Canopus ADVC 110 or DVD Recorder for conversion?

[zapster]

I need to convert a bunch of Hi8 and VHS to DVD. I can either dump them down to the PC via the ADVC110 and then create DVDs or I can borrow a Sony RDR-VX525 and dump them directly to DVD.

Has anyone done any tests to see which of those looks best?

[edDV]

I need to convert a bunch of Hi8 and VHS to DVD. I can either dump them down to the PC via the ADVC110 and then create DVDs or I can borrow a Sony RDR-VX525 and dump them directly to DVD.

Has anyone done any tests to see which of those looks best?

If you don't care to edit, just use the DVD Recorder. Quality depends on the harware encoder chips in the recorder.

If you do want to edit beyond simple cuts, better to do that before the MPeg2 encode. DV is an excellent format for editing and processing. When finished, you would export to DVD MPeg2.

[zapster]

My initial thought was that straight to DVD would be the best quality as its a single encode. Whereas dumping through the ADVC would be the first encode (convert to DV) and then creating DVDs would be the second encode (converting to mpeg2).

Good point on the encoder chip also making a difference, hadn't considered that.

[edDV]

My initial thought was that straight to DVD would be the best quality as its a single encode. Whereas dumping through the ADVC would be the first encode (convert to DV) and then creating DVDs would be the second encode (converting to mpeg2).

Good point on the encoder chip also making a difference, hadn't considered that.

So you don't want to edit, color correct, process image filters, crop, add transitions or titles, set brightness/contrast or play with audio?

If you want to do that later, MPeg decode/recode takes a quality hit.

[thecoalman]

My initial thought was that straight to DVD would be the best quality as its a single encode. Whereas dumping through the ADVC would be the first encode (convert to DV) and then creating DVDs would be the second encode (converting to mpeg2).

Negligible loss if any. DV is higher quality than MPEG.

The benefit as mentioned by edDV is if you want to do extensive editing such as filtering. With a little work you can get a better end product than going straight to MPEG but it is a longer process.

If it's home movie material I always suggest archiving the original DV capture as DV before processing.

[guns1inger]

Also, the longer the recording, the better it is to be able to encode it manually. Most DVD Recorders start to suffer quality wise after 2 hours, and some much sooner. If you convert to DV you can use things like 2-pass VBR encoding and specific matrices in order to get the best possible encoding.