Best Quality video from a PVR/capture card?

[lordsmurf]

I'd test myself, but no 2.0 USB here, don't want to install cards for testing anymore

Come on. I got a USB 2.0 card for $14.95 at the Garland store.

I'm currently unable to rip apart my system. They are both 100% full of drives and cards. I may just get it for testing on USB 1.1, but I know it'll give problems.

[upshot]

Lordsmurf: with TBC built in, prefilters, and hardware compression don't you think that the canopus mpegpro is poised to be the "best" analog capture device on the market???

I'm very tempted to giving this hardware a spin....

BTW I can't wait for your video restoration section to be complete! Very nice site man...

[Beavis]

Did you see an actual capture from the 250 burned on a DVD, etc. or did you just watch the realtime output on the monitor? The 250 only has hardware encoding so the decoding is all from your CPU- which can vary depending on the system it was running on.

Personally, I think the card is great.

[FulciLives]

Lordsmurf: with TBC built in, prefilters, and hardware compression don't you think that the canopus mpegpro is poised to be the "best" analog capture device on the market???

I'm very tempted to giving this hardware a spin....

BTW I can't wait for your video restoration section to be complete! Very nice site man...

According to several users this otherwise most excellent device has a very fatal flaw.

It is hard wired to a 0.0 IRE BLACK level.

This is fine for PAL and Japanese NTSC but just about all other forms of NTSC (including USA and CANADA) need a setting of 7.5 IRE BLACK level.

From what I have read this cannot be fixed with any type of firmware update as the device is "hard-wired" that way.

This "black level bug" applies to the BOTH versions of the MPEGPro (there is a PCI version and a USB version).

Canopus also makes a slightly more expensive but similiar PCI card called the MVRD2200 but I do not know if this product suffers the same fatal flaw.

Such a shame because the MPEGPRO sounds like an otherwise great piece of equipment.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[upshot]

NO !?! the Canopus MPEGpro does not have a IRE switch like the ADVC-100?? Do you have some documentation on that???

[FulciLives]

NO !?! the Canopus MPEGpro does not have a IRE switch like the ADVC-100?? Do you have some documentation on that???

My information comes from other users who posted here and got that info (about it being hard-wired and not firmware upgraded) direct from Canopus.

I think at least one person mentioned this in the reviews of it in the CAPTURE CARD section.

But there were also some posts in the forums as well about it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[upshot]

o i c That's simply jaw dropping... what about the ADVC-300??

[FulciLives]

o i c That's simply jaw dropping... what about the ADVC-300??

Reports of the ADVC-300 have so far been pretty stunning. Basically works and even looks just like the ADVC-100 complete with IRE input setting.

The only downside though ... and many are upset about this ... is that the "trick" of making the ADVC-100 ignore macrovision does NOT work with the ADVC-300

That's a deal breaker for many.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[LRD]

Buy the Compro VideoMate Live USB 2. It costs around $200+ from iocombo.com and hardware compresses mpeg 1 and 2. Please see my posts for the product in the capture card list. I can send you a screen shot if you provide your email.

LRD

[lordsmurf]

The TBCs in the Canopus products are not impressive to me. I mean, yeah, they're there, maybe, supposedly.

I've not really looked at Canopus much recently, they seem to be too expensive, and everything they have comes with some sort of problem or limitation, one that cannot be fixed.

I'm using ATI now, and if I ever decide to "go pro" I'd probably skip over Canopus and go to Matrox. However, I've not made any decisions on this, not there yet, and there are "ease of use" considerations that go to Canopus.

[upshot]

So... I assume that you would suggest a tbc-1000->advc-100 combo rather than the advc-300?? (bout the same total tag)

[FulciLives]

So... I assume that you would suggest a tbc-1000->advc-100 combo rather than the advc-300?? (bout the same total tag)

If you need to be able to defeat copy protection then yes this is a better option than going with the ADVC-300 which cannot defeat macrovision.

Unfortunately the ADVC-300 also has some kewl 3D noise reduction circuits that the ADVC-100 does not have.

However there are filters you can use through VirtualDub or AviSynth that should be able to do about the same thing.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[upshot]

I have procoder on order and "Any customer who purchases ProCoder from September 11th, 2003 will obtain a free upgrade to ProCoder 2.0" yipee... Are the filters built into it as powerful as the advc-300??

[FulciLives]

I have procoder on order and "Any customer who purchases ProCoder from September 11th, 2003 will obtain a free upgrade to ProCoder 2.0" yipee... Are the filters built into it as powerful as the advc-300??

I have never used Procoder so I don't know much about it.

The filters I were talking about were VirtualDub and AviSynth filters. I don't know if you can use those with ProCoder or not.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman