need best analog capturing hardware?????

[vitamine]

Hi all...I want to convert or transfer all my mom's vhs stuff to cdr, if possible also dvd for best quality. Can you guys recommend what is the best solution for this stuff. I mean I want best quality. I checked out dazzle but got mixed reviews, and also recommended the ads instant dvd. I also got a choice for the Pinacle kit. I m not sure what to use, can you wiz give me the best recommendation?

[DaveS]

go look at capture cards section (see frame to your left on this page), select features & sort by rating. if you have questions you could post them.

[jay1028]

I recommend Canopus ADVC100. I tried all the others and each one has it's own problems. Really, all of the USB devices are pure junk. I have tried them all. They all had problems and they all have proprietary software and capture devices that will not work with 3rd party software such as TMPGenc. All of the USB devices made DVDs not even as good as my original source material. The Canopus is absolutely flawless. It does just what it is supposed to do. Convert analog to digital. Do yourself a favor and save a lot of grief and time. Stay away from ADS,Adaptec,Dazzle and Pinnacle. Tried them all, returned them all. Look up Canopus on this site and read the reviews. . Good luck.

[vitamine]

hehe...thanks for the advice. I sure will try to get that Canopus. How much are they anyways? Good deals anywhere? Another point I forgot to make is I love to have one that would work with virtual dub.

[ADS Ivan]

Has anyone here checked out the new Instant DVD 2.0 from ADS yet? It is a major upgrade from the last one. I'm sure you can guess, I work for ADS and I am more than available if anyone has any ?'s. I'm also that wacky hobbiest who feels like I have tried most everything out there, from Dazzle to Pinnacle to the mentioned Canopus product, to the Adaptec products & even cheap unbranded stuff like the solutions from guys like KWorld.

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV702/intro/usb702intro.asp?pid=USBAV702

Note that products like the Instant DVD are quite different from the Canopus ADVC-100 as while the Canopus is a DV transcoder (capturing video as DV encoded AVIs), Instant DVD 2.0 captures VCD, SVCD, DVD and now even custom MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video on the fly (CBR or VBR) with hardware encoding (eliminating rendering). It's a great time saver, and with the 2.0's integration with packages like DVD MovieFactory 2.0, it just can't get any easier (record direct to DVD disc on the fly or in a 1 step automated process, with menus, chapters and more).

Regards,
ADS Ivan

[ADS Ivan]

The lowest price I've seen on the Canopus ADVC-100 is $240 from MacSolutions (don't worry it's the PC product)

You can find in at http://store.macsolutions.com/pgi-Product%20Spec?631069100723

I think the key is to know you're ultimate goal though, do you want to capture, edit and send back out to tape? Or do you want to transfer/back-up your tapes to VCD/DVD?

Regards,
ADS Ivan

[vitamine]

thansk...how much for the ads? a good deal?

[ADS Ivan]

We just launched the product on May 15th officially. The product is still getting into distribution, but shouldn't be too hard to find. It should be in Circuit City in early June.

I found it from one of our partners on Half.com for $179.

I'll hook up with a reseller like Meritline or ESBuy next week and see if they can promote the product to you guys with a special coupon code. Realistically, the Instant DVD 2.0 was built for the members of the DVDRHelp community, so I'll definitely see what I can do if anyone would like to try the product out. We'd love to get your feedback, and make sure that it is "the solution" when you encode your video for VCD/DVD authoring.

With an open ear,
ADS Ivan

[txpharoah]

Take a look at the ATI All In Wonder cards too. They work great. The guide in my signature even has info on how to capture VHS/tv straight to DVD.

[vitamine]

Now one last and most important question....is this solution better than using the digital camcorder passthrough capability ability of many digital camcorders to capture your analog video (8mm, Hi8, VHS) and convert it into an equivalent digital video which is easy to send to your computer via Firewire?

[SHS]

I would recommend Canopus ADVC100 for bad messup VHS tape or if you just so happing to have highend digital camcorder that has passthrough capability for thoses VHS tape yes that be 2x more work and take longer to do one clip.
I been using WinTV-PVR 250 because it more useful then thoses plain jana capture and I have done 8mm, Hi8, VHS.
What real going to be interesting is seeing is the new Canopus MPEGPRO MVR and the MPEGPRO EMR both of them feature advanced image filtering, such as 3D digital noise reduction, 3D frame synchronizer, line time base corrector and 3D Y/C separation (NTSC only), to provide enhanced image quality and do belive it going transcoding but only with DV file but it cost $500 and still lack a tuner what was interesting is add TBC which the MVR1000 didn't have it but it to bad Canopus Japan can't see where light is after all they make lot other cooler toys.

ADS Ivan what chipset are your they using now on the Instant DVD 2.0? I hope it not the Cirrus Logic CS92288 if so just so boys know it that chip is only half-duplex.

I think the Vweb 2010 will be much more interesting to see after all not only dose it do MPEG-1/MPEG-2 but it also dose MPEG-4 and H.263 and it Audio Encoding are cool to see below.
MPEG-1 Layer I, II and III (MP3)
MPEG-2 Layer I and II
2-channel down-mixed AAC
2-channel down-mixed AC-3
Sampling frequencies: 8, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48 and 96 KHz.
Bits per channel: 16, 20, 24, 32

[kenmo]

We just launched the product on May 15th officially. The product is still getting into distribution, but shouldn't be too hard to find. It should be in Circuit City in early June.

I found it from one of our partners on Half.com for $179.

I'll hook up with a reseller like Meritline or ESBuy next week and see if they can promote the product to you guys with a special coupon code. Realistically, the Instant DVD 2.0 was built for the members of the DVDRHelp community, so I'll definitely see what I can do if anyone would like to try the product out. We'd love to get your feedback, and make sure that it is "the solution" when you encode your video for VCD/DVD authoring.

With an open ear,
ADS Ivan

Does the ADS capture to AVI ?

[ADS Ivan]

ADS Ivan what chipset are your they using now on the Instant DVD 2.0? I hope it not the Cirrus Logic CS92288 if so just so boys know it that chip is only half-duplex.

With Instant DVD 2.0, we have evolved to the 2288 chip. This new chip supports MPEG Audio (all layers), PCM Audio and AC-3 audio. Note that although we do not ship with the AC-3 enabled, we are looking into putting together a plug-in you could buy as an upgrade to enable it (extra royalty costs for the AC-3 would be wasted by most people, as the average end user would be fine with MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio). The magic of the Instant DVD 2.0 is that it captures a DVD Compliant stream right out of the box, no rendering!

Does the ADS capture to AVI ?

The Instant DVD 2.0 is currently an MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 solution (built for hassle free DVD/SVCD/VCD authoring). If you're looking for AVI's like the Canopus ADVC-100 puts out, we have a solution that directly competes with it which we call PYRO A/V Link, which for less that $249 is your ultimate breakout box. We have a pretty broad product line but are more than dedicated to the consumer/prosumer video marketplace. With the AV Link, you're looking and Composite, S-Video, Component (YPbPr) as well as DV in to a DV compliant stream (a DV encoded AVI).

[SHS]

Yup no body shipping AC3 plug-in due to very high royalty cost of $200 all by it self just look at of some of the DVD Authoring Software that support AC3 ekk.
Yes you rigth AC3 is really not need MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio will just fine if the Home DVD Player is not to old.
I'am sorry ADS Ivan but you can't captures a ture DVD Compliant stream right out of the box this is 100% wrong rigth from get go that can't be done what can be done is capture MPEG but it must compliant stream in order to build a compliant DVD which done by DVD Authoring Software so there no rendering there.

[ADS Ivan]

you can't captures a ture DVD Compliant stream right out of the box this is 100% wrong rigth from get go that can't be done what can be done is capture MPEG but it must compliant stream in order to build a compliant DVD which done by DVD Authoring Software so there no rendering there.

The bundled DVD Movie Factory can capture an MPEG-2 video from Instant DVD 2.0, and without rendering the MPEG-2 author your video to disc. In truth, the tight integration with Ulead's movie factory allows for a true 1 step capture and burn process, as well as a "direct to disc" feature where your DVD is created as you capture with custom menus, chapter points and more. Like you, I'm a hobbiest...I might be a salesman, but I use the tools too...

[SHS]

ADS Ivan I know what you ref to now it know as REALtime MPEG to DVD Transcoding I never like this feature at all, oh and the custom menus, chapter points etc, etc are done at end of capture.

[mmasw]

Take a look at the ATI All In Wonder cards too. They work great. The guide in my signature even has info on how to capture VHS/tv straight to DVD.

I have to agree with Tx on this one


The ATI AIW cards are a quite viable option. You can capture directly to DVD compliant MPG-2. With a little care you can avoid the hassle of attemted to edit MPG-2. I have an ATI AIW 8500DV...it works great. Furthermore, The newestMultimediaCenter Interface comes with an option called VideoSoap which I understand is quite effective and cleaning up noise in analog streams.

The Canopus appears to be an excellent card, but if you have a lot of analog video to capture, keep in mind that you will still have to edit and convert/encode the product of the canopus to make it DVD compliant....and that can take a great deal of time

[birdygal]

If you really want the best capture hardware without lots of problems and the best quailty go with a DV camera with analaog to digital pass through straight to your harddrive via firewire

DV is easy to edit , No dropped frames audio is in sync and I get the results I expect. Plus a 100 percent better quality video than my old VHS camcorder performed


I have used ADS Instant DVD, Pinacle DC10 +, Canopus ADVC1394
and neither of them have performed out of the box as advertised

[vhelp]

hi everyone..

@ SHS..

What's this support for H.263 about ?? ..zjust interesting you brought it up

@ ADS Ivan.. hehe..

Are these guys including support for on-the-fly IVTC or at least an option to
select it ie, (o) IVTC when you know your source is Film ??

I do hope these guys are including it. Curious to know if this is included
as a standard feature, or ware we looking at ghosting so more.

Also, as an old fan of the PVR USB (the first one) - - (from yesterday) are
their any MACRO BLOCKS in low bitrates ie, 2000 to 2520 bitrate (for
SVCD/CVD) type encodes. This one had lots of them, back then, which is
why I gave up on it - long ago.

Also, how configureable is this new device ?? some ie's:
* Interlace
* Telecine (FILM) (a.ka. IVTC)
* Progressive
* VBR, CQ, CBR etc.
* Audio.. ..
* DTC
* AR (Aspect Ratio) 4:3 vs. 16:9 etc.
* Cropping (built-in) or config.
* letter boxing (built-in) or config.
* lots more.. ..

Not to sound hypicritical, but if this device produced comperable output to
my typicle encodes (or better) even I would be willing to give this device a try..
But, there's no substitue for an .AVI to MPEG-2.

That's all the questions for now.
-vhelp

[jay1028]

vitamine,
I almost feel sorry for you with all of the different views. To answer you question about Video Dub, I am sure it will work since the ADVC100 is just a harware device. No proprietary internal MPEG2 conversion like the ADS,Dazzle or Adaptec. I bought the ADS 2.0 because I have USB 2.0 ports and liked the advertised faster conversion and quality from USB 2.0. After on the phone with their tech support for hours, it was decided that the performance I was looking for could not be achieved. I was only looking to make copies of tapes without any degredation. I don't think that I was too demanding!! I have read that you can get excellent results using a DV camcorder as a pass thru to convert analog to digial. By the way, the ADVC100 requires a firewire port on your PC. I spent $20 on a plain jane 1394 card and it all works great. The Canopus ADVC100 is priced at $300. If you look real hard with Google, you can find one for around $275 when I bought mine 6 months ago. Ebay is another option.

Looks to me you are going through what I went through, to do what I thought was a simple process to just convert tapes to DVD. As you have already found out, video is way more intensive than audio.

[SHS]

I'm shock vhelp you don't know what H.263 is well I tell I'm sure you have heard of VoIP that one min thing that using this feature.
What do mean by Interlace vhelp? analog is all ready Interlace, Forgot Progressive this need DeInterlace when come to analog video and as for Cropping this can be done but there a download to it which end up making the video smaller rez so what eles is need is re-scale the image to back to 720x480, etc, etc.
As for this AR (Aspect Ratio) 4:3 vs. 16:9 that what the IfoEdit for other then you need HighEnd DVD Authoring Software.

[vhelp]

well, actually, I thought it was something to do w/ one of the color space
standards, and I think that I saw it in one of TMPG's config screen.

The Interlace is like this:

* if you source footage being captured is Interlaced, then you source will
...be caputred as Interlaced.

* if you source footage being captured is Progressive, then you source will
...be caputred as Progressive. But, w/ Progressive, you don't need to do
...any de-interlacing, nor should you. These are clean frames, and the best to
...capture !!

* if you source footage being captured is Telecined (a.k.a, [3,2] Film) then
...your source will be caputred as Telecined (a.k.a, [3,2] Film) and your
...process will require an IVTC step (should you so desire, else you can
...leave it in and skip it, and well... see ghosting in your final play)

PVR USB (orig version) ...
I remember using this device in my old days, and had trouble w/ its color
being washed out and being limited to 3 bitrate settings. Then, I came out
w/ an hack .reg file (was the first one to for this device, though back then,
someone had stolen my hack and took the credit for it) and this allowed you
to change the bitrate to whatever you wanted it to be. As for the audio, it
was pretty locked to 192k, but I did come up w/ a rather screwy hack, but
at the time, I had decided to NOT release it. Anyways.. The unit was on
the blocky side. Though, if you did some DVD sources, the blocks were
not as bad, though still noticable. Back then, I was still wet behind my ears
w/ blocks and things, and my requirements/compremise were different.
Today, I would never use that same device. I have it sitting next to my TV
as an ornament and stuff, hehe.. I got a lot out of this device, belieave it
or not. I had some good times. But, what made me drop it, was one day,
2 years or so ago, one of the Olympics was on, and I was all ready and set
plans to capture it at high bitrate and then re-encode it via .D2V file, but
when I did this, it was really bad. I could not beleive how bad it came out
and I was so pissed because I had done a good portion of it. It set me
back a little, and I had to re-do those protions that I actually recorded on
tapes (lucky me) while I was capturing them to PVR, though there were a
few parts that I missed recording. One of the things that really made me
rethink this device, was what it was doing to the frames. I can't explain it,
but it wasn't good. Anyways.. that was the old version of this unit. I'm sure
they have worded it better now

-vhelp

[SHS]

vhelp all WinTV-PVR capture interlaced I do belive so do all other hardware capture card do to when start capturing pass 352x240.
Record progressive full frame 720x480 or 576 can't be done over analog source have read thur http://www.100fps.com/ ? been there are 2field odd and even.
You want record progressive you need high definition.
Telecined (a.k.a, [3,2] Film) dosen't alway work over AIR Broadcast nor Cable nor Satellite I know I can enable but it but usless most of time been they don't endbed that info in to signel.
Was it you that had web page on WinTV-PVR USB?.
I agree the first USB PVR was done poorly from some people have been saying at the time hauppauge did how ever upgrade the board alot after that, there doing all new USB PVR 2 which is far better the first USB PVR.

[vhelp]

hi SHS..

When you have the time, have a look at CBT (country music televisoin) and
do some captures. Pay close attention to the details. They air LOTS of
their videos in PROGRESSIVE format !! I am also starting to notice that
even some newer commericals are airing in PROGRESSIVE format too.

If I get the chance to actually capture (by coinsidence) any of these types,
I'll post some up here for you do disect. Knowing for sure what you source
is airing (in time, you'll develpe a trained eye for this) can only help you
further in obtaining better quality of your end product.

The interlace that you are thinking is correct, but not the same thing here.
I've ben to www.100fps.com many times to brush up on my frustration.

Example of progressive capture..
* Rip a DVD movie of your choise, using forced film (24fps)
* then, encode it w/ 23.976 but DON'T apply ANY 3:2 pulldon under
...tmpg, eles if you do, you'll insert those flags, and you WILL have interlace.
* remember to set BOTH source types to non-interlace, under the Video tab
...and Advance Tab.
* then, encode it.
* next, burn this 23.976 PROGRESSIVE clip to CDRW disk.
* next, play it in your DVD player, and capture it.

When you observe it, you should see NO interlace.

There are two kinds of Interlace..
* Scan Line, where EVEN fields 1,3,5 show, then ODD fields, 2,4,6 show
...for TV sets.
* Source type, where one Frame is halfe the resolution x240 etc, etc.

In any case, i'll keep my eyes out for some demo clips to illistrate this.
But, you are right, most anything from broadcast is usually screwy

-vhelp