Line Noise - mostly from VCR sources...not quite solved yet.

[vhelp]

I would love to hear more about your ADVC-100 captures and experience. Is DVIO the only capture application for the ADVC-100? Or is it the best app for DV? Or is it the only free app? I have never used firewire video transfers so I'm not sure how it all works.

Well, the reason I use DVIO is, 1, its free, and 2, it's simple. I don't need a preview.
(it does not have a preview window) I use my TV. My satellite has S-Video (connected
to my ADVC) and RCA, out to my TV. I just watch TV while I'm ADVC'ing. When something
strikes my fancy, I juts press record on DVIO (keyboard) press again to stop, edit
the number and continue another capture. I like it. It works for me, but prob not
for you or other maybe.
There is also synalizer but that has a logo on it, and I don't feel like paying for
it, though price $39 or so is not so bad.
I'm sure there are others, but I haven't tried them. I'm pretty satified w/ DVIO,
thou I do which it had segmentation. Then, it would be ALL that I need. I like
DVIO because its very small and does't hog any resources, and no fancy tools that
i'd never use anyways. That's for vdub/avisynth scripts etc.

Hmmm... Underdog.. I'll have to do some searching around then. I'll see what I
can come up with. sorry about my samples. I haven't ben doing them for a wile
due to MANY projects and things.

Well, I'm watching Clint Estwood right now.. Dirty Hary. I'm a great fan of
him. though he slitely lost his nitch after the 80's on up. W/ the exception
of Pail Rider that brough out the old Estwood in him.

Good that you haven't yet given up on your captures. Get rid of those Line Noises.
-vhelp

[vhelp]

Evening peoples..

bbb and others..

I was struct by something that allerted my attention, late last night..

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
VHS Sources - using the ADVC-100
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The short.. as I've said before, for VHS sources, the DC10+ will outperform
pretty much everything else out their (depending on your skills) and that
goes for the ADVC-100. The DC10+ outperformed the ADVC-100 w/ VHS sources.
So, I'm continuing sticking to my guns on this fact.

.
.

The long.. I was doing some ADVC-100 testings w/ VHS as my source. I did a
few movies, .. Mission to Mars and Monsters Inc. for i.e.
...and at first, I thought the quality was great. Until..

Just yesterday, I was searching through many of my sample clips to compare
(I keep on hand, just in case purposes) and found a few that looked VERY
impressive. To my surprise, they WERE from VHS sources !!
I sat and watched those samples Monsters Inc. and I noticed something
odd.. ..they were artifact free, and color rich, and overall sharpness, nice
and grainy looking and quality was stunning (IMO) for VHS sources. I did some
quicky captures w/ my ADVC-100 on a couple of scenes to compare to..

And, you know what ?? Those I did w/ the ADVC-100 didn't compare in quality.
So, I WAS right.. that for VHS projects, it's best to stick w/ the DC10+ !!

bbb, if you're objective to get (or am thinking of getting) the ADVC-100
souly for VHS sources, you may want to hold off, because I think you'll end
up being dissapointed - to be quite honest w/ you
For those that have never used a DC10+ (but use their ADVC-100 for VHS and other
sources) they'll never know what I'm talking about here, and won't believe me
anyways, and will probably claim that the ADVC-100 produces great quality from
their VHS sources (hogwash) ..but that's ok, being that they never used a
DC10+ before. So, they won't know what they're missing, and yes, they will
probably be right on their part.

I'm sure you'd like to get an idea of what I'm talking about, by viewing some
samples, but at the moment, I'm pressed w/ other items on my agenda, plus, I
have some more testing to do w/ the DC10+ and the ADVC-100.
But, if you really want to see some VHS samples from withever devices, please
let me know, and I'll see what I can come up with later maybe.

So, for those who want the best quality out of their VHS projects, the DC10+
is THE card to get for this endeavor.

bbb.. one more thing.. I'm sure this will make you more happy. I'm
going to be doing some more testing w/ the DC10+ (in addition to the above)
and my WTVGO card etc. to see "what else" I can do to minimize Line Noise.
Perhaps it IS the tv tuner part (on those cards) that IS causing those Line Noise.
The DC10+ and the ADVC-100 do not have any tv tuners, so maybe there is weight
there.

Looks like this thread is STILL going on after all !!

So, let me get busy w/ my work here, he he..
-vhelp

[bbb]

And, you know what ?? Those I did w/ the ADVC-100 didn't compare in quality. So, I WAS right.. that for VHS projects, it's best to stick w/ the DC10+ !!

OMG! Nooooooooooooooooooooooo

But, if you really want to see some VHS samples from withever devices, please let me know, and I'll see what I can come up with later maybe.

oooooooooooo. Please post some samples of the same VHS video captured by both the DC10+ and ADVC-100. I want to see this disappointment before I cry. Do it when you get the time. Thanks.

[TBoneit]

Just saw this thread, and thought I'd throw this out for consideration....

In the past one big source of RFI that I dealt with was cheapo dimmer switches for the lights.

Cheers

[robrosen]

I read somewhere that Athlon XP systems generate a lot of noise that affects TV tuner cards. The way around this noise is to switch to either a Celeron or a Pentium 4. Unfortunately, this means a swap of the motherboard and CPU. A Celeron 2GHz runs about $70 and a compatible motherboard should cost about $60. That's not a huge sum of dough, but that's at least 4 or 5 hours worth of work.

[vhelp]

Hi robrosen..

Although I haven't returned to this thread for updates and things, I've ben
pretty busy w/ other fun things, plus I took a break. I got the ADVC-100,
and that pretty much solved my Line Noise - well, almost.
This unit delivers w/out ANY Line Noise, but I have not yet
figured out:

* the exact cause, and
* how to resolve it

However, your response hasn't gone unnoticed. I have had a hunch about
the MotherBoards and Chipset/CPU being the cause for a while now.
But, I've not yet ben able to actually test this out (mostly lazy) w/ a new
or different mobo, but I have found some clips that I've done way back
when I had my "older" mobo setup, and the source (afer watching them
on the TV set) showed no noise at all. Below, is my older setup, using my
ATI-TV Wonder pci capture card:

* K7T Pro2-A (MS-6330) - Athlon 900mhz w/PC133 128MB


I'm still looking for the cause and resolution. Getting the ADVC-100 was
only a blanket, but NO REGRETS just the same, cause another issue I had
was w/ frame drops (FD) I had a few, but 1, in my opinion, is enough for
me to start strachen my head. I mean, several years back, we talked
about this being mostly due to low power or slow CPU setup. And, that was
back in the 233 MMX days, if you recall. Then, upgrading to an T-Brd w/ a
900MHz chip should of more than ben suffecient. It was not. Today, I now
have an XP 1700+ and XP 1800+ and I drop frames on my 1700+ but on my
1800+ I don't drop any unless the setup becomes unstable or I have used
up most of my respsources. So, weather my sources are from VHS or
Satellite, I will drop frames on my 1700+ though the tapes are always in
good condition (store bought movies)

So, in short, I haven't figured it all out, but I have now narrowed it down
to the mobo and cpu/chipset. I believe that it may finally be tied to this
area, hence my mobo: ESC K7S5A w/ XP 1700+ and I have TWO
of these guys. Eventually, I'll figure it all out and report back here, my
findings and things.

Thanks for your response
-vhelp

[MOVIEGEEK]

vhelp,
I have tried most of what was mentioned(and wasn't) on this thread and it hasn't helped.I still get faint RF interferance and what I've found to reduce the RF when capturing is use PowerVCRII and their "Intelligent Noise Removal"setting.

Good Luck

[robrosen]

vhelp wrote: I believe that it may finally be tied to this area, hence my mobo: ESC K7S5A w/ XP 1700+ and I have TWO of these guys.

I have the same motherboard with an XP 2000+ and SDRAM, and a Pinnacle PCTV tuner card. The one thing we have in common is the mobo and the type of chip.

moviegeek wrote: what I've found to reduce the RF when capturing is use PowerVCRII and their "Intelligent Noise Removal"setting.

This solution works, but introduces another problem. My problem with PowerVCR II is that it does not handle motion well - whenever the camera pans across a room, the captured MPEG stutters as if frames are being dropped - the motion is not at all smooth. The Intelligent Noise Removal setting also softens the picture too much, meaning that details on objects become more indistinct.

Bottom Line: I've found the ADVC-100 to be the best no-brainer capture solution out there. The captures are very good (although not perfect), and encoding into DVD MPEG-2 format is a cinch with both CCE (2.6 without requiring AVISynth) and TMPGEnc. However, if my ADVC-100 gives out on me, my replacement would be MJPEG captures using a 2 GHz Celeron with associated mobo. (I can capture MJPEG with my K7S5A & XP 2000+, but I get the aforementioned interference in my capture files).

Actually, thanks for both your responses...
robrosen

[txpharoah]

RG-6 is just a thicker cable with a different dielectric, so it has less loss per feet than RG-59. They are both 75 ohm impedance. Having a smaller cable is not necessarily a source of noise, if the cables are properly shielded. Just that the longer the cable, the less signal reaches the receiver, in comparison to an RG-6. If vhelp's problem was related to this, he would also see noise in his TV. But he sees it only in his captures.

That's not entirely true. As any person that has self-installed a satellite system would know, only RG6 cable is accepted. The satellite tv will not even function using RG59 cable. So there are several other differences. They were explained to me once, but it was by an engineer, so it went in one ear and out the other. I was still trying to look up his first few words in the dictionary as he prattled on.

My thoughts are either 1) hardware interference (cheap motherboards, video cards and soundcards do this a lot), 2) cheap cabling - go buy shielded gold everything from Monster and Radio Shack's RG6 if coax, 3) overloading the power supplies, 4) knowing that some VCRs refuse to share power strips (like my JVC HRS9800U), and 5) the source tape - whereas noise filters and deinterlacing (on harsh static) can remove the errors.

[robrosen]

txpharaoh wrote: My thoughts are either 1) hardware interference (cheap motherboards, video cards and soundcards do this a lot

I noticed in your profile that one of your machines uses an Athlon XP. Have you ever tried capturing to a TV tuner card using that machine? Did any noise show up in the capture file? What mobo do you use?

[Bob W]

I had the same exact problem but the lines went away forever when I bought and hooked up the Sima CopyMaster from BestBuy for $39. It filters, amplifies, re-syncs, and levels the video out from a VCR or any other video source, well Worth the money IMO.

[txpharoah]

I noticed in your profile that one of your machines uses an Athlon XP. Have you ever tried capturing to a TV tuner card using that machine? Did any noise show up in the capture file? What mobo do you use?

I've long since forgotten what kind of MoBo is in it (built two years ago), but I know it has VIA chips on it. I can capture just fine on the AMD system (on the rare occasion that I actually use it for video), and it uses a cheap Aver card that I won as a door prize. No noise at all. No dropped frames. Nothing. My systems all operate smoothly.