Hardware MPEG2 capturing, DAMNIT! :)

[heavyharmonies]

I am at a point where I don't know what to try. I've tried the following:

Amoisonic VDR2000MKII standalone VCD/SVCD recorder.

Absolutely horrible. Even in SVCD mode, the blockiness of the MPEG artifacting was wholely unacceptable. I sold the unit within 3 days. I'm trying to find out information about some of the other standalone units, but it's like pulling teeth. Specifically, I'm looking for reviews and firsthand experiences with the Oxygenergy DVA-2100 (the review at http://formen.ign.com/news/35614.html at least looks promising), the Malata VDR-R1, and the DataVideo VDR3000.

Dazzle DVC II, DVC USB.

Reasonable, but regardless of how I did things I always ended up with noticable a/v sync problems. Had to send them back, even after trying various fixes found here and on the Dazzle forum.

Looking for recommendations, I'll try to break down the specs as clearly as I can:

Purpose: archiving material currently on VHS or LD to VCD or preferably SVCD. Video will be coming in via S-VHS connection. The vast majority of video material will be older VHS tapes. I've obtained a good playback S-VHS VCR with TBC and NR.

Computer system available: IBM Thinkpad 770Z (366 mHZ Pentium II with 320MB RAM). With docking station, so PCI and ISA slots available, as well as USB and SCSI connections. I currently have XP loaded, but I can revert to 98SE if necessary.

If possible, I am wanting to find a hardware encoding solution (either standalone SVCD recorder or hardware encoder to hook up to above laptop). Doing straight AVI encoding and software conversion simply is not an option. Period.

A standalone DVD recorder (Panasonic DMR-E20) has been recommended, but I'm a bit wary for 2 primary reasons: (1) price of media, $6 per is much too expensive no matter how you slice it; yes, that price will come down, but for a trial-and-error ridden process, this could get extremely expensive in no time, and (2) standard wars... DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.

So, with the above constraints in mind, what's out there? Or am I asking the impossible?

Thanks in advance!

[nick1977]

Not really much help here, but I would say just be grateful your discs are $6 each! Ours in the UK are £12.99 each for DVD-R which equates to over $20!!!

I'd be perfectly happy to pay $6 a disk

Nick

[SHS]

My bitch about (2) is they havn't add some kind of BURN Proof to it so I have to agree it would be extremely expensive after a few coaster which we hate having.
But I would like to point out to you that all most of the consumer MPEG1/2 Recording products are base off 1st generation MPEG1/2 enocde chip maybe we wait for the 2nd or 3rd-generation MPEG chip to truly take full advantage of MPEG2 features and hopelee add in more Adv features like better delacing someting along that line.

Dvico FusionMPEG?.
I'am impressions with some 13 sample MPEG they have there.
VCD capture quality wasn't all that hot look like it has some small artifact bugs in it but they are old video clip before VCD got fix from what I can tell from the korean site on the drv page.
SVCD capture quality was all most very clean even look good under Womble Multimedia MPEG2VCR but had a tad bit of interlace and some block pattan on very fast scean when going thur each frames.
4MB capture quality was all most very clean even look good under Womble Multimedia MPEG2VCR but had a tad bit of interlace and some block pattan on very fast scean when going thur each frames.
6MB capture quality was all most very clean even look very good under Womble Multimedia MPEG2VCR but had a tad bit of interlace when going thur each frames.
Hmm I wonder what the 8MB capture look like should be out standing capture quality.
What really interesting about this card is the fact that it has heatsinker and fan and capture quality is the best I have ever seen from any sample MPEG I have seen so far and playback was very good to, check this Cut-On-the-Fly feature it has sound very interest to me.
You can check the site at http://www.dvico.com/
But I like ponit this out on the advertised site, only 44.1KHz, DVD compliance requires 48KHz so the DVD Authoring
software would have to reencode and upsample it to 48KHz dran that real drag.
Warren Young review the USB version:
http://tangentsoft.net/video/mpeg/reviews/fusion.html
Dran I wish he had done the PCI ver in stead of USB ho well.
To it bad that Canopus didn't get off there a@@ with the MTV1000 they made only in Japan it had top notch video quality from what I have seen from the tuner oh and MPEG clip where very good.
There a Snazzi III which base on Vision Tech Kfir-2 reference board maybe this one will be top notch card?.
Othen then that you need ton cash to get HighQuality capture or DVD quality I should say.

What I like see HW MPEG1/2 recorder that has soild, 100% clean frames on each frames.
Take look at the posting from skittelsen "Short review of the PV231 VCD capture card" MPEG1 recording clip I just saw is soild, 98% of where clean frames on each frames under Womble Multimedia MPEG2VCR I give this card A- oh let make that A or 9 all way around.

[ylong]

Ask norm about PV256. Go to "V256 Forum"( https://www.videohelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=66128&forum=2 ) or "Provideo PV256 problems" ( https://www.videohelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=59718&forum=2 )

Good luck

[matt-o]

have you seen the ADS USBAV-700 USB Instant DVD?
it could be promising?
there is another post here from someone who has it and is posting results.

at buy.com $160 or so..
Videop Capture:
Real time encoding of analog video in to the following formats:
Full D1 MPEG 2 broadcast resolution (704 x 480 NTSC / 720 x 576 PAL)
½ D1 MPEG2 (352 x 480 NTSC / 352 x 576 PAL)
VCD MPEG 1 (352 x 240 NTSC / 352 x 288 PAL)
Frame Rates: 29,97 NTSC and 25 fps PAL
Video Bit Rate: 1.5 Mb/sec to 6 Mb/sec Constant Bit Rate encoding (CBR)
Audio Bit Rate: 128 Kbits/sec., 224 Kbits/sec., 384 Kbits/sec
Connection to PC: USB 1.0

[heavyharmonies]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-11-28 17:52:03, matt-o wrote:
have you seen the ADS USBAV-700 USB Instant DVD?
it could be promising?
there is another post here from someone who has it and is posting results.
at buy.com $160 or so..
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I've been curious about this one as well, but I've seen a host of people advising against it due to the bandwidth limitations of USB; they are claiming that USB will not be able to sustain enough throughput to constitute sufficient bitrate for decent quality. I have not yet seen any real-world test results from this unit though.

[spiderman2k1]

I just got the dazzle 2 and must say I hate my AIW radeon card now. Use MPEG2VCR is the best editting software there is for SVCD. And the block's are small

[yumagah]

All I can say is that I have been using the Amoisonic 2000MKII for two weeks now, and with
a professional level JVC VHS input the results are far from "absolutely terrible". I even hooked
up a macro-disabled DVD player and recorded some MPEG2 clips that I would say are about
85% as good as the original DVD. (Even with the lower bitrate of SVCD). The Amoisonic is a
bit quirky about input signal - a cheapo VHS would probably give inferior results. Older VHS
tapes tend to be poor quality, which will never look excellent when digitized. But a newly
released VHS encodes to SVCD so good that the limits of the VHS format can be seen in a
slight soft-focus effect compared to DVD. No way is this "absolutely terrible".

[nerdfragger]

Wait for a USB 2.0 capture board... It will most likely be worth the wait.

[ejai]

I own the USB instant dvd and feel it's the best capture device I have used yet. The quality is sharp especially when it comes to SVCD. The VCD quality is very sharp as well but has a little too much artifacting around sharp edges. I've used the Terapin and even Broadway card. Both of these devices have their own set of problems. Also technical support for Broadway is terrible, they never like to respond.

I am very happy with The USB instant DVD, but I wish they had used another software package besides Ulead's VideoStudio. VideoStudio crashes alot even using XP and it has very bad audio/video sync issues.

Remember this is only my opinion. I must say one last thing I love the Uleads DVD Media Factory for making SVCDs and VCDs, I make perfect Discs with menus and no major problems.