Help choosing capture device!

[swiego]

I apologize for the newbie question. I *think* I know what I plan to do, but I need to get some advice...

I have about 200 to 300 VHS, SVHS, 8mm, Hi8 and other analog tapes to digitize. Some are high quality, others less so. I already have a JVC 9910U VHS player and a Sony EV-S5000 player for the 8mm tapes. Current goals are -
1. Strong bias toward low-compression high quality capture. I only need to digitize the video, not burn it to DVD or some such. I have a few terabytes of working space and plenty of optical media for archival storage.
2. Some of the tapes are not the best quality. I have found the JVC and Sony to do a very good job of extracting the maximum amount of image out of these tapes. What I don't know is whether another device somewhere else in the pipeline might capture a little bit more.

I think a Canopus AVDC-300 would be a good device. From my reading here, its output is low-compression high-quality AVI, which meets my needs. It also seems to have some image cleanup functionality that may prove useful during the capture process. Lastly it seems to address any audio/video sync issues.

My questions:
1. Am I on the right track, is the AVDC-300 the item I need?
2. Feedback on the JVC and Sony? Is it fair to say that I should not expect to get dramatically higher quality output from other devices?
3. Is it true that DV (what the AVDC-300 produces) is what I am after, or are there other alternatives that might justify a different device?

Any help appreciated....

[redwudz]

I think the Canopus might be a good choice for what you are planning. DV is easy to edit and work with compared to MPEG video. The ADVC device also has an advantage of locked audio/video sync.

You do realize that encoding DV to DVD specs will take a while, depending on the speed of your computer? If you wanted a faster method, albeit with less quality, you could use a DVR and record direct to DVD. But if you need extensive editing, that would be a drawback. You could also capture with a hardware encoder card to MPEG, but it would have the same problems with editing as the DVR method.

Another method would be software capture to AVI and then convert to MPEG, but with that amount of video to process, it would likely take longer than any of the above methods.

[zoobie]

Sounds like a good setup.
If you have all that space, I'd forget DVD and save them as the original DV they came in. Then transfer to the new tech that's coming out.

[swiego]

Thanks for the initial input.

Storage is not a consideration, video will either stay online or be moved to optical or LTO tape for long-term archival. Only clips would be transcoded to DVD or otherwise, and only as needed.

I prefer to capture as close to the original as possible, and save the postprocessing for later. Again, for ongoing use, clips would be extracted from LTO and could be postprocessed at that time, depending on requirements.

I've been reading (more) since making my post and definitely get the sense that DV or lossless 8-bit 4:2:0 (huffyuv?) meets my needs. I assume that the Canopus solution would mean that I am giving up the lossless option? If I am entertaining lossless but still want AV sync and possibly better TBC (that's full-frame, right?) than what my playback devices can provide, what are my options? PVR250 + a hardware device in the middle of the chain?

Lastly, I've read a few posts here that, well, speak pretty poorly of the AVDC-300. It almost sounds like I'd be better off with the AVDC-110 (or maybe some cheapo capture card that can feed video to a lossless software encoder) combined with a Datavideo TBC-3000 or some such?

Options... confusing....

[zoobie]

Not sure about your vhs source tapes but the 110 doesn't defeat macrovision...the 100 did as well as the 55 I believe...
I think you'd be very happy with your original plan but it depends if you need macrovision defeated. Make sure to clean the heads on those players.

[swiego]

Thanks. Don't need macrovision defeat, none of the source material is macrovision-encoded...