Any comments on this method of collecting video clips?

[teevee]

Hi. I like to collect scenes/clips from tv and dvds onto svhs tape. Using high quality consumer svhs machines I get what I think are very nice near dvd quality results with close to frame accurate glitch free transitions between scenes...but I'd like to store the scenes on a computer so I can easily organize, find, edit, add to, and rearrange the clips whenever I like. Have never done computer video editing, but based on what I've read over the last week, I think I found the best solution for what I want to do, but before I buy the rest of the stuff, I thought I'd ask if anyone here has any advice or suggestions.

First, I recently ordered the Datavideo TBC-3000
http://www.datavideo.us/products/tbc_3000_main_page.htm
which has not arrived yet. I ordered the 2 channel version for convenience, so I can connect 2 svhs cables to it, one from my dvd player and one from a svhs machine,(the svhs machine is connected to the tv signal) so I can easily choose to import video from either the tv or dvd player without unplugging the svhs cables.

I plan to get the Canopus ADVC-500 converter
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC500/pt_ADVC500.asp
which would go between the TBC-3000 and my laptop.
While looking for the best analog to dv converter, I found the following
http://www.blackmagic-design.net/products/multibridge/
which seems like it might give a better conversion, but it's not possible to connect it to my laptop. I could get a desktop pc, but the multibridge looks rather complicated, which makes me think it might have some glitches using it even with desktop computers, regarding driver compatibility, or whatever. The ADVC-500 converter looks like a simple, foolproof method, plus I don't know if the multibridge can lock the audio to the dv like the canopus can, although it probably can. Anyway, other than the multibridge, the ADVC-500 was the best quality svhs to dv conversion I could find, plus no need to buy a new desktop pc to use it.

My laptop is a Dell inspiron P4 3.4Ghz with 2G ram & 256mb ATI card. I recently ordered a 2000GB 7200 RPM raid from Dell for storing the clips, along with a firewire pcmcia card, as the laptop only has one built in firewire port and I need 2 firewire ports, one for the raid and one for the ADVC-500 converter.

Am also thinking of getting the EDIUS Pro software for editing the dv files, and Canopus ProCoder 2 for changing the dv files to mpeg2, for when I want to make a dvd from my clips. The ADVC-500 converter, EDIUS software, and Procoder 2 are all made by Canopus so I guess there won't be any compatibility issues. Will also get DVDit Pro to help make dvds.

So hopefully that will give me the best balance of quality, flexibility, ease of use, and speed, but don't know if I am overlooking something that could give me problems or substandard result. Ease of use and speed is important, as otherwise it wouldn't be worth it to collect the clips. For example, while I'm watching a show, if I see something I like, I'm thinking I could just rewind the tv or dvd to the beginning of the scene (I have one of those digital pvrs with svhs output which can "rewind" live tv) store the clip, then keep watching tv. Then sometime later I could go thru my clip collection to edit them, combine them, delete ones I no longer want, etc.

I'm not sure how the dv data actually gets stored on the computer, but I assume I just ask EDIUS Pro to store the clip while I'm watching it on the tv?

Also wondering which is likely to give the best picture quality...

#1 Converting from analog to dv thru the ADVC-500, then back thru the ADVC-500 to svhs tape
or
#2 Converting from analog to dv thru the ADVC-500, then using ProCoder 2 to convert the dv to mpeg2, then copy the mpeg2 to a dvd. I guess I'll find that out, but wondering if anyone here would know in advance. I guess the best quality would be to watch the clips in dv form on my laptop without converting them to analog or mpeg2, but the picture would be quite small as dv resolution is 720 x 480 and my laptop is 1900x1200...so would be more enjoyable to watch on a tv.

I guess another alternative is to get a desktop computer and a hardware mpeg2 encoder card so to go direct from svhs to mpeg2 in one step, but not sure how the quality of that method would compare to what I plan to do. I'm hoping that analog to dv thru the ADVC-500 then dv to mpeg2 by procoder would give me just as good quality, or at least close enough to where I can't tell the difference...does anyone here know?...plus using the ADVC-500 method I get to use my laptop.

I guess analog to Huffyuv to mpeg2 would result in a slightly better picture, but would I notice the quality difference? I don't know about how that's done but from what I've read, it seems there would be more time and hassle involved, and am looking for quick and easy....as in see something, click to store it, then edit later.

Sorry for long post...thanks for any input.

[teevee]

Hi. Anyone have any answers or advice to my above post, or can let me know if I'm on the right track? I mean it looks ok to me but since I've never done any computer video capturing or editing I thought I'd ask here first before I buy the following stuff, as I don't want to waste my money if there's a better method.
Canopus ADVC-500 converter
EDIUS Pro 3
Canopus ProCoder 2
DVDit Pro 6


Also I recently found there is a Datavideo DAC-30 but don't know how it compares to the Canopus ADVC-500... I guess it would come down to which codec is best, if that makes sense?
Thanks.

[edDV]

Where to start.

You seem to have lots of money to spend but it isn't clear what your workflow is. Clips from TV, S-VHS or DVD sources? Destination is HDD, DVD or S-VHS?

Why are you using S-VHS for record? DV format is superior in every way.

Why does this need to work with a laptop? Laptops have compromises especially in HDD system support and encoding (heat + speed).

What is this RAID and how does it interface to a laptop?

What is your workflow and volume?

[Tom Saurus]

Perhaps you should read over at Lord Smurfs Website about video capturing; I learned alot over their. I capture using an ATI All I Wonder Card and I use the settings I read about over at his website, the only real difference is I use 720x480 as my resolution. For some reason it works really well for me. A relative of mine has a HDTV big screen DVD and a DVD I made from something I captured in looked only a step or two down in quality to a Hollywood DVD; I was pleasantly surprised.

I think perhaps you should invest in a good capture card, I recommend an ATI All I Wonder. Capture directly to Mpeg 2 and use Womble Mpeg Video Wizard to do your editing of those files. It takes a while to get the hang of that program but the person or persons that made it really did a good job designing it. It doesn't re-encode and you keep the quality you started with; that is really a nice feature.

Of course there will be other far more articulate at answering your questions; I thought perhaps I could be of a little help. It is obvious that you already know quite a bit about video editing, you can learn alot on this website and I am grateful for the advice I have received here.

Looks like I should of read more closely, I didn't notice it was a lap top, what I was writing about applies to a desktop.

[teevee]

Where to start.

Ok, thanks very much edDV. I have been collecting clips for years, using vhs machines..not all the time, sometimes I won't bother for maybe a year or so, then sometimes I'll feel like collecting some almost daily for a week or more. I have very old David Letterman clips, for example..but the quality isn't so great because over the years, I've rearranged them on vhs tape which involves making third, forth, or later generation copies. I currently have 2 JVC-S9911U svhs machines, one is hooked up to tv thru a PVR

http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Television/DigitalTV/DigitalTVEquipment/Shaw...VRTerminal.htm

and one to my dvd player thru the sima color corrector.

2 or 3 years ago I came accross the idea of storing clips on my computer, and I figured by doing that, I could rearange the clips into themes,..live music, comedy, etc...or delete clips, organize them, etc. as much as I wanted, without losing quality. However, after at least a week of searching for the best method I gave up as it seemed the only way to do that with excellent quality was to spend lots of money and then lots of time for rendering.

Now as a result of making some money from the internet, I'm no longer broke, and so I've recently taken another look at pc video editing. So after several days of reading, I came up with this latest method, which seems will work on my laptop, not take up much time, and hopefully give great picture quality.

>> it isn't clear what your workflow is.<<

The tv cable would go to my PVR, then out of the PVR by component or svhs cable to the Datavideo TBC-3000, then by svhs cable to the Canopus ADVC-500 converter, then by firewire to the firewire input on my laptop, (or to a LaCie FireWire 800 PCMCIA Card), then by firewire to the harddrive raid.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10351
The above raid can be daisy-chained to another raid, incase I fill it up at some time, which I might because I guess I'll store all clips as dv files.

Since the Datavideo TBC-3000 has 2 channels, another svhs cable could go from my dvd player to the Datavideo TBC-3000, so I could easily choose to save clips from the dvd player or from the tv.

I also recently saw this item
http://www.signvideo.com/single_dual_proc-amp_video-processor.htm
but I guess that would only be good for home movies, not for what I want to do.

>>Destination is HDD, DVD or S-VHS?<<

Well I would want to store them on harddrive, then later make either a dvd or svhs tape from the clips for easy tv watching....dvd is most likely better as I could make chapters, ect... but don't know how picture quality going from (dv data to procoder2 to mpeg2) --- would compare with going from (dv data to Canopus ADVC-500 to svhs tape). I imagine there wouldn't be much or any quality difference, in which case I would go with dvd. ... which has got me thinking, does the dvd writer make a difference? .. if so, instead of going with my current laptop dvd writer, maybe I should get a high quality firewire dvd writer? ... well, I guess I'll see how the picture looks.

>>Why are you using S-VHS for record? DV format is superior in every way.<<

Not sure what you mean by that. I have no experience but have read the dv format has some color problems. I can't watch dv format on the tv so have to watch either mpeg2 on dvd or svhs on tape. I could watch the dv on my computer but that would give me a small picture, so even though it would be a better/clearer picture on the computer, it would probably be more enjoyable to watch on a tv.

>>Why does this need to work with a laptop?<<
Would save me money, since I already have a laptop I can use. Hopefully heat won't be an issue since I will be using the Canopus ADVC-500 to reduce cpu workload and external raid to reduce heat inside the laptop.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback. Was just wondering if there's anything I've overlooked...as in...is this the best method to do what I want to do... ease of use and picture quality are my main concerns, but I don't want to spend lots more time to get a very small amount of picture quality improvement.

[teevee]

>>Perhaps you should read over at Lord Smurfs Website about video capturing; I learned alot over their. I capture using an ATI All I Wonder Card and I use the settings I read about over at his website, the only real difference is I use 720x480 as my resolution. For some reason it works really well for me. A relative of mine has a HDTV big screen DVD and a DVD I made from something I captured in looked only a step or two down in quality to a Hollywood DVD; I was pleasantly surprised. <<

Thanks for your input Tom. Well I was wondering about capture cards too but from what I've been reading, to go from analog to dv data, to mpeg2 can give just as good quality as using a capture card to go from analog direct to mpeg2, and seems like dv data would be lots easier to edit and give more advanced editing options.

>> I think perhaps you should invest in a good capture card, I recommend an ATI All I Wonder. Capture directly to Mpeg 2 and use Womble Mpeg Video Wizard to do your editing of those files. It takes a while to get the hang of that program but the person or persons that made it really did a good job designing it. It doesn't re-encode and you keep the quality you started with; that is really a nice feature.>>

Hmm, from what I've been reading, I thought mpeg2 quality would decrease the more you edited it. I will check out that link later, thanks. If Video Wizard can edit mpeg2 without loss of quality, that's great. Not sure how much if any editing I might want to do, but I might like to experiment with it later, just for fun. .. and I think editing dv data would give me lots more options, as in starting the sound from the next clip while the video from the previous video is still running, so to give smoother transitions, or whatever.

>>I thought perhaps I could be of a little help. It is obvious that you already know quite a bit about video editing, you can learn alot on this website and I am grateful for the advice I have received here.<<

Yes, any input is helpful, thanks. I actually don't know anything about video editing other than what I've been reading on the internet, on sites like this.

[lordsmurf]

and seems like dv data would be lots easier to edit and give more advanced editing options.

Not really any harder than anything else.

What do you mean by "more advanced editing options".
If anything, DV is compressed and allows for less editing abilities.

[teevee]

and seems like dv data would be lots easier to edit and give more advanced editing options.

Not really any harder than anything else.

What do you mean by "more advanced editing options".
If anything, DV is compressed and allows for less editing abilities.

Thanks for your input. I don't really know what I mean by "more advanced editing options" as I've never done any editing but perhaps it might be fun to experiment with different editing "tricks". I read that dv is easier to edit, mainly because each dv frame is independent of the next frame, so it's easier to do frame by frame editing in dv, where mpeg2 frames require info from adjacent frames to complete their picture, so makes me think that frame accurate editing of mpeg2 might not be so easy, esp without losing some quality? Plus I understand that mpeg2 is more compressed than dv.

[edDV]

Where to start.

....I currently have 2 JVC-S9911U svhs machines, one is hooked up to tv thru a PVR

http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Television/DigitalTV/DigitalTVEquipment/Shaw...VRTerminal.htm

and one to my dvd player thru the sima color corrector.

The Shaw box looks like a Motorola 6412 (or similar)
http://broadband.motorola.com/dvr/dct6412.asp

It does a good job recording the Digital MPeg2 and HD (DTV) channels but is fairly poor recording analog lower channels. Better to split the cable upstream of the cable box and capture analog separately to one of your new tuner-capture boxes when quality is desired.

You say you are feeding a S-VHS "to my DVD player". Do you mean it is a DVD Recorder? What Model?

Now as a result of making some money from the internet, I'm no longer broke, and so I've recently taken another look at pc video editing. So after several days of reading, I came up with this latest method, which seems will work on my laptop, not take up much time, and hopefully give great picture quality.

>> it isn't clear what your workflow is.<<

The tv cable would go to my PVR, then out of the PVR by component or svhs cable to the Datavideo TBC-3000, then by svhs cable to the Canopus ADVC-500 converter, then by firewire to the firewire input on my laptop, (or to a LaCie FireWire 800 PCMCIA Card), then by firewire to the harddrive raid.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10351
The above raid can be daisy-chained to another raid, incase I fill it up at some time, which I might because I guess I'll store all clips as dv files.

Since the Datavideo TBC-3000 has 2 channels, another svhs cable could go from my dvd player to the Datavideo TBC-3000, so I could easily choose to save clips from the dvd player or from the tv.

I fail to see the purpose of having the TBC-3000 in the chain. The feeds from the cable company will all be stable (except for local cable access and gov't channels). The JVC S-VHS decks have limited TBC. The only need for a TBC is at the output of the VCR.

The ADVC-500 seems way overkill. The only advantage for your workflow (vs. say the ADVC-300) is Y, Pb, Pr inputs but the ADVC box can't capture HDTV so the advantage is limited.

I have the Motorola 6xxx box feeding S-Video (16:9 is letterboxed) from either cable SD or HD to my ADVC-100 and get a very clean DV output. The ADVC-300 would be better since it has proc amp controls that can work from presets via the computer. Cable levels differ channel to channel so it helps to have these adjustments at this point in the chain.

DV is very high bitrate for PVR. You will need a huge hard disk system. I only use DV for special captures. For routine dubs from live cable or the DVR, I realtime encode to MPeg2. I do this in realtime software and a dedicated tower computer but a hardware MPeg2 PVR file serving computer would free the laptop for other uses.

The Lacie RAID isn't what you want for this. If you want to get into extreme editing later you will want to do it on separate hardware. If you must record everything in DV, don't record through the laptop. Go from the ADVC directly to a DV recording HDD system like the Focus FS-4 (or FS-2 if you have the bucks).

http://www.focusinfo.com/products/firestore/firestore.htm

For far less money you could build a dedicated tower for DV PVR and add as many HDD as you need now and future. You don't need RAID, just capacity for that much DV video.

Alternative is to realtime encode to MPeg2 as mentioned above to save half to 2/3 disk space at some quality tradeoff.

>>Destination is HDD, DVD or S-VHS?<<

Well I would want to store them on harddrive, then later make either a dvd or svhs tape from the clips for easy tv watching....dvd is most likely better as I could make chapters, ect... but don't know how picture quality going from (dv data to procoder2 to mpeg2) --- would compare with going from (dv data to Canopus ADVC-500 to svhs tape). I imagine there wouldn't be much or any quality difference, in which case I would go with dvd. ... which has got me thinking, does the dvd writer make a difference? .. if so, instead of going with my current laptop dvd writer, maybe I should get a high quality firewire dvd writer? ... well, I guess I'll see how the picture looks.

>>Why are you using S-VHS for record? DV format is superior in every way.<<

Not sure what you mean by that. I have no experience but have read the dv format has some color problems. I can't watch dv format on the tv so have to watch either mpeg2 on dvd or svhs on tape. I could watch the dv on my computer but that would give me a small picture, so even though it would be a better/clearer picture on the computer, it would probably be more enjoyable to watch on a tv.

Forget S-VHS for recording, DV has it beat in every way. DV has more than twice the chroma bandwidth of S-VHS and much better luminance performance. If you have a ADVC there is no problem playing DV to a TV if you want. I do it all the time from computer to monitor via the ADVC.

Nothing above covers HDTV direct recording except for the letterboxed S-Video. Consider that after you master SD recording.

[edDV]

and seems like dv data would be lots easier to edit and give more advanced editing options.

Not really any harder than anything else.

What do you mean by "more advanced editing options".
If anything, DV is compressed and allows for less editing abilities.

Less than what? DV is optimized for editing and contains all temporal frames. Most of what you see on television is editied in DV format (DVCAM, DVCPro). The next step up is uncompressed SDI using 2x compressed Digital Betacam for storage.

[teevee]

[quote="edDV"]

>>It does a good job recording the Digital MPeg2 and HD (DTV) channels but is fairly poor recording analog lower channels.
Better to split the cable upstream of the cable box and capture analog separately to one of your new tuner-capture boxes when quality is desired.<<

Do you mean to one of my svhs tuners? So I would use a splitter to record the lower channels from the svhs machine?. I'll try that later to compare picture quality... and by "lower channels", is that everything under channel 14? Only problem is, I can only rewind live tv using the motorola box, so if I'm watching tv and see something I'd like to keep, with the motorola box I can simply rewind and store it. Using the svhs tuner, to rewind a scene I'd have to be recording the program on the svhs machine, which is not quite as convenient.


>>You say you are feeding a S-VHS "to my DVD player". Do you mean it is a DVD Recorder? What Model?<<

I have one svhs machine hooked up to my dvd player thru a sima color corrector, but the signal goes from the dvd player to the svhs machine. It's just a simple panasonic dvd player.


>>I fail to see the purpose of having the TBC-3000 in the chain. The feeds from the cable company will all be stable (except for local cable access and gov't channels). The JVC S-VHS decks have limited TBC. The only need for a TBC is at the output of the VCR.<<

I have a collection of clips on tape that I'd like to store on the computer, as well as some home movies currently on vhs. Also, a TBC will allow me to store scenes from dvd movies. I guess when I'm finished archiving all my tapes, I'll only need a one channel TBC to use with the dvd player, unless I use the svhs machine to record some programs on the lower channels.

>>The ADVC-500 seems way overkill. The only advantage for your workflow (vs. say the ADVC-300) is Y, Pb, Pr inputs but the ADVC box can't capture HDTV so the advantage is limited.<<

Was just thinking the ADVC-500 might somehow give a better result, as it's supposed to be a step up from the ADVC-300. My dvd player has component outputs, so it might help a bit?



>>I have the Motorola 6xxx box feeding S-Video (16:9 is letterboxed) from either cable SD or HD to my ADVC-100 and get a very clean DV output.<<


I don't understand how a high def signal can go from the motorola box to the ADVC-100. I thought you need a special cable to send HD signals and the ADVC-100 wouldn't be able to accept that cable? When it comes to HD I don't really know anything as I don't have a HD tv and havn't been reading much about it.

>>The ADVC-300 would be better since it has proc amp controls that can work from presets via the computer. Cable levels differ channel to channel so it helps to have these adjustments at this point in the chain.<<

Cool. I might be too lazy to work at adjusting those controls, but who knows,...if it makes a noticable difference I might work at it.

>>DV is very high bitrate for PVR. You will need a huge hard disk system. I only use DV for special captures. For routine dubs from live cable or the DVR, I realtime encode to MPeg2. I do this in realtime software and a dedicated tower computer but a hardware MPeg2 PVR file serving computer would free the laptop for other uses.<<

I no longer use my laptop for much, and wouldn't be using it for anything while watching tv. The lacie raid is pretty huge, and if it fills up I can daisychain another raid by firewire.



>>The Lacie RAID isn't what you want for this. If you want to get into extreme editing later you will want to do it on separate hardware.<<

I still don't understand why the Lacie raid is not a good match for storing and editing clips. It's big and fast..what am I missing?


>>If you must record everything in DV, don't record through the laptop. Go from the ADVC directly to a DV recording HDD system like the Focus FS-4 (or FS-2 if you have the bucks).<<

The FS-2 looks very interesting, at about $7,000 US? Would it make it easy to store and edit clips? It's late now so I didn't read thru what it can do and how to use it, but will do tomorrow, thanks. ...can you tell me what else I would need with that FS-2 to collect, store, and edit clips?


>>For far less money you could build a dedicated tower for DV PVR and add as many HDD as you need now and future. You don't need RAID, just capacity for that much DV video.<<

Again, I'm not understanding. ..I thought high capacity equals raid? If the raid runs out of space then you can expand by daisychaining firewire. By dedicated tower you mean a desktop pc?

>>Forget S-VHS for recording, DV has it beat in every way. DV has more than twice the chroma bandwidth of S-VHS and much better luminance performance. If you have a ADVC there is no problem playing DV to a TV if you want. I do it all the time from computer to monitor via the ADVC.<<
Neat.

>>Nothing above covers HDTV direct recording except for the letterboxed S-Video. Consider that after you master SD recording.<<

Can't think about hdtv now...too tired. Thanks and good nite.

[thecoalman]

Quick observation: It appears to me that you're trying to kill a fly with a hammer..... Personally I'd cut back on some of that hardware and look into investing in software.

I know you mentioned that you'll be using a laptop but a desktop is better for this. Additionally it opens up the possibility of getting a Matrox or simialr rea-time editing card. If your going to be doing a lot of editing this will save you huge amount of time as far as previewing your edits go. That's my next purchase....

[edDV]

[quote="teevee"]

>>It does a good job recording the Digital MPeg2 and HD (DTV) channels but is fairly poor recording analog lower channels.
Better to split the cable upstream of the cable box and capture analog separately to one of your new tuner-capture boxes when quality is desired.<<

Do you mean to one of my svhs tuners? So I would use a splitter to record the lower channels from the svhs machine?. I'll try that later to compare picture quality... and by "lower channels", is that everything under channel 14? Only problem is, I can only rewind live tv using the motorola box, so if I'm watching tv and see something I'd like to keep, with the motorola box I can simply rewind and store it. Using the svhs tuner, to rewind a scene I'd have to be recording the program on the svhs machine, which is not quite as convenient.

You could pass through a S-VHS tuner (using comb filter) in E-E mode to a ADVC and get better results than the Motorola 6412. I would do this only for special recordings. Routine DVR can still be done on the 6412 at lower quality.

Cable channels are usuallly analog NTSC on the two digit stations 02-99, Three digit "digital" SD channels are usually ~528x480 MPeg2 @ 6-15 Mb/s. HDTV channels are MPeg-TS streams ~20-25 Mb/s.

>>You say you are feeding a S-VHS "to my DVD player". Do you mean it is a DVD Recorder? What Model?<<

I have one svhs machine hooked up to my dvd player thru a sima color corrector, but the signal goes from the dvd player to the svhs machine. It's just a simple panasonic dvd player.

Before you do buy anything else, I suggest you buy a direct DVD recorder and evaluate that for some of your needs. You can record many programs directly to DVD and eliminate lots of clip management and encoding time.

>>I fail to see the purpose of having the TBC-3000 in the chain. The feeds from the cable company will all be stable (except for local cable access and gov't channels). The JVC S-VHS decks have limited TBC. The only need for a TBC is at the output of the VCR.<<

I have a collection of clips on tape that I'd like to store on the computer, as well as some home movies currently on vhs. Also, a TBC will allow me to store scenes from dvd movies. I guess when I'm finished archiving all my tapes, I'll only need a one channel TBC to use with the dvd player, unless I use the svhs machine to record some programs on the lower channels.

The TBC-3000 seems overkill but it is up to you. A single channel TBC is all you need. Dual channel TBCs are usually used for timed analog switching.

>>The ADVC-500 seems way overkill. The only advantage for your workflow (vs. say the ADVC-300) is Y, Pb, Pr inputs but the ADVC box can't capture HDTV so the advantage is limited.<<

Was just thinking the ADVC-500 might somehow give a better result, as it's supposed to be a step up from the ADVC-300. My dvd player has component outputs, so it might help a bit?

Clip extraction from DVD is better done digitally from the DVD disc files.

>>I have the Motorola 6xxx box feeding S-Video (16:9 is letterboxed) from either cable SD or HD to my ADVC-100 and get a very clean DV output.<<

I don't understand how a high def signal can go from the motorola box to the ADVC-100. I thought you need a special cable to send HD signals and the ADVC-100 wouldn't be able to accept that cable? When it comes to HD I don't really know anything as I don't have a HD tv and havn't been reading much about it.

The Motorola 6412 outputs full resolution HDTV (1080i or 720p) over the DVI or analog component outputs. It also outputs a downscaled NTSC SD representation in letterbox format on the S-Video connector. That is the signal that I capture with the ADVC to 720x480 interlaced DV. I either record that as DV to the HDD or I realtime encode from the DV stream to MPeg2 for PVR timeshifting.

>>The ADVC-300 would be better since it has proc amp controls that can work from presets via the computer. Cable levels differ channel to channel so it helps to have these adjustments at this point in the chain.<<

Cool. I might be too lazy to work at adjusting those controls, but who knows,...if it makes a noticable difference I might work at it.

You are going to need to put in lots of work to get any advantage out of these expensive boxes.

>>DV is very high bitrate for PVR. You will need a huge hard disk system. I only use DV for special captures. For routine dubs from live cable or the DVR, I realtime encode to MPeg2. I do this in realtime software and a dedicated tower computer but a hardware MPeg2 PVR file serving computer would free the laptop for other uses.<<

I no longer use my laptop for much, and wouldn't be using it for anything while watching tv. The lacie raid is pretty huge, and if it fills up I can daisychain another raid by firewire.

>>The Lacie RAID isn't what you want for this. If you want to get into extreme editing later you will want to do it on separate hardware.<<

I still don't understand why the Lacie raid is not a good match for storing and editing clips. It's big and fast..what am I missing?

The Lacie is designed for a multi-stream editing environment. You are paying top dollar for bandwidth that you don't need. Everything you propose to do can be done without RAID with single drive recording and playback. What you need is a HDD platform where you can simply and cheaply add HDD units for capacity. A tower PC is the cheapest and most efficient solution. Other packaged file servers will be cheaper and/or more flexible than the Lacie.

>>If you must record everything in DV, don't record through the laptop. Go from the ADVC directly to a DV recording HDD system like the Focus FS-4 (or FS-2 if you have the bucks).<<

The FS-2 looks very interesting, at about $7,000 US? Would it make it easy to store and edit clips? It's late now so I didn't read thru what it can do and how to use it, but will do tomorrow, thanks. ...can you tell me what else I would need with that FS-2 to collect, store, and edit clips?

>>For far less money you could build a dedicated tower for DV PVR and add as many HDD as you need now and future. You don't need RAID, just capacity for that much DV video.<<

Again, I'm not understanding. ..I thought high capacity equals raid? If the raid runs out of space then you can expand by daisychaining firewire. By dedicated tower you mean a desktop pc?

No, RAID 0 is for bandwidth, RAID 1 et.al. is for realtime backup. DV uses only 3.5-4.0 MB/s stream rates. A single modern drive can easily handle 20-40 MB/s sustained data rate. RAID is only required for handling multiple synchronized streams in an editing configuration.

Your problem is adding capacity.

>>Forget S-VHS for recording, DV has it beat in every way. DV has more than twice the chroma bandwidth of S-VHS and much better luminance performance. If you have a ADVC there is no problem playing DV to a TV if you want. I do it all the time from computer to monitor via the ADVC.<<
Neat.

>>Nothing above covers HDTV direct recording except for the letterboxed S-Video. Consider that after you master SD recording.<<

Can't think about hdtv now...too tired. Thanks and good nite.

Save some of your lottery winnings for HDTV. You can easily run up a huge tab there.

Before you buy anything, work out your daily workflow and software requirements for each step. You are designing a workflow process. The hardware and software should only be purchased to match and support your process.

[davideck]

Excellent thread!
I felt compelled to add my two cents about the TBC-3000.

Silly as it sounds, I do prefer to capture off air through a TBC just in case the RF glitches. My Hauppauge PVR-250 is pretty picky about that, and you don't get a second chance.

Also IMHO, the TBC-3000 Proc Amp controls are really nice. And it is not only a dual TBC but also a dual Proc Amp. Great for optimizing two sources.

[teevee]

[quote="edDV"]
>>Clip extraction from DVD is better done digitally from the DVD disc files.<<

Regarding the above comment, if someone is able to provide short answers to the 5 questions below, and show me a link to where I can learn more, that would be great!...thanks
**************************************
#1 By "better done" does that refer to the picture quality?

#2 Can collecting clips with the digital extraction method be done on macrovision protected dvds?

#3 Could the clips be trimed down to single frame accuracy?

#4 What file format would the clips be in?

#5 If I used the digital clip extraction method on some clips and the Canopus ADVC-300 method on other clips, I guess I'd end up with a mixture of clip formats...would I then be able to edit and combine all the clips together using a program like Edius Pro?

Any link to further info would be great. I thought maybe it has something to do with huffyuv so I googled ["clip extraction" huffyuv] but did not get any results.
Thanks!
***************************************

A few more comments are below, but it's kindof a lot of reading...mainly I'm looking for advice on the above questions.


After the helpful input I have received so far, I decided to order the Canopus ADVC300 instead of the Canopus ADVC500 which will save me over $1,000
http://www.future-micro.ca/db/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=8
I actually would have stayed with the Canopus ADVC500 if I could find a time base corrector with component input and outputs, because the Canopus ADVC500 has component inputs, but the only one I could find is here
http://www.future-micro.ca/db/product.php?productid=715&cat=0&page=1
which cost $3,000 so that would be almost $3,500 extra just to increase the quality from using s-video to using component...but then with the extra processing involved going from analog to dv then to mpeg2, I don't know if I'd see any difference.

>>Before you do buy anything else, I suggest you buy a direct DVD recorder and evaluate that for some of your needs. You can record many programs directly to DVD and eliminate lots of clip management and encoding time.<<

Thanks for the idea but about 2 years ago I bought a panasonic DMR-E50 dvd recorder. My svhs machine showed me a better picture, plus unlike the svhs machine, the dvd recorder couldn't even give me glitch free transitions between scenes, as the audio would trail off at the end of each cut...so I returned the dvd recorder. Plus a computer will allow me much more flexibility in organizing, arranging and editing clips without loss of quality.

Also, I've read advice saying not use my laptop, but I still don't understand why. A dv signal would be coming into a firewire port from the advc 300, and the laptop would simply have to move the dv data to the firewire raid for storage. Whether using the laptop or desktop, the dv data stored on the raid should be exactly the same, and my laptop is powerful enough. Later I could go thru my clips and edit them using a program like EDIUS Pro 3. I can't see why the laptop and firewire raid couldn't work together to edit the clips.

Regarding the FireStore FS-2 suggestion, it does say "With DTE, there is no ingest stage between shooting and editing...no capturing, no file transfer, no file conversion."
..but it appears that the FireStore FS-2 only accepts dv data, so I'd still have to get the advc 300...so I don't understand how the FS-2 would help, esp since I already have a laptop and ordered a raid for storage.


Well, I guess my next step is to read about HD and to find out if it's possible for me to collect any HD clips. If I find it is possible, after about 6 months or so I might get a turnkey HD editing system.

Thanks for all the help!