Canopus ADVC 300 use with DVD Recorder

[westbrookmedia]

I'm trying to convert an 8mm analog tape to digital quickly and maintain quality. I am especially having issues with some low light footage. Doing it on the PC through an ADVC300 is producing DVDs with ok results. However, I'm guessing the poor results are having to do with poor encoding and/or not making the best choices on the ADVC. I'm just learning how to use this bad boy. I've had it for some time and had only been using it at factory defaults to capture analog on my PC.

I tested out a desktop recorder... a JVC M100, hooked the camera directly using composite and the results were really great. There was some softening, barely noticed, and the low light footage had lots of 'mosquitos', but smaller ones, no blocking.

When I did the same thing on the Pioneer DVR210, the quality in comparison to the JVC was crappy. The low light footage had significant 'macroblocking'. The noise was bad on both, but the noise was chunkier on the Pioneer than the JVC and not as close to the original as the JVC.

I don't own the JVC and it doesn't allow variable record times (10 minute blocks) something I really need for flexibility in breaking up tapes for people. I cannot continue to put tapes on DVD at a competitive cost using the PC, it takes too much time.

So, I tried placing the ADVC300 in between the camera and the Pioneer recorder and DV out from the Canopus to the Pioneer. I lowered the sharpness and set the IRE to 7.5 and used 3D Y/C separationand NR. I tried several tests using different levels of sharpness and was able to improve the quality of the low light footage (-2 was best), but the video was still not as good and darker than the JVC.

Now my question is... are there additional settings I could use on the Canopus (before the digital image enters the Pioneer DVD recorder) to get the quality to more closely match the original video... OR is it just a crappy encoder on the Pionner that is producing the less than original results??

Is it possible to match the quality of the original tape with the equipment I have without taking the time to capture and then burn on the PC?

I like the JVC, however, with rigid recording times of 1,2,4 hours etc... doesn't allow me to break up a two hour tape at a meaningful breaking point.

Any Canopus 300 users out there?

[redwudz]

I use a Canopus ADVC-100 and there are no software adjustments with it. The DV is encoded with a hardware encoder.

What does the DV look like on the computer? All the problems I have had are with the software encodes to MPEG format after the Canopus does the transfer.

I use fairly simple tools. I transfer the DV with WinDV to the hard drive. Then I filter and edit with Virtual Dub Mod, then encode to MPEG-2 with TMPGEnc encoder. Any loss of quality has been with the encode settings.

[Dragonsf]

I'm an ADVC 300 owner and I found (PC-specific) that some DV codecs give bad results (a decode is needed during encoding to mpeg). The Apdaptec codec gave best results.

[westbrookmedia]

redwudz says

I use a Canopus ADVC-100 and there are no software adjustments with it. The DV is encoded with a hardware encoder.

What does the DV look like on the computer? All the problems I have had are with the software encodes to MPEG format after the Canopus does the transfer.

Have you found encode settings for TPMGEnc which work well for you?

If I am using the ADVC-300 as an A/D converter to the PC, software (picture controller 300) is available for almost all the adjustments (sharpness, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, noise reduction, Y/C separation, black expansion, white peak adjustment, white step, volume and a couple others). I just set the dip switch to 'PC' and can make the adjustments via the software. It worked fairly well on another low light video and looked pretty good. From what I remember, it fell to pieces when I burned it to a DVD (encoded). It was full of noise and not as nice as the original tape. It was a lot of work and I got similar results burning the DVD directly to a DVD recorder.

Now, however, I am trying to use the ADVC-300 as a standalone unit with the recorder in an attempt to improve the quality. So, I set the dipswitch to 'UNIT' and all the adjustments are made directly on the unit using the tiny dipswitch and buttons on top to control a series of annoying LED's.

[westbrookmedia]

I'm an ADVC 300 owner and I found (PC-specific) that some DV codecs give bad results (a decode is needed during encoding to mpeg). The Apdaptec codec gave best results.

When you are capturing low light footage or noisy tape, what settings do you use on the ADVC 300 to improve the quality of the conversion?

I did find that lowering the sharpness helped the noise, but the blocking prevailed (on the desktop recorder). I'm trying to address the macroblocking. I haven't found any adjustments that reduce the blocking. This leads me to the conclusion that the Pioneer encoder is the problem and produces the blocking upon encoding.

Do you like the Canopus? I've had it for a long time and have only started to use it as more than a straight A/D converter using factory default settings.

[Dragonsf]

Yes I like the ADVC very much. Before I had the Hollywood DV Bridge with all the trouble.
I only use the lightness setting of the the Canopus controller. All other settings gave bad conversions. If I need some filtering (seldom), I just use the AviSynth filter. I'm converting with CCE to mpeg.
During conversion, I can control the PW with my Monitor using the S-Video output of the ADVC. This jack just sees, what's done to the video signal just before conversion.

[edDV]

I answered some of your ADVC-300 questions on your other similar post. Read that and resumarize where you are.

You are using the ADVC-300 to capture and encode your 8mm camcorder video to DV format (25 Mb/s intraframe compression) and then sending DV format to the Pioneer over IEEE-1394 for further encoding to MPeg2 (4-9 Mb/s using interframe and addtional in frame compression).

The handles you have along the way are described in the other post.
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1476346#1476346

[westbrookmedia]

I answered some of your ADVC-300 questions on your other similar post. Read that and resumarize where you are.

You are using the ADVC-300 to capture and encode your 8mm camcorder video to DV format (25 Mb/s intraframe compression) and then sending DV format to the Pioneer over IEEE-1394 for further encoding to MPeg2 (4-9 Mb/s using interframe and addtional in frame compression).

The handles you have along the way are described in the other post.
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1476346#1476346

Yes, thank you for putting the link here. Thas is exactly where I am, as you stated. Is this post now a duplicate?

As I moved along, the posts began to get closer. In conclusion, my problem is the encoder on the recorder.