ADVC-100 vs ATI Radeon - Screenshots

[FulciLives]

This might be slightly off topic but ...

I've heard that some Digital cam people complain about the lower priced PANASONIC stand alone DVD recorders due to the fact that they lack a FIREWIRE port but I've always read that you really couldn't tell the differene between a direct FIREWIRE connection and a direct ANALOG out from the Digital Cam connection.

So as an aside I think Will's pics pretty much prove that FIREWIRE isn't "better" in that regard.

Sorry if this is off topic but I get tired of Digital Cam owners bitching about the lack of FIREWIRE on stand alone DVD recorders (or computer based MPEG solutions such as the Hauppauge WinTV PVR series).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Will Hay]

Hi Will,

Just thought to ask you if you had done an A-B comparison with your composite and Svideo cables.

I can't find that post you made with the instructions
I could have sworn it was either here or my composite signal length thread
Will

[FulciLives]

just thought I'd make an observation, if you look at the 2nd set of pics and look at your son's hair it is more detailed in the Canopus shot than in the Firewire so there looks to be a slight bit of difference between the two

and great thread btw

Damn I see that now too!

The FIREWIRE version has less detial and what looks like maybe an MPEG conversion artifact.

The ADVC looks sharper which kinda defies explaination since you would THINK that the FIREWIRE would look better.

Very interesting ... the plot thickens ...

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[trevlac]

Actually, I think the brightness or black level is too high on the ATI. This is a guess from messing around with my monitor.

The bleed is in the yellow of the 1st pic. Some is due to movement, but it is not nearly as bad on the ATI. It would show best on a white/red straight line.

Did you also notice how the ATI picture is streatched.

The Firewire one is the full width
The ADVC is croped but not streatched
The ATI is croped and then streatched to fill the 720 width. You should cap at 704.

[Will Hay]

Did you also notice how the ATI picture is streatched.

The Firewire one is the full width
The ADVC is croped but not streatched
The ATI is croped and then streatched to fill the 720 width. You should cap at 704.

Yeah, I did notice that.
Being the novice I am (and Fulci's bitch too, insofar as I'm clearly his research assistant ) I've been force fed that 720 x 576 is the capture standard for DVD.
Again, showing my ignorance
Will

[FulciLives]

Being the novice I am (and Fulci's bitch too, insofar as I'm clearly his research assistant ) I've been force fed that 720 x 576 is the capture standard for DVD.

Hey Will ... who loves ya baby

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I know you said it will take a day or so but I am curious to see the pics of a VCR hooked directly up to the CANOPUS/ATI

Hopefully you have some good quality VHS SP speed pre-records to use as a source.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[FulciLives]

Actually, I think the brightness or black level is too high on the ATI. This is a guess from messing around with my monitor.

The bleed is in the yellow of the 1st pic. Some is due to movement, but it is not nearly as bad on the ATI. It would show best on a white/red straight line.

I am confused. You think the ATI looks too bright (either due to BRIGHTNESS and/or CONTRAST) but think the ADVC/FIREWIRE has too much color bleed?

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[racerxnet]

Hi Will,

The response to the A-B comparison is on page 3 of this thread.

MAK

[Will Hay]

I know you said it will take a day or so but I am curious to see the pics of a VCR hooked directly up to the CANOPUS/ATI

Hopefully you have some good quality VHS SP speed pre-records to use as a source.

Yeah, I'll use my Star Wars set, think I've only watched it once.
Will

[Will Hay]

Did I mention that I've run an s-video lead from the scart adapter in the back of the TV to the front of the ADVC?
It's B&W, no colour.
Will

[Will Hay]

Personnaly I don't think the ATI looks too washed out, but I think it has the more natural red of the three.
Take a look at my little lad's boot, in the pic with his grandma putting it back on.
Will

[racerxnet]

If I can get a pinout of the scart connector I can tell you what the problem is. Evidently it would appear there is an open connection somewhere, or the compatibility of the cable/scart/TV nedds to be addressed with the Svideo cable.

[Will Hay]

If I can get a pinout of the scart connector I can tell you what the problem is. Evidently it would appear there is an open connection somewhere, or the compatibility of the cable/scart/TV nedds to be addressed with the Svideo cable.

This is what I'm using, but you need technical details, right?
Will

[FulciLives]

Personnaly I don't think the ATI looks too washed out, but I think it has the more natural red of the three.
Take a look at my little lad's boot, in the pic with his grandma putting it back on.
Will

Well RED looks one way with the LEFT eye and a slightly different way with my RIGHT eye so who am I to judge but I do see what you mean about the RED not being so STRONG in the ATI pic.

Having said that I prefer the way the ADVC or even the FIREWIRE pics look compared to the ATI pics even in regard to the RED issue. Well at least this most current batch. Not talking about the first TV capture batch.

As for a request ... hehehe ... how about that scene from EMPIRE STRIKES BACK where Luke and Darth Vader meet to battle in that room where Hon Solo was put in carbinite. Lot's of deep blue and strong orange in that scene plus it is a bit on the dark side. We have bright outdoor daylight pics now maybe we need something darker for "contrast".

Plus that's a really kewl scene hehehe

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Will Hay]

Hi Will,

Just thought to ask you if you had done an A-B comparison with your composite and Svideo cables. I had done this recently just to see the effects of reproduction on the TV screen. It could be done just as easily while viewing the image on your monitor. I ask this because you are still using a composite cable. In my comparisons, I used the inputs of my TV which are both composite and Svideo. I took the output from the DVD player (both composite and Svideo) and connected both cables to the input of both respective connections on the TV. There was a straight lead from the DVD without any other breakout box or connector to the TV. From there I selected the source on the TV to look at the A-B comparison. I can tell you without a doubt that the composite source looked much more red in color and saturation overall. I did this also with a recorded SVHS movie recorded from a DVD to do another A-B comparison of seperating the YC signal from the VCR deck to the TV. Same results were appearant when viewed from the selectable input source of Svideo or composite. Svidoe was brighter, less color saturation, and overall better at the Svideo capabilities of 400 lines.

I'm afraid I don't understand this, sorry
I can't compare the effects of s-video and composite because the s-video doesn't work, it outputs as B&W.
My TV only has one scart in the back (input and output) and a yellow and white composite on the front (not two audio ports) - presumably these are input only.
Rather than run a composite set of leads from a scart adapter (in the back of the TV) to an extension box, like this....



....I ran it straight to the ADVC-100.
The darkness and saturation was still the same.
Will

[trevlac]

I am confused. You think the ATI looks too bright (either due to BRIGHTNESS and/or CONTRAST) but think the ADVC/FIREWIRE has too much color bleed?

Do I have to make sense?

The ATI's blacks are too light. Detail is lost here.

In the first pic the front edge of the trike and the handle bars, the yellow bleeds out.

The real interesting thing is that the sony 'firewire' capture has lower resolution than the others. I find this to be strange, considering they all come from the same source tape, and the firewire should just be a copy of the source to the PC. Blow up the trike and look at the edge. The firewire is twice as 'blocky'.

Oh, and s-video is much better than composite if your source is seperate. If you have a composite souce, I believe it has more to do with the connectors/color seperator than the fact you can get to y/c.

[Will Hay]

I am confused. You think the ATI looks too bright (either due to BRIGHTNESS and/or CONTRAST) but think the ADVC/FIREWIRE has too much color bleed?

Do I have to make sense?

The ATI's blacks are too light. Detail is lost here.

In the first pic the front edge of the trike and the handle bars, the yellow bleeds out.

The real interesting thing is that the sony 'firewire' capture has lower resolution than the others. I find this to be strange, considering they all come from the same source tape, and the firewire should just be a copy of the source to the PC. Blow up the trike and look at the edge. The firewire is twice as 'blocky'.

Oh, and s-video is much better than composite if your source is seperate. If you have a composite souce, I believe it has more to do with the connectors/color seperator than the fact you can get to y/c.

Yep, I don't doubt s-video is far superior to composite, but I would have thought nothing could beat firewire until these tests
Will

[rhegedus]

Just another colour bleed observation: if you look at the third set of pics, the lady bending down has a white halo around her vest that is more noticeable against the black background with the AIW than with either the ADVC or firewire capture.

[FulciLives]

I have the THX NTSC LD of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (Original Theatrical Version) so I captured some footage from it (the scene where Luke and Darth Vader meet in the room where Han Solo was "freezed") using my AverTV Stereo PCI TV tuner type capture card.

Would love to compare screen shots with Will on this if he can capture the same from his PAL VHS video.

I used composite video (my LD players only has composite out) and captured with TheFlyDS using the PICVideo MJPEG codec on the 19 quality level (with 20 being best). Resolution used 704x480 29.970fps

I trimmed the clip in VirtualDubMod and imported the TRIM into an AviSynth AVS script which I used to feed both CCE and TMPGEnc (actually the CCE encode is going now but I'll also do a TMPGEnc encode to see if it looks different). By using the AviSynth AVS script I avoid any colorspace conversion by NOT frameserving from VirtualDubMod. Normally I use Convolution3D as a noise filter but to be fair the clip is "unprocessed" in any way otherthan using the AddBorders AviSynth command to bring the width from 704 to 720

I figure I could do the screen caps through WinDVD because I think that is how Will got his (actually I seem to recall Will saying he used PowerDVD but I only have WinDVD myself but how different can they be)?

If anyone (I guess mostly Will since this is HIS thread) wants me to post these pics I will but they will be too large to upload here so I would have to link to them I guess and I don't have website space to do this with (maybe someone can help me out in that regard).

Cheers!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
A sample ... OK here is a screen grab from the CCE encoded 8000kbps CBR MPEG-2 file using WinDVD ... this is 640x480 (that's what WinDVD gave me even though the DVD is 720x480) and compressed using JPEG at a quality of 7 out of 10 (using Adobe PhotoDeluxe). File size is 49.8kb

[Will Hay]

A bit of a development...
....I just connected my dvd player (which has an s-video connector) directly to the ADVC-100 s-video input with an s-video cable and the colour representation is shite, very dark and saturated although thinking about it (and having just delected and then selected the input type) this might be the macrovision detection.
Hang on, I'll play while type...
Yep, it's macrovision but for the couple of seconds until it kicked in it looked to be a perfect representation of the colour.

Okay, now please tell me the macrovision fix isn't unique to the US!!!!!!!!!
Will

[FulciLives]

A bit of a development...
....I just connected my dvd player (which has an s-video connector) directly to the ADVC-100 s-video input with an s-video cable and the colour representation is shite, very dark and saturated although thinking about it (and having just delected and then selected the input type) this might be the macrovision detection.
Hang on, I'll play while type...
Yep, it's macrovision but for the couple of seconds until it kicked in it looked to be a perfect representation of the colour.

Okay, now please tell me the macrovision fix isn't unique to the US!!!!!!!!!
Will

Can't answer that question but hopefully it is not just specific to NTSC conversions but not all DVD discs have copy protection ... if it is on a "major label" like WARNER BROS or PARAMOUNT or UNIVERSAL then yeah it most likely will but some independent labels don't even bother ... at least not with MACROVISION. I'd be surprised if the CANOPUS ADVC-100 was suseptable to CGMS/A

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Will Hay]

Okay, so I held down the input tab (for around 15 seconds, no more macrovision so I'll be able to test a little better now) and sure enough the image quality in the preview window is superb, looks absolutely superb - just like the original DVD.
Clearly my problems are specific to either my source and/or my (composite) cables.
Will

[rhegedus]

Could have saved yourself loads of anguish.....

Well, the simplest way to compare captures with the original would be to rip a DVD (preferably less than 4.3Gb to avoid compression) and re-burn to DVD, then do captures from the DVD stream and compare to the original rip.

I'm glad you're getting to the source of the problems.

Still up for the 'Top Gear' capture?

[Will Hay]

Could have saved yourself loads of anguish.....

Well, the simplest way to compare captures with the original would be to rip a DVD (preferably less than 4.3Gb to avoid compression) and re-burn to DVD, then do captures from the DVD stream and compare to the original rip.

I'm glad you're getting to the source of the problems.

Still up for the 'Top Gear' capture?

Not much point pal, now I know my composite captures are utter shite.
Thanks anyway
Will

[FulciLives]

Would this TEST be too much to ask for Will?

RIP a DVD to your HDD and play it back with PowerDVD or WinDVD etc. and do some screen grabes.

Then play back the same DVD on your DVD player and capture a bit with the CANOPUS ADVC-100 ... convert to say CBR 8000kbps MPEG-2 DVD format then play that file in PowerDVD/WinDVD and try to screen grab the same images.

Then post them side by side.

That's about as good a comparison we can get I suppose.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I guess you could even do ATI capture too and have a set of pics from all 3 versions ... DVD rip screen grab, ADVC-100 capture and ATI capture.

[Will Hay]

Could have saved yourself loads of anguish.....

Well, the simplest way to compare captures with the original would be to rip a DVD (preferably less than 4.3Gb to avoid compression) and re-burn to DVD, then do captures from the DVD stream and compare to the original rip.

Man, you do like to gloat, don't you?
I didn't realise my (new) dvd player had an s-video facility.
The following pictures are captured from my...

dvd player > s-video > ADVC-100

[Will Hay]

Would this TEST be too much to ask for Will?

Well, I have manged to run the dvd player through the ADVC (see above) and as you can see the results are awesome.
Okay, I did use an s-video cable so like Isay I think my problems with VHS/TV signal are a result of either my composite cables or my source.
I'll add the VHS player directly tomorrow, I'm not going to play around anymore with DVD captures, definately not tonight, its after midnight and I'm buggered, I need sleep.
Catch you all later
And thanks folks
Will

[FulciLives]

Would this TEST be too much to ask for Will?

Well, I have manged to run the dvd player through the ADVC (see above) and as you can see the results are awesome.
Okay, I did use an s-video cable so like Isay I think my problems with VHS/TV signal are a result of either my composite cables or my source.
I'll add the VHS player directly tomorrow, I'm not going to play around anymore with DVD captures, definately not tonight, its after midnight and I'm buggered, I need sleep.
Catch you all later
And thanks folks
Will

Yes I agree that the DVD captured pics through the CANOPUS ADVC-100 look damn sweet!

So really I guess all that is left now is hooking up the VHS VCR directly to the ADVC-100 using a direct composite video cable.

Hopefully the captures will look as good (well at least for VHS) meaning that the problem isn't the CANOPUS ADVC-100 but your SCART thingie which, living in the USA, I know little about. I do have a multi-system PAL/NTSC/SECAM Toshiba VHS VCR but I think it only has RF and composite video inputs/outputs.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Good job Will I am impressed and leaning more towards purchasing the CANOPUS ADVC-100 than ever. Sure wish the money was there now in my bank account hehehe

[rhegedus]

Just a quick note for those considering the s-video route. Make sure that your player has a dedicated s-video output and not just a SCART/s-video adaptor - these give a hatched/grainy effect on captures.

Man, this thread was fast and furious.

Time for sleeeeeeeeeeeeep.

[racerxnet]

Hi Will,

You could use smart ripper to rip the VOB files without macrovision encoding and burn to DVD disk. Yes I need the actual printout of the scart connector to test the pinout. Or, I have the unit in my hand and test with an Ohm Meter for continuity regarding input/output on the pins. Or flash the eprom on the DVD player to remove the AGC control bit.

And last, I have reverse engineered the drivers to remove the macro protection for the newer ATI cards. I have not released any info regarding what to look for in the drivers for this operation. I know most are not reverse engineers in software programming language. I do not like to provide illegal code to circumvent this crap. I have a friend who is looking into the bit that might disable the AGC control on the rage theater chip (200 series). We are focusing on the bios code.

I may attempt to use my oscilliscope and check each leg on the ATI chipset to see if I can pick up the signal for the AGC control while playing a macro encoded VCR tape. If I fry the card I could care less. But I do have a plan to prevent the situation from occuring.