basic analog to dv?

[fishywishy]

so i originally set out to buy a digital camera to convert my sony analog tapes to dv thru a sony camera. well my last one i got off ebay the dv port was defective! now im looking on ebay and wondering if i should just get a converter since the analog to dv conversion was a lot better quality then i thought it would be. so now whats the difference between a pci card like the atis or hauppauge vs the ADS and Canopus ADVC external converter?

i currently have a hauppauge wintv pci card from a couple years ago. the quality is pretty bad. any recommendations for a analog to dv converter? nothing special, i will be doing minimal editing. this will be bought off ebay, so if someone would kindly list the products itd make my life a lot easier. thx

[redwudz]

I use a ADVC-100 analog to DV converter. It was replaced by the 110, but if you can find a ADVC-100 on E-bay in good condition for a good price, go for it. DV converters, whether in a camcorder or a standalone unit do essentially the same thing and I doubt you would see any difference in the output between the types or brands.

If you look to the left in 'Capture Cards' and check the box for 'DV Converter (Captures analog video and converts to DV)', then 'Search', you should see a fairly complete listing of the units available.

[fishywishy]

so whats the difference between say the advc dv converted and a ati tv usb input (besides the usb 8) ) is it only that the ati imports it as raw avi while the advc encodes it to dv? is the quality much better?

[redwudz]

The ATI card would also do a analog to digital conversion because computers don't 'understand' analog.
DV is a fixed format, that's why all DV devices should have the same format and output specifications:

5:1 Compression ratio (Compared to the analog input)
25 Mbps video data rate or about 13GB per hour
720x480, 4:1:1 (NTSC)
2 ch @ 48 kHz PCM audio

DV conversion is normally done in hardware. DV usually has 'locked sync' between the audio and video.

The ATI card, depending on which one, would do a software analog to digital conversion to a format you select. This compression uses the CPU for the analog to digital conversion. A fast CPU is generally needed for the higher compression codecs to get good results. The quality depends on the codec used and it's settings. The sync between audio and video is not locked and dropping frames during conversion can cause sync problems. There are also ATI cards that do hardware conversion to MPEG formats.

Generally a ATI card, with a fast CPU has the ability to get a better quality conversion from analog to digital. But it can be more complex to set up and depends on the CPU for the conversion speed. I've used this method, but much prefer a hardware encoder. I like DV as it locks in the sync, and sync loss is one on the common problems with software analog to digital conversions.

DV has a few added advantages. Every frame is a keyframe, so frame accurate editing is standard. It's downside is the room it takes up on your hard drive, 13GB an hour. I usually convert it to MPEG or Xvid after editing and I have plenty of hard drive space, so that's not really a problem.

[fishywishy]

well its odd, cause the times ive used a sony dv camera to import in video the dv format has been higher quality then the raw avi that my tv card captures (even after deinterlacing it). only thing i can think of is its because its a old tv card. then again the camera is even older

[fishywishy]

well im really price hunting here so bear with me can those haupauge pvr-250 cards compare to the canopus decks? after very close eaxmination of my current card to a sony dv capture the dv is a little bit sharper and bright, otherwise its the same

[TheInformer]

I've input analog video through my Sony Sony DVMC-DA1 (https://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCardRead=48#comments) and through my ATI AIW Radeon 9700 Pro.

Result? No contest.

The quality of the DVMC-DA1 video was far superior to the ATI card. Just my experience, that's all.