After struggeling a lot with myself regarding which card to choose - here are my final conclusions. Hope you could help with the issues and questions still unsolved for me.
I'd like to mention that time is an important factor now. My dad's birthday is next week and I'd like to buy the card for him, since he's been longing for it for quite some time now.
First of all here are my system specs:
AMD Athlon XP 1700+(1533MHz) with 512 DDR266 RAM.
MSI MoBo with VIA KT333 chipset.
1 HD of 120GB 7200RPM IDE
GF 4 MX440 64MB agp 4x
I need the card mainly for capturing home movies. Thus The source is OLD and probably problematic VHS tapes. I also intend to do pretty much extensive editing.
I'm considering either the Canopus ADVC 55 or ADVC100, or a just a good quality capture card to capture lossless, edit, and reencode.
Following issues are still unclear to me:
1. chipset - Which one is the best? Phillips? BT878? CX23880 or CX23883(heard these are good)? others(if exist).
2. My system - will it be able to handle huffyuv capturing process/encoding without resulting a severe A/V async and tons of dropped frames?
3. noise - I've read somewhere that Athlon XP 1400-2000 cause a lot of noise. Maybe that's a good reason not to go on an internal software encoding capture card? maybe try an alternative like the Canopus ADVC models?
4. What do you think about MJPEG hardware encoding capture cards? I've seen some cards like the Pinnacle DC10 plus. It has MJPEG hardware encoder. it's surprisingly cheap(in a 'be cautious' way). And as I've read MJPEG on high quality can get a near-lossless huffyuv quality. Further more - the encoding is made on hardware(no sync/dropped frames issues), and the .avi is editable. And no noise(as I've read).
So. Now I turn to you the experts for some help. I hope to get a decision by sunday and finally get a card.
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The PC speed is rather marginal for trouble free s/w encoding. Also, since you have only one disk, hufyuv encoding is rather out of the question as captures will generate huge files.
One other aspect is your OS and hard disk file system. If you want to go capturing, you need NTFS. Otherwise you will bump into the 4Gb file limit of FAT32.
Since your CPU is marginal for s/w encoding, I would recommend a h/w compression device. (Even my P4/2.8HT machine gave me occasional dropped frames and audio/video sync issues with s/w compression).
One option for an external capture device would be a DV capture device, like the one you mention. DV is good quality, highly editable and about 50MBps data rate. Disks tend to get filled up quickly.
Another option is for an MPEG-2 capture device. Yes, MPEG2 is not ideal for editing (perhaps even not suitable), however all things are true to a point: I use a Hauppauge external MPEG-2 capture box and capture at 12MBPS. This ensures high image quality and relatively small files. I then edit these files with VirtualDUB MPEG, trim out things I don't want and save the video stream encoded in DivX Constant quality with a factor of 3, and a Key frame interval of 5 frames. This gives me small files, no visible quality loss. I then re-encode the final content (after subsequent editing, effects and merging) with an MPEG-2 encoder to make DVDs.
One final option that I have seen recently is an external capture device (from Plextor) that captures and encodes to DivX directly. Looks appealing however I have not tried it or seen capture quality from it.
As a conclusion, if you are able to buy another large HD, you could try a DV capture device. If not, I would recommend an MPEG2 capture device and the approach I describe above.
Also, try to avoid Pinnacle products. It looks like the low end range is badged low quality products that work with problems and fail after a while.
Finally, consider buing a device with a TV tuner. Why not be able to record TV broadcasts as well?The more I learn, the more I come to realize how little it is I know. -
In reply to MJPEG, I've used a MJPEG card for some time. (Iomega BUZ) The quality was very good, no problems with editing, and using h/w encoding it works on slower machines. I used it last on a Celeron 633, full screen capturing so your system shouldn't be a problem.
btw, using VirtualDub you can capture continiously into several 4GB files without (severe) framedrops -- depending on the system --, if you plan on editing yr source material just import all the files in the editor. I've used this method for years without problems. -
Originally Posted by SaSi
Originally Posted by Z-C -
If you want it to work with the minimum chance of problems, buy an ADVC and a cheap Firewire card. Your machine specs are easily good enough to handle Firewire transfers. Although as has already been pointed out, you may need a second hard drive to store the transfers (as DV is a file transfer, not a capture, the analogue to digital conversion is done by the ADVC). DV is just over 13GB per hour, but a number of applications will automatically split the files into chunks that your FAT32 drive(s) can handle.
If you want to start at the bottom of a seriously steep learning curve, buy a Pinnacle DC10+. I started with one of these and spent almost 6 months learning how to stop it dropping frames and trying to keep the video and audio in sync. Once I managed to get it to work properly for the majority of the time (about 3 days out of 4), it was capable of some good results but it certainly made me work for them. Anyone who complains about ATI software bugs has never tried Pinnacle....... -
Thanks a lot for your answers
.
After doing some more reading. and after checking a lot of reviews I've decided to go for the Canopus ADVC 55.
It's a bit pricey, but the reviews are amazing!
Furthermore, most people claim that it has great quality - 1:1 copies from analog to digital(atleast to their eyes).
Just a few more questions - First could someone point the differences between the ADVC 55/100/110?
I've heard that the only difference between the 55 and 100/110 is the fact that it can't do digital to analog(backwards). Are there any other differences? I guess there are atleast between the 110 and 100 models.
Another q - Is DV editable? more or less like lossless encoded files(like huffyuv)? I really need the option to edit the movies. That includes some serious editing - Transitions, effects, cutting, adding music streams etc..
And one last question - I heard that the capturing process is real easy with ADVC. besides the fact that I don't have to worry from A/V async and dropped frames - how is it easier than other capturing hardware solutions?
Have a good week everyone. and thanks again! -
DV is intended to be edited. It is compressed but this is done in whatever creates the file (DV camcorder or ADVC) and, unlike mpeg, ever frame is there in it's entirety so fades, wipes, etc are smooth.
Transferring is easier because that is all you are doing, transferring a file. The ADVC does the hard work of digitising the analogue video, WinDV or similar just works like a glorified Windows Explorer and copies it from your Firewire port to hard drive.
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