Canopus 110(100) vs Canopus 300-VHS battle

[SerbianBoss]

Hello everybody,

1. I want to open new thread and discuss about quality analog capture with Canopus 110(100) vs Canopus 300.

I have Canopus 110 and i am disappointed about analog (VHS) capture. Because i have always noisy capture even i have a good VHS cassete.

So i would like that everyone who have Canopus 110,100 and 300 upload an image.

2. Users who have Canopus 300 can say about noise reduction feature.

I am interesting thas noise reduction on canopus 300 is worth?

This picture is DV format (vhs).

[lordsmurf]

Not really, no. The Canopus products are about 75% hype and marketing bullshit, and about 25% reality. Now, that 25% reality is generally pretty good, but they blow far too much smoke up customer's asses for my taste. I prefer a little more realism, and a little less waves of the magic wand. These are simple DV AVI capture devices, nothing more. They are not super-mega-special gifts from hyper-advanced space aliens.

There are colorspace issues when dealing with VHS and DV, something most people either do not understand, or choose to ignore.

Now, on the other hand, VHS is a lossy format. And your video appears to be underexposed, which would explain the grain. Add to that the fact that the computer monitor is higher resolution than a tv set, and you can see more flaws.

What you have here can be filtered in VirtualDub. That would be my suggestion. You pretty much have to filter most video anyway, when VHS is the source.

But no, that ADVC-300 will only bilk you for hundreds of dollars and give little in return. There are several DVD recorders that can actually clean up noise much better than a Canopus DV device could ever do for a VHS tape (JVC DVD recorders, plus a few others).

[jimmalenko]

OP's image (for those who don't want to click):





Stills don't mean much, but this is one I did just the other day. The tape is around 8 years old, and I've just got a standard LG 4-head VHS VCR straight into the ADVC-100. It's CDVC (canopus compatible) DV-AVI via scenalyzerlive.

[thecoalman]

Can't help you with anything from the 300 but the issue lies with your source. Here'sa screencap from a 3rd generation VHS originally recorded on a Hi-8 cam. Hi-8>VHS>VHS It was captured using JVC 9911>Datavideo 1000>ADVC 110

[Fos]

what vcr do you have?

it seems that the vcr can't playback well old tapes.

Personally, i don't like to clean sources when i have a good mpeg encoder but anyways, you can use : CNR , Static noise reduction , temporal smoother, etc.... with Virtualdub.
Then , frameserver it to tmpgenc.

[thecoalman]

Here's probably about the best example of what you can expect from the 110. The first is screncap from a DV file from my video cam, an exact copy so to speak:





The second is almost the same frame captured with the canopus via S-Video, identical without getting a microscope out. As I said before your problem is not the canopus unless you have a lemon. Whether the 300 will help any is debatable.

[Fos]

we know that the Canopus captures well all digital and good analog sources.
But for noise sources , it's a crap.
I had been using the canopus advc 55 and i was very dissapointed with some tapes , i created a thread with my problem.
I don't know if my problem was a interference or whatever but the only device that captures well and without any noise was the ati theater 200 card.

Then i could encoder the uncompressed file to DV and the quality was superior than the Av/dv device.

@thecoalman

The svhs cap looks darker and more saturated than the cap from the DV input.

[SerbianBoss]

Thanks for quich reply.

This is my best picture from VHS



Others post your pictures from Canopus or similar convertors.

Users who has ADVC 300 can say how is noise reduction filter on device. Is it worth or not?

[thecoalman]

Users who has ADVC 300 can say how is noise reduction filter on device. Is it worth or not?

The trouble with that question is to answer it you need to compare both using the same source tape. Without a comparison like that you're not going to have anyhting conclusive. That would go with comparing any device, you need to use the same conditions otherwise it is not a very accutate measurment.

we know that the Canopus captures well all digital and good analog sources.
But for noise sources , it's a crap.

I had a pretty noisy tape and I'd have to say it didn't do too bad. I didn't have anything to compare it too but the capture and subsequent DVD looked as good as the original VHS. Still noisy but so was the source. As for the comparsions shot between DV and S-video as I said it's almost identical, I was actually suprised at how well it reproduced the signal as I was expecting at least some amount of added noise or degradtion but as far as that goes it's practically non-exsistent.

[SerbianBoss]

Ok, anybody can upload pictures

[Fos]

jurasic park vhs tape

Jvc hrs7700>tbc 1000>ati via svhs cable>virtualdub(mjpg)>powerdvd(screenshoot)

[Fos]

[SerbianBoss]

Can rest users who have some of ADVCpost here some images.

[SerbianBoss]

Can rest users who have some of ADVC post here some images.

[CCEncoder]

Can rest users who have some of ADVC post here some images.

Can they post some videos in here? I don't trust images I would like to see some video capturing commercials from TV cable using ati theater 200 card and ADVC 110-100 to finally decide, I saw the screenshoots from advc110 and I don't like them they look as bad as my dazzle hollywood bridge, too noise.

[edDV]

This is a 480i SD DTV source through Motorola DCT6200 cable box then S-Video to ADVC-100 480i.


1080i HD 2.35:1 film through DCT6200 cable box then letterboxed S-Video to ADVC-100 480i.


1080i HD broadcast through DCT6200 cable box then S-Video to ADVC-100 480i.

[CCEncoder]

Can someone put some videos up? I'll be really grateful

[Wile_E]

The 3D noise reduction on the ADVC-300 is not worth it. It only has off-low-high settings. The high setting is too aggressive and causes ghost trails on fast moving objects. The low setting is barely noticeable. The 2D NR just blurs the image taking detail out. The 3D NR on my JVC hr-s9911u works a lot better in smoothing out the noise.

I've come to the conclusion that digital capture is not forgiving of analog sources. Any slight variation from frame to frame, causes your digital capture device to say "oh, that pixel is different from the previous frame". I find it best just to run my sources through avisynth and use convolution3D filter. It's too bad that there are no good capture devices that do this in real time. You may want to consider buying a DVD player that has real-time noise reduction. I bought a Panasonic DVD-S52S that has mpeg DNR. It works wonders if grainy DVD's and is almost as good as doing the prefiltering with convolution3D.

[CCEncoder]

The 3D noise reduction on the ADVC-300 is not worth it. It only has off-low-high settings. The high setting is too aggressive and causes ghost trails on fast moving objects. The low setting is barely noticeable. The 2D NR just blurs the image taking detail out. The 3D NR on my JVC hr-s9911u works a lot better in smoothing out the noise.

I've come to the conclusion that digital capture is not forgiving of analog sources. Any slight variation from frame to frame, causes your digital capture device to say "oh, that pixel is different from the previous frame". I find it best just to run my sources through avisynth and use convolution3D filter. It's too bad that there are no good capture devices that do this in real time. You may want to consider buying a DVD player that has real-time noise reduction. I bought a Panasonic DVD-S52S that has mpeg DNR. It works wonders if grainy DVD's and is almost as good as doing the prefiltering with convolution3D.

Are you saying this method works great using any capture device?Would you show me how to do it?

[edDV]

Can someone put some videos up? I'll be really grateful

What kind of video?

Clean source like downscaled HD to S-Video Y/C analog?
Noisy VHS?
Other?

I think you will find the ADVC does fine from a clean source.
I haven't done much with VHS but the ADVC does well from a cable box, Hi8 and BetacamSP.

Quality is very similar to Sony DV camcorder pass-through although the ADVC adds the 0% 7.5% IRE setup switch. Audio sync is another key benefit. I also like that it can capture PAL and output either NTSC or PAL color bars to analog. The bars help with VCR, capture card and monitor calibration.

[CCEncoder]

Can someone put some videos up? I'll be really grateful

What kind of video?

Clean source like downscaled HD to S-Video Y/C analog?
Noisy VHS?
Other?

I think you will find the ADVC does fine from a clean source.
I haven't done much with VHS but the ADVC does well from a cable box, Hi8 and BetacamSP.

Quality is very similar to Sony DV camcorder pass-through although the ADVC adds the 0% 7.5% IRE setup switch. Audio sync is another key benefit. I also like that it can capture PAL and output either NTSC or PAL color bars to analog. The bars help with VCR, capture card and monitor calibration.

HD TV? can you just transfer that using firewire? I mostly mean analog such as, VHS camara and VCR, and also regular cable nondigital is what I'm interested in seem how it does. And the source tape has to look good so I notice if the image is preserved. Who can do that?

[edDV]

HD TV? can you just transfer that using firewire?

An encoding capture device will perfom differently with a clean source (e.g. downscaled HD cable channel to analog S-Video) or at the other extreme, a noisy error laden source like VHS.

I mostly mean analog such as, VHS camara and VCR, and also regular cable nondigital is what I'm interested in seem how it does. And the source tape has to look good so I notice if the image is preserved. Who can do that?

I'll try the analog cable capture.

For VHS there are levels of capture sophistication. All these require boxes in the path before the capture device.

1. cheap vs expensive VHS player
2. level adjustment before capture
3. noise reduction
4. timebase (line or frame) correction

The ADVC-100 has none of these features. External devices are used. The ADVC-300 has a form of #2, #3 and #4 (line based) but reviews haven't been very strong for these features significanly improving a VHS capture.

[edDV]

OK. Here are some representative capture frames. Hard to get DV down to 2MB (max file size). You will need to look frame by frame with a viewer.

DscChsample1.avi

Analog Discovery Channel.
Commercial (film based with telecine)



File --

[edDV]

I may need some mod assist sending a 1.6MB file.
Never mind, it worked.

View this file frame by frame without deinterlace. You can attemprt your own IVTC.
Virtualdubmod works fine.

dscchsample1.avi

[Wile_E]

Look at the red background. It is not a smooth gradient and is "noisy" which is easily seen frame to frame. This is exactly what I get with my ADVC-300 and VHS tapes. That's why I use Convolution3D to smooth out the colors.. Unfortunately it is a time-consuming process.

CCEncoder, if you search here for Convolution3D, you should find several threads with sample avisynth scripts. Here is one such thread.
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=225951

[edDV]

Am I imagining or is the Vega preview less noisy than VirtualDubMod?

[alegator]

[quote="lordsmurf"]What you have here can be filtered in VirtualDub. That would be my suggestion. You pretty much have to filter most video anyway, when VHS is the source.quote]
Any thread that explains how to do this? Thanks.
My personal experience with capturing Hi8 tapes with the ADVC100 (the tapes are about 15 to 12 years old) is that computer playback is grainy and noisy, but when authoring to DVD (I use Ulead DVD Workshop) and played back in a rehgular TV the quality is impressive. Maybe Ulead or the DVD player itself adds those filters already.

[edDV]

Look at the red background. It is not a smooth gradient and is "noisy" which is easily seen frame to frame. This is exactly what I get with my ADVC-300 and VHS tapes. That's why I use Convolution3D to smooth out the colors.. Unfortunately it is a time-consuming process.

CCEncoder, if you search here for Convolution3D, you should find several threads with sample avisynth scripts. Here is one such thread.
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=225951

Do you mean the red diagonals? I frame selected for those. We have a whole thread on that as I recall. Remember this is a noisy NTSC analog cable channel.

[edDV]

OK - 480i sports

First is ESPN analog channel over cable S-Video to ADVC-100 to DV 480i.


file

edpn-ntsc7.avi

[edDV]

Next is same game ESPN-HD channel letterbox over cable S-Video out to ADVC-100 to DV 480i.


file



espn-hd.avi