Canopus ADVC-110 or Hauppauge250+VDUB

[akito8]

I am half way done with my video capturing and some of my videos need some serious editing; I am presently using a Plextor PX-M402U (it works great for most of my videos). I want to capture uncompressed for the really messed up videos. I tried capturing with Virtual Dub, but it is having lag problems. I think it is too much bandwidth to capture uncompressed via USB...

Anyways, I want to get something where I can either capture to Uncompressed AVI or DV (which I hear the canopus does a good job of).

Things that are important:
1) video quality
2) video/audio sync
3) software that is good at editing. (i think i've read that the canopus captures to a DV file that is proprietary)

I've heard that the 110 is worse than the 100 or something... which is why I brought up the question. not sure if the 110 is better...
I know the canopus is known for good sync, but has the hauppauge ever been known to have sync issues?

[yoda313]

The hauppauge wintv pvr 250 is MPEG only so that may not be what you want if you need to cap to a dv file. Though I've never had a synch issue with my captures that I've noticed on my 250.

[edDV]

I'm not clear what problems you are having with your "really messed up videos" and how you intend to correct them.

Are you saying the plextor is somehow choking on these tapes? How so?

It may be a VCR playback issue.

There is no immediate reason to assume alternative encoders Hauppauge pvr-250 (to MPeg2) or Canopus ADVC (to DV) will do any better. Neither capture uncompressed.

A cheap tuner card can be used for uncompressed capture. These may struggle as well.

How do these tapes play directly to your TV? Can you dub them from one VCR to another?

What software and filters are you intending to use?

[akito8]

The problem with the plextor was that every 5 seconds, the picture would get stuck for 1 second, then continue. Which looks like lag to me.

The bad tapes are fine with the exception that they seriously need to be cropped (30-40 lines at bottom) or I need to fix the contrast/brightness, or in a few cases i want to try some other vdub filters.

JVC HR-S9911U (only 3 days old, works perfectly with good tapes)
Plextor PX-M402U (at 640X480, i need to crop about 5 lines from the bottom, 5 lines from the left, and about 10 lines from the right, when I am using a good tape)

In general I do not worry about cropping those lines, most of it is just black with the exception of the bottom which appears to be 5 lines of distorted wrap-around.

In the end, I believe the entire setup is fine with the occasional bad tape that is really worn. For these tapes, I feel I need to take some time and play with filters... if I end up using a lot of filters, I'd rather capture uncompressed; right now I am capturing DivX Home Theater setting.

Although I can get a cheap tuner card, I am trying to avoid sync issues, which I had with my AIW 9800 pro... which is why I am leaning toward the Canopus, unless the Hauppauge or other tuner card has a good record with syncing.

[akito8]

There is no immediate reason to assume alternative encoders Hauppauge pvr-250 (to MPeg2) or Canopus ADVC (to DV) will do any better. Neither capture uncompressed.

Are you sure? Using VDub, I thought it was possible.

I've used lossless compression (HuffYUV) and it worked great - 40GB for about 90minutes of video, but it looked great! sync was off... but editing the video was great; source from laserdisc, cropped off widescreen black bars and got my StarWars:SE '97 edition onto computer.

[edDV]

There is no immediate reason to assume alternative encoders Hauppauge pvr-250 (to MPeg2) or Canopus ADVC (to DV) will do any better. Neither capture uncompressed.

Are you sure? Using VDub, I thought it was possible.

I've used lossless compression (HuffYUV) and it worked great - 40GB for about 90minutes of video, but it looked great! sync was off... but editing the video was great; source from laserdisc, cropped off widescreen black bars and got my StarWars:SE '97 edition onto computer.

The ADVC captures to DV format only but many filters are available for DV format. I use the ADVC-100 to Premiere or Vegas most of the time. When I need to capture uncompressed, I use my ATI AIW.

The discussions here on the PVR-250 seem to have concluded uncompressed capture was not possible. I may have missed something.

[thecoalman]

As per your question about the ADVC

Things that are important:
1) video quality

Check

2) video/audio sync

Check

3) software that is good at editing. (i think i've read that the canopus captures to a DV file that is proprietary)

Not! :P Note: the ADVC comes with no software, none needed. Plug it in and capture with your favorite capturing app using DV. You could even just use movie maker. The software you use makes no difference besides the options it has such as splitting the file etc. That's the beaty of the ADVC or similar converters, simplicity.

The DV file can be opened by any editor. Nothing against the Hauppage but if heavy editing is your goal ADVC is the better choice.

I've heard that the 110 is worse than the 100 or something... which is why I brought up the question. not sure if the 110 is better...

Probably the biggest difference between the 110 and the 100 is that the 110 doesn't require a external power supply if your connecting it to a 6 pin firewire port on your computer. The only other thing that comes to mind is you can disable Macrovision protection on the 100.That has been confirmed many times here.

I've read a few posts that suggested it couldn't be done on some models of the 100's same with the 110. I've seen no conclusive posts about that though. I have a 110 and have been meaning to test it myself but haven't gotten around to it.

As EdDV suggested above if the problem lies elsewhere the ADVC isn't going to help. It would probably help if you posted a screenshot of what the error looks like.

[thecoalman]

I've used lossless compression (HuffYUV) and it worked great

If your using the ADVC..... my question is why would you want to convert it DV and then convert it to Huffy? I guess that would apply to the Hauppage as well.

[Torrential]

When I had my PVR-150 (which is now returned) - I got it to capture uncompressed AVI with VirtualDub (of course I had to use 720x480). It worked fine. I didn't really do anything special, just opened vdub and went to capture mode and it worked. Actually, now I remember something different. It might have been VirtualVCR. Well it was one of the two, and I know that it worked perfectly, because I plugged my audio from my cable box right into the line-in on my sound card, and the video and audio were in sync.

EDIT: I remember that for the color space, it had something funky like UYYY or something like that - didn't have a choice for YUY2. But I solved that problem by setting the compression codec to Huffyuv set to YUY2 mode. Now I could open it in programs like vdub, avisynth..

[akito8]

Everyone thanks for the info.

Coalman:

Basically my question was like this;

Should I buy the Hauppauge and use Vdub to capture uncompressed HuffYUV

or

Buy the Canopus to capture DV and use whatever (I am hoping that VDub works as well, since I didn't know that Canopus didn't have software)

Torrential:

did you have any dropped frames? I had to ramp my video b/c of sync issues; it was horrible to hear "I am your father", and then luke is still swinging his lightsaber because the video didn't catch up to that part yet.

[Torrential]

Canopus ADVC-100 won't work with just any app, and it won't work with Vdub. WinDV is an excellent application for capturing DV - it should work well. My suggestion though is to get the Hauppauge.

EDIT: No dropped frames..

[thecoalman]

Should I buy the Hauppauge and use Vdub to capture uncompressed HuffYUV

My opinion on that is you buy the tool for what ever your goal is. The Hauppage is a MPEG encoder and rom my understanding is great tool for that. The ADVC is for making DV-AVI.... neither is for making uncompressed AVI if you want uncompressed AVI get something for making uncompressed AVI.

Having said that your not going to find anything neraly as easy to use athe ADVC. Te quality of DV-AVI is more than acceptable and is much more edit friendly than MPEG.

Buy the Canopus to capture DV and use whatever (I am hoping that VDub works as well, since I didn't know that Canopus didn't have software)

Don't be mislead by that, you don't need any software for the Canopus. You plug it into your computer, start up any application capable of capturing from a DV device such as Movie Maker for example....... just about any software you have for capturing will fit the bill.

There is no messing with codecs etc.... you have tow choices Type1 or type2. Besides that some software may have additional features such as splitting the file into chunks etc. Regardless of what program you use to capture the results will be the same as long as your capturing as DV-AVI, all the conversion is done by the box, your computer has nothing to do with it beside recording the stream.

did you have any dropped frames? I had to ramp my video b/c of sync issues; it was horrible to hear "I am your father", and then luke is still swinging his lightsaber because the video didn't catch up to that part yet.

If you have problems like that with the ADVC it's your system or the the source.

[thecoalman]

Canopus ADVC-100 won't work with just any app, and it won't work with Vdub.

Do you mean capturing or the files? I'm not familiar with Vdub you can capture using Type 2 from a capturing app, I though that's what Vdub accepted?

[junkmalle]

Canopus ADVC-100 won't work with just any app, and it won't work with Vdub.

Do you mean capturing or the files?

You can't capture from a DV device with VirtualDub. It also can't capture from a hardware MPEG2 device like the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250. All variants of VirtualDub can edit DV AVI. VirtualDubMPEG2 and VirtaulDubMod can edit Hauppauge MPEG2 files.

BTW, the Hauppauge PVR series has proc amp controls that let you adjust the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation before the video is compressed. There are third party utilities that let you adjust the sharpness and spacial/temporal noise filtering. About the only thing you can't do is crop or mask the noise and black areas at the edges of the frame.

The Hauppauge PVR cards can also capture in MPEG2 at up to 15,000 kbps. There's very little difference between that and raw uncompressed video if you really need to do further processing.

[akito8]

Thanks for all the input guys, I'll have to read through all the posts again, it is a little confusing (some contradictory info), and I'll do some research and make a decision.

[SatStorm]

I would go with the canopus myself.

For realtime mpeg 2 encoding, there are other, non hardware based alternatives, with great results. Mainconcept for example....
Sure, it is a far more expensive root, but for my precius material, I prefer more for best, than less for good