Comparing DAC100 to the ADVC 100

[Bondiablo]

The only complaint I've heard about the DAC compared to the ADVC, other than the DAC being more picky about source quality, is that the DAC can't capture B&W footage. Don't know if it's true though or why that would be.

Also there is one more similar device besides those already mentioned, the Miglia Directors Cut. Interestingly their support section says their device can't capture B&W either.

[Marco33]

The only complaint I've heard about the DAC compared to the ADVC, other than the DAC being more picky about source quality, is that the DAC can't capture B&W footage. Don't know if it's true though or why that would be.

The DAC needs what they call a "color burst". That's why it doesn't work on B&W.

[stevedore]

I started with the DAC-100 a couple of months ago, and agree with the comments relating to older or lower-quality tapes. My biggest complaint was that once it encountered a problem, it couldn't recover easily. It would continue capturing jerky video, dropping frames like crazy, giving me a worthless capture.

I traded up to the ADVC-100, and have seen quite an improvement. It may drop a frame on a marginal tape, but it recovers immediately & continues capturing the video that follows.

Regarding Macrovision: The ADVC-100 has an indicator that lights when it encounters Macrovision protection. I've seen it on a Disney tape I was capturing, and the defeat feature described above works well. The DAC-100 appears to filter Macrovision by default, as it had no trouble capturing the same tape.

[zanos]

From what I can tell the DAC100 is a piece of junk. I had to return it because the quality of the signal coming in thru my directv via svideo was equal to medium quality svcd. Plugging in my cam thru the firewire port produced pretty much the same results. I have no idea why this was. In any case you'd be better off buying yourself a used mini dv with pass thru off of ebay. That's basically what the canopus is anyway but instead of being able to use it as a camcorder it just sits there.

[FL350innh]

From what I can tell the DAC100 is a piece of junk. I had to return it because the quality of the signal coming in thru my directv via svideo was equal to medium quality svcd. Plugging in my cam thru the firewire port produced pretty much the same results. I have no idea why this was. In any case you'd be better off buying yourself a used mini dv with pass thru off of ebay. That's basically what the canopus is anyway but instead of being able to use it as a camcorder it just sits there.

What are you using now? I've used both ADVCand the DAC. Both do a good job.. But the DAC (for me) has been more tolerant of poor tapes. Never a sync issue and recovers quickly. Your milage my vary... Depending on what you use for source. Bad tapes have always recoverd for me on the DAC better then the ADVC or my pass through on the camcorder. I capture from my Hughes sat box with no problems or quality difference.. But then again I use 6 head vcrs, Quality DVD players and quality cables. I make sure no EMF from other sources is an issue as well. It's always easy to blame the hardware and forget about the capture enviorment.

[monoxide77]

I own the ADVC-100 and I love it. The comments about the color are right on. On normal films that you might be capturing, the "color boost" is a good thing. However, it seems to be a problem with animation, especiallly where bright blues and reds are concerned. The colors seem to bleed together. I've learned this capturing many Disney LDs. The worst by far is Aladdin. If I can muster up some screenshots, I will. On the other end of the spectrum, I captured the movie D.A.R.Y.L., the letterboxed version and I was impressed. Watching the LD on my TV the colors seem bland and almost washed out. When I captured it and watched it on DVDr, the colors seemed to come to life, more vibrant. And I used no color enhancing filters or anything. I'd be willing to try the DAC-100 for capturing animation. Now i'm curious.

[zanos]

From what I can tell the DAC100 is a piece of junk. I had to return it because the quality of the signal coming in thru my directv via svideo was equal to medium quality svcd. Plugging in my cam thru the firewire port produced pretty much the same results. I have no idea why this was. In any case you'd be better off buying yourself a used mini dv with pass thru off of ebay. That's basically what the canopus is anyway but instead of being able to use it as a camcorder it just sits there.

What are you using now? I've used both ADVCand the DAC. Both do a good job.. But the DAC (for me) has been more tolerant of poor tapes. Never a sync issue and recovers quickly. Your milage my vary... Depending on what you use for source. Bad tapes have always recoverd for me on the DAC better then the ADVC or my pass through on the camcorder. I capture from my Hughes sat box with no problems or quality difference.. But then again I use 6 head vcrs, Quality DVD players and quality cables. I make sure no EMF from other sources is an issue as well. It's always easy to blame the hardware and forget about the capture enviorment.

I am going to either hack my mini dv to enable the pass thru feature or buy one off of ebay for around 100 dollars. Maybe I got a lemon, who knows. All I know is it's a $175 piece of junk. I don't think I'd keep it now even if it did work fine. The DAC and especially the canopus are extremely overpriced for what they do.

[Will Hay]

The only complaint I've heard about the DAC compared to the ADVC, other than the DAC being more picky about source quality, is that the DAC can't capture B&W footage. Don't know if it's true though or why that would be.

The DAC needs what they call a "color burst". That's why it doesn't work on B&W.

I've heard conflicting reports that the DAC-100 can't capture black and white footage.
I'm torn between this and the ADVC-100 and need to be able to convert old B&W movies to DVD therefore this is important.
Can anyone confirm?
Many thanks,
Will

Ps. Yes, I know this is an old thread, but that's why a forum search is a good idea before posting the same question over and over

[Michelle]

The only complaint I've heard about the DAC compared to the ADVC, other than the DAC being more picky about source quality, is that the DAC can't capture B&W footage. Don't know if it's true though or why that would be.

The DAC needs what they call a "color burst". That's why it doesn't work on B&W.

I've heard conflicting reports that the DAC-100 can't capture black and white footage.
I'm torn between this and the ADVC-100 and need to be able to convert old B&W movies to DVD therefore this is important.
Can anyone confirm?
Many thanks,
Will

Ps. Yes, I know this is an old thread, but that's why a forum search is a good idea before posting the same question over and over

I think that any device that is color capable will provide the "color burst" even if it is playing a B&W signal. To confirm I got out my "High Noon" DVD and it captures fine.

[Metaluna]

Technically, I don't think a signal that lacks a colorburst is legal NTSC (or PAL) anyway. NTSC without the colorburst is called RS-170. I think it would be pretty rare to run across RS-170 if you were capturing normal broadcast content.

[trhouse]

Just curious but what does the DAC-100 or ADVC-100 do when a tape has a flaw resulting in bars that scroll and the picture is obsured for a few seconds. Can these products still maintain sync or recover sync after the flaw?

[Holden]

I have a DAC100. It has flawlessly captured Hi8mm tapes up to 7 years old, my 10 year old VHS wedding video, DVD player ouput and 4 year old VHS recordings on 12 year old tapes.

The only tape so far it can't capture was recorded in an 80's vintage full size VHS camcorder. The tracking is so bad that the DAC100 just outputs nothing. Viewing this tape on a TV shows why: Even with manual riding of the tracking adjustment, it is barely watchable, and only because of its' personal meaning to me.

BTW: I ues WinDV to capture the signal with and it works perfectly.

Greg

[trhouse]

Thanks for the comment. It is difficult when many are satisfied with a product to determine what its limitations are. These products seem to garner much praise for their ability to maintain sync. but I would guess at some point a TBC may still be needed. I have thought about trying one of these devices but my current capture device does not have any sync problems as long as the VHS tape is in good condition. If the tape has a crease or the rolling bars that obscure the picture, it can lose sync although not always. Is this the same with the DAC100 or ADVC100?

[vcdforme]

How about an ADS Pyro A/V link?
Half the price of the Canopus, and I think it
works better.
Unlike Canopus, they even give you some software and
a manual.
$150 at Circuit city.

[Dragonsf]

As far as using Virtual Dub to capture with the ADCV100- Forget about it ! Virtual Dub does NOT support any Firewire port captures and never has. However.....

The following site has info on using Virtual Dub after capture & conversion, if you are so inclined.

www22.brinkster.com/mikemelancholic/guide/guide_main.html

That's in nop way true.I'm using VirtualDub for all my DV "captures" without any problem.The only drawback (which is a feature for me):you need a separate Audio card for capturing AUDIo, as VDub can't capture DV Audio.To get VirtualDub working with FW:
1. remove all other VfW Video capture drivers (i.e if you have any Video-IN device, Vdub doesn't see the FW drivers)
2. to activate the FW drivers, start DVapp, then AVI-IO and select the FW drivers in AVI-IO
3. stop AVI-IO, start VDup, go into capture mode and setup Video (compression: use the default compressor/no recompression)
4. check Audio (use 48Khz/16Bit Stereo)
5. start capture

[Metaluna]

That's in nop way true.I'm using VirtualDub for all my DV "captures" without any problem.The only drawback (which is a feature for me):you need a separate Audio card for capturing AUDIo, as VDub can't capture DV Audio.

While I'm sure that this works great for your application, I have to believe that locked audio is one of the major features that attracts people to these DV capture boxes (otherwise, why not just get something like an All-In-Wonder VE at less than half the price, and get better video quality in the bargain). So I think it's still fair to say that Vdub doesn't support DV capturing in the way most people intend for it to work.

[Dragonsf]

The major drawback of Audio in DAC 100 und HDB are the failures you get, when there is a bad frame.With both devices you get no audio during such frames->there is a gap in the audio stream.With the DAC 100, these are from 5 to 25 frames starting at the bad one and the HDB are 1-2.That's why I prefer the separate Audio solution (which never produced an out-of-sync audio stream BTW ).I made more than 30 DVDs this way and I happy, that I can do that.Before I used Premiere/DVApp and others and had a lot of work to eliminate/recover those gaps.

[Bondiablo]

Here's an update to the DAC-100 and B&W. This reply comes straight from DataVideo.

I apologize in advance for probably giving you more information that you want.

It will do fine with a B&W scene in a color movie.
It will do fine with something that has been broadcast.
It will do fine with DVD's.
VHS/SVHS - depends on whether they have color burst (sorry to be a nit picker here).
If they are commercial VHS, chances are they do.
If they are security VHS tapes, chances are they do not.

I guess you can deduce from this reply that we also sell DAC's to security people who want to edit their tapes.

[pbanders]

I have the ADS Pyro A/V Link, it's a great device. I was unaware of the Macrovision filtering of the ADVC-100, does anyone know if the ADS has Macrovision filtering? I'll test it tonight when I get home.

[pbanders]

I have the ADS Pyro A/V Link, it's a great device. I was unaware of the Macrovision filtering of the ADVC-100, does anyone know if the ADS has Macrovision filtering? I'll test it tonight when I get home.

Took me a while, but I finally tested it - yes, the ADS does remove Macrovision.

[hiptune]

[quote="FL350innh I've used both ADVCand the DAC. Both do a good job.. But the DAC (for me) has been more tolerant of poor tapes. Never a sync issue and recovers quickly. Your milage my vary... Depending on what you use for source. Bad tapes have always recoverd for me on the DAC better then the ADVC or my pass through on the camcorder. quote]

Funny that you are the only one who says the DAC handles poor quality tapes better than the ADVC - 100.

The ADVC handles all video incl. B & W perfectly. Yet you come along saying it has issues.

Yep, only you out of hundreds. My millage does indeed vary from yours.

Jeff

[Matteo693]

What do people think about Canopus (or equiv) vs Camcorder pass-thru captures? Are they basically the same quality?

Can Macrovision be defeated when using the DV camcorder method?

[hiptune]

What do people think about Canopus (or equiv) vs Camcorder pass-thru captures? Are they basically the same quality?

Can Macrovision be defeated when using the DV camcorder method?

Yes, the quality (providing the camcorder is working perfectly) should be about the same.

The macrovision would not be removed without the advc or another device.

Good questions here.

Jeff

[spectroelectro]

As for the Canopus (or DAC-100) vs camcorder pass-through capture, it's important to note that the camcorder pass-through does NOT give you locked audio. A camcorder pass-through capture will invariably slide out of audio/video sync in the same way that regular captures with an el cheapo card like the Leadtek do. Somewhere around 1/3 of all the cries for help on this forum involves audio/video sync probelms, so this is an important point.
As for getting VDub to capture from firewire, it's technically true that you can get it to work on some computer systems (depending on your OS and mobo) but as mentioned you lose audio sync when you do that. So once again you're back to square one with problems in the audio and video sliding out of sync.
For my part, if I'm capturing blocks of video from a TV show, audio-video sync issues aren't serious. No block of video lasts much longer than about 12 minutes and the el cheapo PCI capture card I use lets me select "NONE" for "SYNC TO" and (the options are AUDIO and VIDEO and NONE) and also lets me select NO COMPRESSION instead of DV Audio or PCM audio. I've found that with those options on my particular PCI Leadtek video capture card, I only get audio/video desync but around 8 or 9 frames after 13 minutes. I can fix that in the mix with Ulead Media Studio Pro, so it's not an issue.
But if you plan to capture a long continuous block of video, then I would strongly suggest avoiding capping via camcorder pass through OR via VDub from the Canopus or DAC-100 with audio through your sound card. I occasionally capture long blcoks of video from CSPAN-2 to VCD, and after about an hour the audio & video get deync'd enough that there's around and half a second of lag twixt audio and video. If it weren't some talking head giving a lecture, it would be unwatchable.
Which explains why I still tend to use my Canopus for most captures. The aduio/video lock + TMPG lets you capture to a large hard disk and then queu up your AVI files to encode overnight. I find that this frees up my computer to an incredible extent, while still maintaining superb video quality on the MPEG-2 encodes.
One of the reasons I bought an el cheapo PCI cap card even after I had my Canopus is that the cap card lets me capture in real time to MPEG-2 or SVCD or VCD format. However, my experience is that I didn't save much time. I still ahve to run Womble MPEG VCR to cut the comemrcials out of hte captured MPEG-2 files, then I typically run Rejig to squeeze the MPEG-2 video so 2 TV shows will fit on one DVD, and then I have to author the DVD and burn it. All that takes mre time, in the end, that just capping via the Canopus to DV files and queueing up the DV files for encoding overnight with TMPGenc.