Before buying Canopus ADVC-100 Questions

[arvin]

Folks, I nould like to know something. Can someone give me the answers for this what i am going to do.

1.I want to buy Canopus ADVC-100 for capturing video from VHS, Hi8 tapes with best quality of captured video-I would like if captured video can be SAME quality as input signal, with best Audio/video synch- for 3 hours of capturing,

2. Then, to put that captured file with canopus -(so that will be almost always 1:30 to 2hrs file (appx. 14Gb/per 1 hr.)
into Ulead Movie Factory 2 or other DVD Authoring program, which will accept that file (without converting it before in MPEG 2), and burn it on DVD with the result-DVD with same quality as original.

3. OR to convert captured file with TMPGENC and then with Ulead Movie Factory2 to Author and burn DVD.


and final, as I already have ViVo GF4 card, can I keep that card and Canopus in the same time and to swithc when I want to choose if I want to capture with Canopus or my ViVo card, OR I have to uninstal ViVo card(because of WDM and capture drivers-posible conflict) and to instal ordinary display adapter.



Maybe it's to much questions, but I just need to know if I can do all this, in the order-capture with Canopus, import in some DVD authoring program, burn on DVD = same quality as original Hi8 or VHs,

And do I have to have some extra expensive Fire Wire card to work with Canopus or just any Fire Wire will provide samo good quality as some expensive Fire Wire..



Thanks a lot

[i_am_dave]

arvin,

Don't know if I can answer all your questions, but I have an ADVC-100 and have transferred about 70 hours of VHS tapes.
I have an HP 1.8Ghz system with onboard Firewire, I think almost all firewire cards work well with the ADVC-100.

I pull in the entire video in DV format. (one 4 hour video was about 50Gig), using Ulead Video Studio 6.0.
I do my editting in Video Studio and then render to one or more files in DV format for best quality.
I then Encode using TMPGenc and apply whatever filtering or corrections are required.
I then use Ulead DVD Workshop to create my menus and so forth. I create a title set.
I then use RecordNow to burn the title set to DVD.

Sounds like a lot of work, but I always end up with a good quality DVD. Often the DVD copy is better than the original because I filtered and cleaned up the video during the process. I have taken some pretty bad material and been able to restore it.

Hope this helps!
I then do edi

[jpetrick]

You mentioned that you "cleaned Up The Video", can you expand a little on what settings, filters, etc thatn you used to filter out "Noise" from the VHS?

[flaninacupboard]

TMPGencs' inbuilt noise reduction filter does a great job, try setting it at 10 1 12 for VHS, but your encoding times will be tripled or quadrupled.

[i_am_dave]

jpetrick,

I sometimes use the noise filter with default settings, but what really helped were the simple and custom color correction.
I had a lot of VHS tapes that were really beginning to degrade. Things like washed out color or excess color saturation.
It is true that it really increases encoding time, sometimes 36 hours for a 1 hour segment, but I think it was really worth the effort to clean up and save off permanent(unless my DVD rots), footage of my kids when they were young.

Good luck!

Dave

[arvin]

Thank you folks!

[yg1968]

Arvin,

Another option would be to get a digital-8 camcorder with a passthrough feature (for example, the Sony TRV-350). You can then use the passthrough feature to capture VHS, etc through your firewire card. The passthrough feature essentially replaces the need for the ADVC-100. Not all digital camcorders have this passthrough feature (for example the Sony TRV-250 and the TRV-140 do not have it).

[monoxide77]

and final, as I already have ViVo GF4 card, can I keep that card and Canopus in the same time and to swithc when I want to choose if I want to capture with Canopus or my ViVo card, OR I have to uninstal ViVo card(because of WDM and capture drivers-posible conflict) and to instal ordinary display adapter.

you should be fine keeping your ViVo card where it's at without any conflict with the ADVC-100. as far as i know, it doesn't use WDM drivers. I have my capture card still in my computer for sometimes watching TV and it never conflicts with my ADVC.