Canopus ADVC-50 vs ADS DVD Xpress

[Sturge33]

I have the DVD Xpress right now, but I was looking at buying the ADVC-50. I have no need for the 100's ability to output back to analog. Everything is going to DVD. I am capturing old VHS home movies. The tapes have been stored in an unheated/uncooled storage building for over a year and are not of the highest quality to begin with. Would I gain any quality by purchasing the Canopus device?

I'm hesitant to purchase it not knowing if there would even be anything to gain considering the source I am capturing. Everything I record now is on DV so after I transfer these tapes, the capture device would be used very little, maybe for capturing some cartoons or something for the kids. Should I get the ADVC-50 now or just be happy with what I've got?

[DVWannaB]

sounds like you just talked yourself out of it there mate.

[Dr. DOS]

The Express is pretty good (I have one at home) but you will get artifacts in your capture on occassion. (The encoder is not the best)

What's the price of the 50.

I also have dozens of tapes and am thinking about getting the best stand alone recorder I can find .... I don't need transitions, titles, etc... .just VHS to DVD.

Maybe some thing to think about ....

[Sturge33]

The ADVC-50 is around $150. My little bro is still in college so he can get it from one of those academic sites for me for that price.

[Dr. DOS]

Hmmm.... What is your ultimate goal... dubbing VHS to DVD or capturing, then filtering / editing / addition titles / transitions, etc and then burning.

If dubbing get a desktop unit. In other thread the good ones may be sub $100 post xmas this year.

[Anonymous65]

The ADVC-50 is a very good video capture card, http://steve.kittelsen.com/advc50

[shaynew]

A good number of folks have problems with their machine not recognizing 50's are attached. The canopus forums have a lot of hate messages about it. Though a patch may have mostly resolved that. See the reviews on the 50 over in Capture Cards section on the left. Maybe the new ADVC55's fixed that problem and won't need a patch.

But if you avoid that problem canopus DV encoders do a great job. I have a 100 and love how encodes look.


--Shayne

[lordsmurf]

If you are converting tapes (or analog signal), and quality is priority one...

NTSC ... skip DV, get a better card
PAL ... DV is a fine choice

[DVWannaB]

If you are converting tapes (or analog signal), and quality is priority one...

NTSC ... skip DV, get a better card
PAL ... DV is a fine choice

lordsmurf,

what is the reason why say DV for PAL, but MPEG2 capture for NTSC. Should not both sets of video standards be handled in a like manner? PAL/NTSC to *.avi to favorite encoder for best possible output?

Thanks.