I own both...
Canopus ADVC-100 and the wonderful ATI Radeon 64mb DDR ViVo.
I feel I'm at the limit of my expertise of capturing analogue, or I should say I've had enough.
I've been at it 18 months and even way back using my trusty old VHS-C camcorder I've gotten (word?) some pretty good dvdr's out of the whole process.
I now own a Sony MiniDV camcorder and having found the heaven sent gift that is firewire, decided to go the same route with my analogue captures, ie the world famous, much revered ADVC-100.
"Why?" I hear you ask, "When you were perfectly happy with Virtualdub and the ATI card?"
The answer is simple...
(1) I was sold the ADVC-100 from here, this very site.
This very site from whom everyone, and I mean everyone, proclaimed it the very pinnacle of pro-consumer 'capturing', and
(2) The audio/video sync issue always lurks around the corner and there's no doubt the ADVC eliminates this risk.
So what the hell, I bought it.
Now, I don't proclaim to be an expert.
For those of you who don't know me don't be fooled by my post count.
I've scraped my way along this site and managed to pick up the scraps I've been tossed by other, far more knowledgable folks.
Some nice, some not so nice, some arseholes.
I'm having issues with the colour saturation of the ADVC-100, specifically the colour 'red'.
It was suggested to me, in order to correct this saturation problem, to try 'capture' with scenalzer, and specifically to 'capture' to a Canopus Compatible DV File.
I did this, I still got the saturated red.
I normally capture with Pinnacle Studio 8.10...
...so now feel the problem doesn't lie with my 'capture' software.
It was suggested to me to use the s-video adapter cable that came in the ADVC box, rather than plus my composite directly into the front of the unit.
I did this, nothing changed.
It was suggested I switch composite cables.
I did this, nothing changed.
I now feel I've eliminated everything I can with regards the actual ADVC-100 device - please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, actually, that's not true. I haven't had chance to hook up a VCR directly to the ADVC-100 but as I plan to 'capture' a TV signal directly from my TV (via an output adapter on a scart connector) it doesn't matter.
It was suggested to me to playaround with the settings in TMPGEnc, specifically these...
I did this.
I checked just the 'interpolate' box only and still had saturated red
I checked no boxes at all and still had saturated red
I checked the 'set equation' box to DV box only and still had saturated red
I feel, to the best of my ability, I have covered all angles with regards encoding (other than altering the brightness and red colour options in TMPGEnc, within the 'advanced setting' tab which I don't really want to do, I want the ADVC to work as it does for others).
At this point I began to feel like I was expecting too much from the ADVC-100, and recorded a small amount of TV to VHS and them pumped the signal into my computer....
Firstly, with Pinnacle Studio 8.10 via the ADVC-100
and secondly using Virtualdub at 720 x 576 using the PicVideo MJPEG codec at quality setting 19/20.
The following screenshots show the outcome, all encoded with TMPGEnc at 8000CBR.
In all cases, the ADVC-100 is on the left, the ATI capture on the right.
As I say, I'm no expert, if there's any settings I've not qualified please ask and I'll do my best to add them.
Finally, please refrain from posting until I upload all the pics, it might take a little while
Will
Try StreamFab Downloader and download from Netflix, Amazon, Youtube! Or Try DVDFab and copy Blu-rays! or rip iTunes movies!
Closed Thread
Results 1 to 30 of 350
Thread
-
tgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
One thing I forgot to add is that my ATI card is a budget, a real budget model.
I constantly read how the AIW (All In Wonder) is the card of choice, but I've honestly suprised myself tonight as to how great my £35 Radeon has performed.
Saying that, I'd take the ease of the ADVC anytime, I soooooo want it to work.
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
I am far from an expert, but the most interesting picture to me is the red star. All the detail is lost in the glow around the star with the canopus. Since that detail has red in it, and you think the red is getting saturated, wouldn't you see the red even more with the canopus shot? Maybe it is a brightness/contrast problem and not a saturation problem?
Of course they are not the exact frames being compared either. Just a thought.
-
Hi HayWill..
Bummer you're still complaining about the pics's being too RED (or rich)
in color. But, hay, that's your preference if you like it light colored
.
.
In that case, just set your IRE to 0, instad of 7.5 on your unit.
I have mine set to 7.5 IRE ... (dip 2 is set to ON)
For you, try it at: 0 IRE ... (dip 2 is set to ON)
Yeah, I like my colors more richer, not lighter. But, since you're PAL, may
be your color space is screwy too (like mine here in NTSC, even though I
have it set to PAL's 7.5 IRE :P )
.
.
Also, I'm not sure what your SCART is actually doing to your signal though.
I have my doubts that SCARTs are not recommended for the ADVC-100 !!
On the other hand, you could have just become accustome to the light 'ness
in color output of your captured source, and consiquently, it's habbit forming. Anyways..
Good luck,
-vhelp
-
Originally Posted by proggy
It may well be a DV codec thing. Not only does the red bleed, the green does too. It's just less noticable. From what I can tell, it's not clear what subsampleing your box does. It may well do 4:1:1, just at a PAL frame rate and size. The assumed problem with this is that you have 1/2 the color from the start. Then when the decompression codec provides the color in 4:4:4 or even 4:2:2 (I'm not sure what happens here), it has to use 1 piece of color data to get the color for 4 pixels. When you go to mpeg, the subsample changes to 4:2:0 which means we only really keep the color for every other line. The method of going from 4:1:1 to 4:2:0 is important because the worse case would be 4:1:0 or about 1 piece of color info for every 8 pixel block. This is indeed made worse by interlace because the lines are offset during movement.
I can't say I have much experience with this problem. I use a cheap BT card, and I havn't noticed on my DVcam. I'm surprized VHelp did not say more about this. Maybe that's not the problem. Could also still be the connectors. However, if the color signal was delayed I'd expect a shift (red moved to the right). If it was a composite (comb/notch) filter thing, I'd only expect bleed in high frequency (line edges). It's my understanding that the color signal in PAL is only mixed with the highest frequencies of the luma.
Anyway, can you produce the color bars from the unit and feed them back into the ADVC and ATI and post the results. That should let people tell which device has the hue/satuartion/whitelevel and black level set correctly. Do it for both IRE settings on the ADVC capture (3 pics total). Don't run them thru MPEG.
-
Any possible way of doing another STAR picture but this time with both captures at roughly the same point in time. I am bothered by the lack of detail in the white area surrounding the STAR in the CANOPUS picture but it clearly is not from the same moment in time as the ATI capture ... you can tell that the white star IN the READ STAR (the one in the bottom right leg) is smaller in the CANOPUS pic meaning one pic is behind the other ... and this might explain the differences in the pics.
All in all I don't think the CANOPUS looks bad at all and after all you do have (or should have) ZERO sync problems now which might be worth it even though the ATI picture might be more pleasing to your eye.
- John "FulciLives" Coleman"The eyes are the first thing that you have to destroy ... because they have seen too many bad things" - Lucio Fulci
EXPLORE THE FILMS OF LUCIO FULCI - THE MAESTRO OF GORE
-
Originally Posted by vhelp
Only doing red or green is faulty, and not rich. It's fake.
In video, I prefer real. In photo, I like color, but I want the full RGB spectrum increased, and I need the option to change it at will.
The experiences Will is having are not favorable at all.
It seems the Canopus is darker too.
The ATI cards via MMC can have all aspects changed (color, saturation, brightness, hue, etc), including the very valuable GAMMA setting, which is normally only found on higher quality cards.
While correcting in TMPGEnc may be an option, at that point it becomes restoration work, and in doing restoration, understand that to recreate a color or alter an original color, you end up altering the others too (though if done right you hopefully won't notice). This again, is not favorable.
I honestly hope there is a fix for this, but I think it's a limitation of the 4:1:1 spec as well as Canopus ADVC/codecs, and maybe even the DV format itself. This is common, but normally not this noticeable this much of the time.Want my help? Ask here! (not via PM!)
FAQs: Best Blank Discs • Best TBCs • Best VCRs for capture • Restore VHS
-
Any possible way of doing another STAR picture but this time with both captures at roughly the same point in time. I am bothered by the lack of detail in the white area surrounding the STAR in the CANOPUS picture but it clearly is not from the same moment in time as the ATI capture ... you can tell that the white star IN the READ STAR (the one in the bottom right leg) is smaller in the CANOPUS pic meaning one pic is behind the other ... and this might explain the differences in the pics.
Anyway, can you produce the color bars from the unit and feed them back into the ADVC and ATI and post the results. That should let people tell which device has the hue/satuartion/whitelevel and black level set correctly. Do it for both IRE settings on the ADVC capture (3 pics total). Don't run them thru MPEG.
Anyway, one thing I have noticed from the screenshots is they don't really give a fair representation of the problem I'm experiencing.
What I mean is that when you watch the footage through, once the results produced by the ADVC-100 and then with the ATI the colours look much, much more natural with the ATI.
Much more.
Maybevhelp is right, maybe I've become too accustomed to the ATI captures but I know one thing; I prefer the ATI hands down at the present time.
In that case, just set your IRE to 0, instad of 7.5 on your unit.
I have mine set to 7.5 IRE ... (dip 2 is set to ON)
For you, try it at: 0 IRE ... (dip 2 is set to ON)
I was under the impresssion this setting was irrelevent for PAL users but like I say it doesn't seem to make a difference.
This is from the Canopus website:
I'll do some testing on it though.
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
The captures look very impressive with both devices. The difference in color reminds me of the difference between a Sony and a Panasonic TV. Sony's seem warmer with slightly more contrast but Sony's have a setting for the color temperature which definitely affects it.
Thank you for sharing these captures with us.
-
Originally Posted by trhouse
Thanks, but I do worry these do not reflect the overall problem I'm having, and may be misleading to any prospective ADVC-100 buyers.
Please folks, don't be under any illusion - the quality I'm getting from the ADVC-100 at the present time (without any colour adjustment in TMPGEnc) is unacceptable to me.
I agree it doesn't look too bad in the screenshots but trust me, its far more noticable during playback.
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
One of the high end TBC's may help you, whereas you can augment the luma/chroma ... but it'll run at least $600 or more for a good one ..
Want my help? Ask here! (not via PM!)
FAQs: Best Blank Discs • Best TBCs • Best VCRs for capture • Restore VHS
-
Originally Posted by lordsmurf
Then it's not an option, but thanks.
I'm not spending anymore, with a second child due in March and a wife giving up work its the last thing I'm going to do.
Worst case...
....I use the ATI and ADVC-100 selectively, depending on
a) the condition of the source
b) the final use and
c) how I feel at the time
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
Thanks Will
I had been considering buying an ADVC-100 - again due to the glowing reviews on this site. However having read your piece and seen the screenshots I think I'll stick with my current setup: Pinnacle PCTV (tv card) - cost me about STG £40, Virtual VCR & Huffuv. I get comparable quality to your ATI card, capturing to AVI.
Hope you get that ADVC-100 sorted !!
Moonstomp.Just because you're nobody, doesn't mean that you're no good. Just because there's a reason, doesn't mean it's understood. It doesn't make it all right ! (The Specials)
-
These TV caps, were they terrestrial, cable or satelite?
I know the same conditions will apply to both capture devices, but I'm just curious about the resolution.
Have you still got some cam footage on tape that you could pass through both of these devices - might be a bt more natural colour than those from TV.Regards,
Rob
-
I have been using an ADVC-100 for well over a year now and have created hundreds of VCDs, SVCDs and DVDs from the video captured with it. Compared to the hassle that I have experienced with some analogue capture cards I would need some very compelling arguments to make me abandon the ADVC.
On the red saturation; yes, it does. Is that not a "feature" of the DV compression format? I thought I read somewhere that some red over-saturation and stairstepping artefacts on diagnonals were almost unavoidable with DV, but some codecs are better than others ... and the one used in the Canopus seems to be one of the best.
What matters to me is what the overall experience is like, and I can say that watching DVDs created using DV captured with the Canopus from a digital cable tuner, and then encoded with MainConcept or TMPGEnc, I find it very hard to tell the difference from the live broadcast. That's good enough for me and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Canopus 100% Certainly a high end analogue capture card with a lossless compression codec like HUFYUV (which I have used extensively in the past) would give better results, but it's a balance. Most consumer capture cards have audio sync errors because the PC's sound card is used to capture the audio and the clocks are not synced - you don't get that hassle with the Canopus.
One small thing, I have found that the best codec for rendering the video on the PC is MainConcept as opposed to the default Microsoft supplied one.
-
Originally Posted by rhegedus
Originally Posted by rhegedus
Oh no, wait, I have some footage I converted via the ATI and put on DVDr but that's not gonna be any use really, is it.
I suppose I could try it.tgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
Originally Posted by acanthis
I'm not bashing the ADVC, I really want to abandon the ATI because like you I find the ADVC a flawless function.
It's soooooooo easy, effortless and you know you ain't going to have any audio/video sync.
Originally Posted by acanthis
Would I right in thinking that, with this in mind, The only codec used was by the ADVC itself?
I appreciate if I render/edit within Pinnacle and save as an avi then I need to use a codec (I can't select anything other than the one shown below from within Pinnacle) but if I'm just 'capturing' then I'm not altering the quality at all?
This is the only DV codec option I have in Pinnacle:
I'd like to explore the possibility of a different codec though, can anyone shed some light on it for me, I think I'm confusing myselftgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
Originally Posted by rhegedus
Yeah, you're right...
...it is a silly question
Of course I did, what do you think I'm doing here, corrupting the results?
This thread might help others but I still need help here
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
I can't judge from stills, that's for sure. Maybe some others can.
If I have to judge from those stills, then my only conclusion is that I'm more than happy with my asus 7700, my hauppauge win tv primio fm and my new kworld mpeg 2 PCI station....
Anyway, since this works for you and you are happy with it, don't listen anyone! Just do your stuff the way you wish!
-
Actuualy Rob, now the mention it...
... I did plan to capture directly from Sky TV, but then realised I wouldn't be able to compare like for like frame grabs as I wouldn't be able to shoot the same footage twice with the ATI.
I did a few 'captures' with the ADVC and noticed, during live 'capture' that the colour saturation was worse.
It also had a bleed to the right hand side which, whilst (very slightly) apparent on the TV was greatly emphasisied by the ADVC.
I 'captured' some footage from Sky Sports News, and if you have tis channel you'll know there's a lot of red in it, in particular the time in the bottom right and the infobar (scrolling text).
I decided to use TV commercials as my test as I felt these were more natural.
That's why I don't feel the images I've uploaded are a fair representation, I could have uploaded examples which were a lot worse, I wish I had now, I could have compared them to the ATI.
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
Will, maybe there is a chance the $75 US Sima SED-EM will help you.
SED-EM just so no mistakesWant my help? Ask here! (not via PM!)
FAQs: Best Blank Discs • Best TBCs • Best VCRs for capture • Restore VHS
-
Hi Sat,
Originally Posted by SatStorm
I expected more from the ADVC when compared to the ATI and want to improve the 'capture'.
I think I'll take some more screenshots of particularly bad examples (I've been rather conservative with what I've uploaded so far) and show my concerns a little better.
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
-
Originally Posted by rhegedus
No, it was a good question.
It would have been very easy for me to start recording on the VHS whilst capturing to the ATI and then capturing to the ADVC from the VHS recording.
I know I didn't because my wife was watching that terrible buffy vampire show and rather than record five mins of that horrendous (and dark) show I turned it over and recorded Sky Sports News.
She wasn't pleased
I then asked her to press play when I banged on the bedroom floor, and then rewind and press play again when I banged again
Does it have to be this hard?
Willtgpo, my real dad, told me to make a maximum of 5,806 posts on vcdhelp.com in one lifetime. So I have.
Similar Threads
-
Can I use a U.S Canopus ADVC-100 in the U.K?
By jedi55 in forum CapturingReplies: 33Last Post: 6th Oct 2012, 19:26 -
Canopus ADVC-100 vs Canopus ADVC-110
By tarrickb in forum Camcorders (DV/HDV/AVCHD/HD)Replies: 20Last Post: 16th Oct 2010, 21:52 -
Ati All In Wonder HD and PS3 screenshots and capture HD video.. help needed
By C.P in forum CapturingReplies: 6Last Post: 30th Mar 2010, 18:46 -
ADVC 100 and ADVC 300 non recognized in Windows
By scardi in forum CapturingReplies: 4Last Post: 28th Feb 2010, 02:23 -
ADVC-300 vs. ADVC-100
By DeadLily in forum CapturingReplies: 11Last Post: 19th Sep 2007, 09:15