Best capturing software for Canopus ADVC-110

[tran]

Hi,
I am newbie, have very little knowledge about movies making.
I received the Canopus ADVC-110 on Friday evening and spent two nights playing with it :P
I tested capturing using Windows Movies Maker, Windv, CaptureFlux. I thought WMM would provide the best capture (avi) files, but to my surprise WinDV did the best job. I downloaded Ulead Studio 10 Plus, Adobe Element Premier 3.0, VirtualDub and plan to test them when I have some times this week.
My task is to transfer my Hi8 tapes to digital, to preserve my family movies. Just capture them, and store in the hard drive, and not edit or anything else now. I will do the "production" later when I have time.
I read many threads posted here and on some other forums, but I have not found the answers for my questions below, therefore I appreciate if you guys can give me the answers and any other advices.
My question are:
1/ Which sofware can provide the best capture, in term of preserving the original quality as much as I can ? What setup should should the format be ? I can add/upgrade my hard drive(s), so the size of the capture files is not a problem. The quality is the highest priority.
2/ How come WinDV provide better capture quality than Windows Movie Maker ?
3/ I know Adobe EP3.0 and Ulead Studio 10 Plus each costs approximately $100. Are they worth the price, comparing with VirtualDub? Or just personal preferences ?
4/ Is there a guide for using the ADVC-110 somewhere? The manual does not reccommend any software to use...
5/ I use Windows Movie Maker to burn a short (10 minutes) clip to a DVD-RW and view it on my LG player. It looks good. However I believe there are other better software for encoding/compress and save the clip to DVD. What is your favorite ?
6/ My Sony Hi8 CCDTRV65 is very reliable and still running like a charm, but I know the tapes are not the best. Any reccomendation for a new camcorder: miniDV ? miniDVD ?
My setup:
Dell XPS400 Dualcore, 2GB, 250GB, 256MB w.DVI
Canopus ADVC-110
Sony Hi8 CCDTRV65 (9year-old)
Many thanks for your inputs !

[budz]

Scenalyzer Live is a good capture program to use.

http://www.scenalyzer.com/main.html

[Wile_E]

I just bought Scenalyzer Live to use with my ADVC-300 and mini-DV camcorder. Works great and much better than WinDV. Both programs use buffering to prevent dropped frames. Windows Movie Maker does not.

[tran]

Hi budz and Wile_E,
Many thanks for quick reply !
Could you please be more specific e.g. about your capture para setup so I could follow?
Thanks.

[redwudz]

First, most any program that transfers the DV to the computer will have the same quality. It's just a data transfer, not a capture like a video card does. Some programs are easier to use or more versatile, like Scenalyzer Live. WMM probably has it's problems with outputting the DV. But none of them should change the quality of the DV when it is transferred to your hard drive from the ADVC. I use a ADVC-100.

I use WinDV for the transfer. Then I use VirtualDub Mod for editing. I add the Panasonic DV Codec so VDM will accept the DV files. After editing, I save out the audio as a WAV and convert it to AC3 with ffmpeggui. I frameserve the edited DV video only to TMPGEnc Plus encoder directly and encode as DVD compliant MPEG-2. Then I drop the MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio into TMPGEnc DVD Author, create the menus, etc., then burn to a DVD.

I like WinDV and VDM as they are freeware and VDM is a good editor for DV. It also has a lot of filters available so I can clean up the video if needed. When I output the WAV file, I can also use Audacity to filter and improve that before encoding to AC3. Audacity is also freeware.

[tran]

First, most any program that transfers the DV to the computer will have the same quality. It's just a data transfer, not a capture like a video card does.

Hi redwudz,
Thanks for reply.
I know the ADVC-110 converts the signals from analog to digital and the software should only save the files to the hard drive. However, when I capture a clip using Windows Movie Maker, if I select the first option "Best..." (which actually not the best) then WMM will store the file in a smaller format with lower quality than if I select the 2nd option (DV-AVI).
WinDV also give 2 options 1 & 2 (compressed) and I do not know which option will give better quality.
Again, what I try to do is to capture the best quality as I can to preserve the video for later use.
Take care,
Tran

[redwudz]

If you were using WMM, you would want to save it out as DV only or it will suffer a quality loss. WMM and MS would like you to use their WMV format and they kind of 'hide' the option to save it out as DV. I would only use WMM if you want to edit with it. The other programs like Scenalyzer and WinDV will just do a transfer and not try to re-encode anything.

With WinDV, the two choices are how the audio is stored. Most editing or encoding programs use Type 2, such as VirtualDub and TMPGEnc encoder. Some use Type 1. But you can convert the DV type if needed with no loss. There are a couple of converters for this in the DV sections of our 'Tools' page: https://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=33#33

I didn't see it mentioned in the other posts, and you are likely aware that DV takes about 13GB per hour of hard drive space. Large hard drives help.

[tran]

Hi redwudz,
Thank you very much for your help !
I will do the test as soon as possible.
One more thing: the ADVC-110 is ok for my task isn't it? or should I get the 300?
Honestly, I think I should save some money for the Sony Handycam DCR-DVD405 :P
Thanks in advance.