has been there and it has bothered me a bit.
but so i found out that if i set the scratch discs (the locations where to captured .avi is stored and saved when it comes in) for video and audio streams in separate drives this risk actually notably diminishes, there's just less strain in the set-up. and so i can very well set the audio scratch disc on my internal drive (since the files aren't generally much more than 1 GB or a bit more) while only the video is sent back to the external. so far this seems to work very well.
so for me it's actually worth it, capturing in separate files. otherwise it wouldn't really matter at that point though whether i capture in one stream or two, because i can always set the capture in single stream and then simply export the audio from it if i change my mind and want to have a separate audio stream for editing.
(a side note about the audio: but just how often do we have a nice stereo stream when working with vhs tapes? unfortunately not everyone out there making the tapes had the latest model of some fancy stereo vcr at their disposal - well it's quite understandable if you consider some older tapes from the 80s. a pity, though.)
then, once we are in Compressor for the mpeg-2 conversion there's actually no option anymore whether you produce your mpeg in single stream or two separate streams. it'll always happen in separate streams. DVD Studio Pro (the authoring program at the end of the production "assembly line") doesn't accept single stream mpeg. if you have a single stream mpeg file you have to demux it first or you cannot import it to the program.
so, you can maybe already guess from this that i always encode the audio and video separately, yes i do.
but here comes another aspect that actually really makes me like the current applications in my current set-up:
Compressor is an application that works completely separately between Final Cut Pro (FCP) and DVD Studio Pro. it's not really tied to either of those. i mean, you can always use it also completely separately too: so you don't even have to import files to FCP first in order to make use of it and you don't have to export them to DVD Studio pro either (so it doesn't "tag" the files it produces into some kind of project files like some other applications do so that you cannot use then with any other applications but the ones officially linked to the production chain (for instance iMovie and iDVD (which are the easy-to-use everyday counterparts of FCP and DVD SP) do this. you cannot for instance import a complete iMovie project into FCP just like that, it craves for several tricks, because the built-in link in the project file points only to iDVD).
anyway, i'm straying a bit here now. what i was saying was that Compressor is good because it's a separate application. but you don't even have to use the Compressor at all if you don't choose to. you can also import from FCP straight to DVD Studio Pro after editing, then do the authoring and only then encode to mpeg at the very end. DVD Studio pro also offers a separate mpeg-2 encoder.
i prefer to use Compressor simply because it has much more options available. and i also simply like to work with assets that are already encoded when i do authoring. but what also makes Compressor great is that if you notice that you maybe forgot something when you were making the capture adjustments for Canopus with Picture Controller. maybe you forgot the noise reduction (although that never happens, just an imaginary example! ;) or maybe the picture came out a bit too dark after all. then you still have a possibility to correct this in Compressor. it has a wide range of great filters available. you won't have this option if you go straight to DVD Studio pro and encode there. it's Quicktime encoder isn't quite as advanced, although it does produce great quality though.
i'd say that Compressor is actually pretty sophisticated mpeg compressor. although i do have the older version of the program though (1.0), the new one's a bit different than described here, so i've been told.
but for instance, there's actually no built-in option for compressed audio - i find "it's attitude" actually quite lovely "for our purposes": because it always starts with the mind that no no, you simply don't compress the audio, it's either PCM or then you just don't try to fit this much stuff on one disc. so it's a lossless fan, you see...
however, if you want to argue with it and compress the audio after all you actually take the audio file into a separate application that comes with the DVD Studio pro and which is called A.Pack. there you can do your "evil" destructive audio compression separately while you only let the Compressor handle the video file.
(by the way, this is where that little application BitrateCalc comes in very handy - because it's easy to lose the grasp of the estimated file sizes of the final products when you go back and forth between several applications.)
well, you could say that i'm kind of forced to keep the audio and video files separate most of the process because the applications require it. but i agree with what you've said earlier, that it's actually the best option anyway. it's always better to keep the audio separate until the very end and only parse the audio and video together when you are burning the final product. in that way one can always easily do some editing if one wants.
which is where we come to this:
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
mpeg streamclip is an excellent little freeware tool i recently found. i'm sure there are others like that which are just as good, but i'd surely recommend that to someone looking for a good application. and i can say that not everything has worked so smoothly with my current other applications, but this one's been designed to work with FCP, DVD SP (and also Toast) so this has been really good for me so far.
and waht also really good as you can see when you click the column on the left and you'll also find a counterpart for windows:
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html
this is very good for those of us who occasionally work with both systems - saves a LOT of time! :D
so what good does this tool especially offer for me?
let's say you want to re-author something that's already been authored as a dvd (so it's in .vob files) and you didn't do the authoring yourself so you don't have the original mpeg streams anymore. i cannot import .vob or single stream mpeg-2 into DVd Studio pro so i need something that demuxes it back to two separate streams. and for some strange reasons i've had some problems with this. i've been using a program called ffmpegx for such things (and also different kinds of conversions between other video formats). but most of the 2-stream mpeg files it produces me are not good, and the DVD Studio Pro often rejects the video file. the other option would be to go back and re-encode the mpeg back to .avi and then make a new 2-stream mpeg from it - but that's just madness for several reasons: takes forever and you very well lose a lot in quality. the second reason is the "evil" one so it's just not an option at all most of the time. the only situation that i'd need to re-encode is if i want to take something back into FCP (which doesn't handle any kind of mpeg, just .avi or .dv). for instance i cannot do any kind of simple editing like trimming in DVD Studio Pro. but luckily mpeg streamclip also provides some basic editing possibilities (very basic but anyway, those are the ones you also most often need).
so mpeg streamclip does it all nicely for me, and it's a very good addition to my set-up.
and if i may repeat my little advertising speech:
- repeat: NO dreaded re-encoding takes place! :D
- works very smoothly with FCP and DVD SP.
- it's both mac and pc compatible.
(that lovely program even resqued me one dvd which i thought was beyond repair and all hope: it was already authored into a proper dvd but couldn't be burned on a disc since there was some weird errors in the disc built-up. i was already getting ready to accept the fact that i'll lose the original design (that dvd actually had very good looks with nice menus so i was a bit annoyed) and i should be happy if i can just resque the .vob files alone.)
ok, enough of advertising (besides the streamclip team isn't even paying me for doing this - yet! :wink: )
but a final note about applications and the need for re-authoring:
i think you just need to have something good running that enables you to re-author dvds when needed, and as easily as it possibly can be done. since it always takes a lot of time anyway, so you don't want any extra obstacles there.
well, it's just nice to have a possibility to do some extra work on it if one wants to. it simply adds to the enjoyment so hugely. for instance there are even dvds traded at the moment which don't have any kind of tracks at all. of course you can say that one has to be glad that some version even exists and stop whining. but since we do have the technology and applications easily available to make it better, then why not? because you have a 2+ hour cure show on single track? now that's just pain to operate with, i think most everyone would agree.
:!: but: it all boils down to the capturing and mpeg encoding. no fancy menus or great layouts will save you if either (or both, god forbid!) of those two very done sloppily. if the resulting mpeg is poorly encoded, maybe because the bitrates were too low (for example, you stubbornly try to fit an entire dream tour show on one dvd - beware!) or just with a crappy encoder (most standalone dvd recorders, unfortunately) - then nothing much can be done afterwards as we know. digitalizing something unfortunately doesn't always mean the quality remained - it's sad but many vhs sources look million times better than the sloppily digitalized version produced out of it.
i think there's food for thought in that.
(ok, i wonder if this is enough for today? hmm, maybe... :roll: :wink: )
(the quote tags seem to work again for me, by the way :-) )
I have some experience only on the PC and budget analogue tv-card - side. Majority of these tv/capture cards use the same kind of capture devices manufactured by conexant or philips. There?s not a big difference in technical quality. The quality is an issue of the software used there, and with some tweaking of the settings the picture can be very good. But the software bundled with these cheap cards is absolutely horrible and unusable even when watching normal tv. (and when looking at the recorded quality you?re left quite speechless). If one wants to spend only about 20 euros on a card the results can still be very good and better than on the worse standalone - dvd recorders, but the software... I?ve tried ChrisTV which is the easiest to use and gives decent quality. But it?s not free. DScaler is the best program to these cards and gives very good picture on both capture - and tuner side. Also Dscaler is absolutely free. (But not the easiest to use though.)
-bluewater
edit: oh no... dscaler doesn?t support recording... so, no other way than Christv for these old cards as far as i know. If i get christv set up again i?ll take some snapshots, but just for reference as the devices recommended by lf4 and japanesebaby are probably superior and for cure-encoding they are the only way to go.
edit: here is for reference 2 images, about as bad as it gets, this is a total crap analogue tv/capture card that costs about 20 euros (pinnacle pctv rave) and bad cable-tv signal combined. Program is DScaler, and you cannot even record it :) But still it?s watchable, whereas the original program bundled with the card is compeletely unusable.
http://img110.imageshack.us/my.php?image=still9fy.png
http://img79.imageshack.us/my.php?image=joke5wm.png
edit: another 2 images from another budget carbage card, unknown brand, costing about 15 euros. The picture is much better than on pinnacle model. Dscaler or any other program doesn?t recognize the card, but once doing some gory things both programs eat the captured video. The results are surprisingly good for an almost free card, but still, i wouldn?t recommend this one to anyone either despite the good picture (compatibility problems).
http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dog7cj.png
Recorded on ChrisTV to very low-bitrate Xvid on my own settings (5 minutes to about 25 megs) . So this is as bad as it gets (slightly above average emule stuff):
http://img119.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ndvd0016nw.png
And last, I use very fast Ati display adapters that might have a positive effect on the picture quality. I used in the first two images
Ati Radeon 9600 pro + ati 5.11 wdm drivers, 2300+ sempron, 256mb ddr
on the last two
Ati Radeon x800XL + ati 6.4 wdm drivers, a64 3500+, 1024mb ddr
as these budget capture cards take a lot processing power to look decent.