Can you significantly improve from Canopus ADVC110?

[gevorg]

I've tried a Canopus ADVC110 to capture VHS to digital, and got quite disappointed with its performance since it cannot even match my 10+ year old Sony DCR-TRV27 miniDV camcorder in pass-through mode. I was hoping that an A-to-D converter that is being sold today would outperform an old camcorder, guess not. Can you significantly improve from Canopus ADVC110? Not sure if I should try another capture card, since I feel like I'll be squeezing the last 1% of possible quality.

[DB83]

An ADVC is not a capture card. It merely converts an analogue signal 'A' to 'DV'.

Its bigger brother the ADVC300 has extra features to improve the conversion process but you will read on here mixed opinion of its worth.

[danno78]

You may skip DV 4:1:1 color space compression with any capture card and get uncompressed/lossless compression. I don`t see any reason why Sony DCR-TRV27 is beter over Canopus ADVC110. On composite Canopux boxes are much beter than Sony in pasthrough mode because comb filter used by Sony is a basic one versus 2D adaptive Philips used in ADVC110.

[gevorg]

An ADVC is not a capture card. It merely converts an analogue signal 'A' to 'DV'.

Its bigger brother the ADVC300 has extra features to improve the conversion process but you will read on here mixed opinion of its worth.

Correct, I've meant to say a capture "device" not a "card". I'll take a closer look at ADVC300, hopefully it uses a better A-to-D converter.

You may skip DV 4:1:1 color space compression with any capture card and get uncompressed/lossless compression.

Thanks, I'll see if that makes any difference. In my initial comparison, both captures from Sony and Canopus, ended up compressed in DVSD.

I don`t see any reason why Sony DCR-TRV27 is beter over Canopus ADVC110. On composite Canopux boxes are much beter than Sony in pasthrough mode because comb filter used by Sony is a basic one versus 2D adaptive Philips used in ADVC110.

That sounds right in theory, but in my practice, whatever the Sony camcorder does is better than Canopus.

[Brad]

Perhaps you could throw up some samples of the same content running through each, for the rest of us to see?

[gevorg]

they're all private family events, I'll see if I can cut out a small boring clip for the whole world to see

[2Bdecided]

The difference is that your camcorder probably includes a TBC, maybe some filtering, and some massaging of luma+chroma levels. The ADVC110 does a great job of converting the analogue video to DV without changing it - with a lousy source, that may be the last thing you want! A TBC is almost always beneficial; filtering and level changing may be. If your camcorder loop-through does a better job, use that.

Assuming you're talking about a VHS source, capturing to lossless and avoiding 4:1:1 chroma are secondary issues compared with using a TBC and getting the levels correct/better. A pure lossless capture with no TBC, no filtering, and the same levels as the ADVC110 happened to use is going to look basically (maybe even exactly!) like the capture from the ADVC110.

Cheers,
David.