canopus v other devices

[edDV]

I have done some further research, and aside from the broadcast quality cards people seem to hold the PDI Deluxe in high regards – as shown here:

http://www.pixelmagicsystems.com/products/pdi/pdi_deluxe.htm

The only problem is it uses an old BT878 chipset which uses an 8bit DAC instead of 10bit DAC. How do people on this forum feel about this card? And what about the 8bit v 10bit question?

Another card I have been researching is the Turtle Beach PCI card, although I have read a negative review on this card.

@$230 that PDI Deluxe must be the most expensive BT878 card.

Does the Turtle Beach card cap uncompressed? I thought it compressed to MPeg. What chipset does it use?

[lordsmurf]

Theory vs practice, I'm afraid. The theory is proven with better DV boxes.

The chroma issues are indeed between the VCR and the DV file, meaning the DV box itself is crapping up something.

DV is 4:1:1, which compresses even more than 4:2:0 in some ways. I wish 4:2:0 was written in better terms, the "0" is misleading to so many people. (Not you, however, I'm sure. But others reading this probably have no idea.) I firmly believe it's poor implementation of 4:1:1 down-conversion from the source input that leads to the errors we see.

My respect for Canopus products really started to disappear after Procoder 2, and the "upgrades" to the various ADVC boxes. Aside from consumers/hobbyists, I'm really not aware of Canopus having a big presence in any professional capacity anymore. I've not seen it for years now. Their buyout by Thomson for Grass Valley pretty much threw out what few good products they had. Even wikipedia gives them a few lumps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canopus_Corporation

People buying Canopus hardware/software thinking that they're buying into professional gear are fooling themselves entirely. It's an overpriced consumer toy, with average consumer quality.

I have a $25 Tevion card from Aldi (the grocery store) that can capture HuffYUV in better quality than all of the Canopus boxes, plus even a few really old Matrox setups.

Most times, comparing 8-bit vs 10-bit vs 12-bit is "measurebating". The numbers don't mean much if the card is weaker in other areas. Take the whole product, don't measure this and that.

[marada]

“$230 that PDI Deluxe must be the most expensive BT878 card”

I totally agree that this price seems way over the top for a card with a BT878 chipset, however is there anything better within this price range? Now that I am in this marked looking for a good quality capture card I actually feel quite disappointed. Looking at the cards available, it seems we are no further forward than 6-7 years ago. What seems to have happened is over the years an abundance of cheap cards have flooded the market, leaving only the real high end cards at the other end of the market and nothing in between. If you contrast this with other computer hardware such as graphics cards, processor power, hard drive capacity etc - capture cards seem to be a long way behind.

[jagabo]

Looking at the cards available, it seems we are no further forward than 6-7 years ago.

Because cards made then could capture everything in SD video and SD video hasn't changed since then. The differences between better cards are worse cards are the amount of external noise that leaks into the caps and software.

You're way over thinking this for VHS capture -- the lowest resolution, lowest dynamic range, noisiest, crappiest source there is.

[edDV]

All the tuner cards went to hardware encoding chipsets that lack direct uncompressed capture.

The compressed MPeg tuner card market is driven by Tivo like PVR software.

There's no low end demand for uncompressed capture. HD tuners tune MPeg streams directly.

Luckily the SD pro cards are dropping in price. We haven't mentioned the BlackMagic Intensity Pro that can cap uncompressed SD or HD, composite or component. Unlike the Xena, it has no TBC.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/techspecs/
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=blackmagic+intensi...wAw#ps-sellers

[jagabo]

Start at the bottom of the barrel (BT 878, works with Linux):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814122159

(That card pretty much guarantees A/V sync problems though -- as you'll be capturing audio with your audio card.)

Then get a BlackMagic Intensity Pro and compare.

[edDV]

Wow, you found one without a tuner.

I agree audio drift is the problem with this approach especially for 2 hr to 6 hr captures.

[lordsmurf]

BT8x8 cards have a chronic issue with being unable to sync to the audio card, causing not just drift but drop-frame problems that cause loss of sync that cannot be corrected.

I have an extra BT878 AVer card that actually worked well in conjunction with SoundBlaster cards.

[marada]

I was looking at the BlackMagic Intensity Pro, although I note it uses a breakout cable. I can’t help but think that this is not the way to go since you are introducing another connection compared to if you went directly to the card with a good quality cable. It’s like any cable if you cut and then join the cable, it does not matter how good the quality of the connector is you still lose some quality.

[marada]

“Does the Turtle Beach card cap uncompressed? I thought it compressed to Mpeg?”

Well according to the card specs posted on this site you are able to capture uncompressed. I am not sure what chipset it uses, I have goggled this but have not had any luck finding out.

[marada]

Also the Balckmagic intensity seems to have a few problems with capture from VCR. Please see the following thread from a user:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/blackmagic-intensity-pro-can-t-capture-from-any...e-t347419.html

“Emailed BlackMagic the first time, took a little while to get back to me, but they did and were friendly.
Told me the problem was with my card. I suggested it wasn't and asked if they had any software debug I could run for them to gather data on why the flicker was so bad on composite. They said no, and that if I send my card they would take a look at it.

I wrote back and told them I didn't want my card checked out, I wanted a new working card. They said that wasn't an option.

I asked if there were any known problems. They said no. Took 3 weeks or so to get back to me.

I went to the trouble of borrowing 6 DVD/VHS players from friends, and tested them all. DVD via composite always captured fine. VHS never captured fine, no matter the VHS source (tried over 30 tapes by now). The same decks captures perfecly to my other 2 capture cards.

I hoped they would bring out a new firmware and delayed sending the card in, so I waited. Sometime in June or July (I think) they had a new firmware. Applied it, no luck. Same problems. Interlacing capture was also still looking quite bad. So I wrote another email, and they wrote back again saying it was either my setup, or just my card. They still didn't mention that any one else was reporting this problem.

So, come Aug 4 - reply from Bradwalker , I learn that lots of people are having this problem. Confirming my gut feeling that it wasn't just my card. So the big question is, why wouldn't BM tell me this was a known problem?”

[jagabo]

I was looking at the BlackMagic Intensity Pro, although I note it uses a breakout cable. I can’t help but think that this is not the way to go since you are introducing another connection compared to if you went directly to the card with a good quality cable.

Standard definition video is such low bandwidth (especially VHS) this is irrelevant. The card's apparent problem with composite video sources is an issue though. My guess is a full frame TBC would take care of this.

[marada]

Well I think the manufacturers are being very dishonest, they should fully inform their customer base of this before people decide to buy the card. If this is the case it may even be cheaper to buy a decent pro secondhand card that integrates a TBC.

[marada]

As for the PDI Deluxe card, does anyone know if this suffered from audio sync problems? I have not heard of this problem with this card, although it does use the same chipset as the cheaper cards. With this card are you still reliant on your soundcard for audio capture like with the ATI cards?

[lordsmurf]

Well I think the manufacturers are being very dishonest, they should fully inform their customer base of this before people decide to buy the card. If this is the case it may even be cheaper to buy a decent pro secondhand card that integrates a TBC.

NO, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The problem is people pretending to be skilled at video. The customers are being dishonest to themselves. The Blackmagic card is fine, it's their terrible VHS tapes that is the problem. And because they don't actually know anything about video, they just randomly start blaming things. In this case, blame is misplaced on Blackmagic. If they knew about video, then they'd realize the VHS signal is the source of issues, and a TBC is a necessity. I'm probably coming across mean here, but I'm getting tired of people thinking that the ability to buy something and the ability to KNOW HOW TO USE IT are the same. In some cases, you really need a LOT of knowledge on the topic, especially photo and video -- it's not as easy as buying a camera and reading the manual in the box.

BT8x8 cards don't test for sync lock. The ATI AIW AGP Radeon (Theatre Rage and Theatre 200) cards, via ATI MMC, test for sync lock. They are also intelligent at dropped frames, dumping the audio with the frame, when this occurs. Audio is routed through the ATI card first, and fed to the soundcard for processing second. Many years ago, people cried about ATI sync issues, but it was completely a problem of the weenie computers of that era, your Pentium III's and sub-2Ghz Pentium 4's (and comparable AMD's).

Most capture cards used a breakout box of some kind. There's no loss of signal quality from this.

[marada]

Well I just saw a PDI Deluxe card that was 7 years old go in auction on EBay for £50. That seems too steep considering I have seen the blackmagic intensity card go for under £100. It seems what you are saying the ATI cards are better than the PDI cards anyway. I must say those ATI cards seem to go very cheap secondhand, although all Ebay prices seem to be high at the moment considering Christmas.

[edDV]

Well I just saw a PDI Deluxe card that was 7 years old go in auction on EBay for £50. That seems too steep considering I have seen the blackmagic intensity card go for under £100. It seems what you are saying the ATI cards are better than the PDI cards anyway. I must say those ATI cards seem to go very cheap secondhand, although all Ebay prices seem to be high at the moment considering Christmas.

Downside of the ATI AIW cards is lack of drivers for Vista and Linux. You would need to run them in a virtual XP machine. Even so, the drivers can be unstable. Lordsmurf can probably steer you into the right combination.

Most AIW cards are AGP and double as display cards. Your motherboard is probably PCIe only.

I retired my AIW when I went to Vista and Core2.

I think we are going in circles.

[marada]

Yes my mobo is PCI-e only

[edDV]

Yes my mobo is PCI-e only

Then wouldn't that rule out the PDI Deluxe and most other BT cards? There are some PCIe BT cards out there.

[marada]

I retired my AIW when I went to Vista and Core2

So what card are you using now?

[edDV]

First, I''m not doing much VHS capture yet.

I capture analog several ways, mostly to DV format from my Canopus AVCD-100, GV-200 deck and/or DV/HDV camcorders. For SD I'm mostly a DV format guy.

Then, I have several hardware encoding tuners for SD/HD TV capture (ATI and Hauppauge).

If I were capturing VHS/S-VHS, I'd prefer to have that Brighteye frame sync or the Xena/Kona.

[lordsmurf]

I don't know that I could justify the costs of the Aja card, when other options work just as well -- same or similar end results. Sometimes I think those things are bought just because they are name-branded gear, as there is still some elitism left in higher-end video editing.

Some years ago, certain Canopus and Matrox users would talk down to me because of my choice in ATI cards. However, my output was always superior to theirs. Part of that was surely due to experience, but the card itself was not as magical as they seemed to believe. Too much kool-aid, I think.

I deal with similar BS when it comes to Mac users who are still stuck in 1985, thinking all creative production is done in Apple-land.

[vhelp]

Apple ?

it aint' even good for your teeth, LoL LoL its full of acid, the crap that eats at the enamel on your teeth!

-vhelp 5265

:P *~*!*~*!~* HaPpY HoLiDaYs *~*!*~*!~*

[marada]

I really don't know why people bother with MACs, there is nothing special about them since they just run on the same computer hardware as any other PC. Right now I am running Snow leopard OS on my Core2Duo. It was really simple to load with empire EFI. On my rig Snow Leopard runs as fast as any MAC computer runs it. I also have another hard drive with Windows 7, as Well as another hard drive running Ubuntu. So the question with a MAC is why pay 3 times more for the same hardware, and limit your options? The same with MP3, I have a great little unbranded Chinese MP3 player where the sound quality is every bit as good as an iPod, with a huge storage capacity and at a 10th of the price.
Apple = big rip off

[2Bdecided]

DV is not an optimal method, no. The colorspace compression can and often does muck up VHS input, although it's mostly a problem for cheap boxes, including the ones from Canopus (yes, that includes the ADVC-300, too).

While the "problem" of NTSC DV is well known, I don't see any problems with PAL. I've thrashed the inputs of my ADVC110 with some extreme colour test charts, and it behaves impeccably. This includes levels and frequencies way beyond anything you could get from VHS.

What problems are you seeing with VHS?

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

On another note I don’t see why anybody would want a Canopus device. Surely you are better off with a good VCR attached to a TBC feeding into a capture card that you can do uncompressed capture with. I really don't see the point in introducing compression during capture. Get the video onto your hard drive uncompressed then you can do anything you want with it, including editing and finally deciding on a codec for final production. Why would anyone want to limit themselves at capture? It does not make sense considering how cheap hard drive space is these days.

Capturing is slow. But proper restoration is even slower. And the possibilities change and increase year-by-year.

I bet (S-)VHS captured in 2001 to lossless, filtered as best as was possible back then, and encoded to DVD as best as was possible back then, will look worse than my (S-)VHS > DV > DVD efforts now.

Plus in a few years time the processing will be even faster and easier (and maybe slightly better too).


So a lot of that captured footage is going to sit on my HDD for a long time. You can tell me how cheap multi-TV drives are - but in fact lossless YUV on HDD is still a very expensive way of storing a $5 VHS tape! This matters when you have a hundred of them - even more if you have a thousand (which I don't!).

Having it as DV-AVI is more than sufficient quality, and means I can capture it and deal with it as and when I need to.

DV or lossless - it still looks like (S-)VHS. With a decent deck+TBC, decent de-noising, and gentle sharpening, it'll look like surprisingly stable, clean, and sharp (S-)VHS - but it'll still look like (S-)VHS. Using lossless in place of DV won't help that at all.


Obviously lossless makes perfect sense if you capture, filter, encode, and burn tape-by-tape. The only advantage to DV then is that, in general, people seem to make it work with less hassle. However, if you intend to capture, and then store all the files, working through them at your leisure, it has the obvious advantage of size.

Also, if you really care about what you've captured, it has the advantage of being able to dump it to DV tape if you really want, which (should your HDD backup strategy fail) you (or someone) should be able to play in 10-20 years time with slightly less difficulty than procuring a new decent transfer of VHS at that time.

Cheers,
David.

[edDV]

My VHS pallet contains maybe 1000 tapes but I can easily triage with a strategy like this

1. No need to capture commercial VHS tapes unless they aren't available on DVD. As I wait DVD versions are getting near free.

2. Same goes for movies dubbed from TV. I personally find the commercial breaks the more interesting part of these tapes.

3. Obscure TV series and national/local news/magazine stories are the gold I'm after. These tapes first need logging on a cheap VCR, then choice bits can be captured to HDD (DV or 4:2:2) on the good VCR. There is no reason to wear out the good VCR logging or cueing tapes. The really good stuff I'll cap uncompressed just in case filters improve in the future.

4. Camcorder originals and (S)VHS dubs from pro VTRs are my first priority. Most of these have already been backed to DV without a TBC. I want to go at them a second time with a TBC.

This triage is very labor intensive. Actual capture hours are probably less than 5% of the collection. Good thing is HDD drives are becoming relatively cheap so I can archive in DV or 4:2:2.

Good thing is I have a cool, dry space to store these tapes.

Then there are the 100 or so reel to reel radio dubs and the cassettes. Those will keep me busy well into retirement.

[jagabo]

Just for fun here is a practical example of the chroma resolution of an old, cheap VHS deck (a hand-me-down Toshiba W-602). The video scope chroma channels are displayed at the bottom (AviSynth's VideoScope() filter):



The signal from the DVD player that it recorded:



And the source image from which the DVD was made:



The VHS and DVD signals were captured with a Hauppauge PVR-250. MPEG 2, at 720x480, 15,000 kbps. The grayscale resolution bars are there for reference. Their resolution matches the resolution of the color resolution bars. The color resolution bars where chosen so that both U and V vary nearly sinusoidally (no higher frequencies from square waves) and in sync, almost full scale. The luminance is constant over the color bars. Ie, Y is constant, U and V vary sinusoidally.

From this you can see that VHS's color resolution (this deck anyway) is about 40 or 50 lines across the full width of the screen.

[edDV]

From this you can see that VHS's color resolution (this deck anyway) is about 40 or 50 lines across the full width of the screen.

That is consistent with 0.5 MHz bandwidth for U and V chroma on color under VHS or S-VHS. A rule of thumb is every 1 MHz of bandwidth translates to about 80 "lines of horizontal resolution" as read from an EIA resolution chart. That means 3 MHz VHS luminance bandwidth achieves about 240 lines of horizontal resolution where 5MHz S-VHS luminance gets to about 400 lines.

Lines of horizontal resolution is not pixels. It is the point where alternating white and black lines resolve to gray on a resolution chart.

For 4x3 aspect video, 400 lines of resolution compares roughly to 520 pixels (1.3x) which is roughly the 524x480 resolution cable companies use for SD MPeg2.

4:1:1 DV samples luminance at 13.5 MHz (6.75 MHz Nyquist) and chrominance at 3.375 MHz (1.69 MHz Nyquist) so it actually oversamples (S)VHS chroma by 3x.

4:2:0 DV (consumer PAL) samples chrominance horizontally at 6.75 MHz (3.375 MHz Nyquist) so oversamples (S)VHS chroma by about 6x. However unlike 4:1:1 or 4:2:2, it undersamples vertical chroma by 0.5x.

DVCPro PAL uses 4:1:1 for better multi-generation performance.

[jagabo]

That is consistent with 0.5 MHz bandwidth for U and V chroma on color under VHS or S-VHS. A rule of thumb is every 1 MHz of bandwidth translates to about 80 "lines of horizontal resolution" as read from an EIA resolution chart. That means 3 MHz VHS luminance bandwidth achieves about 240 lines of horizontal resolution where 5MHz S-VHS luminance gets to about 400 lines.

I think everyone here knows this but for those who don't:

Video engineers specify the horizontal resolution across a portion of the screen equal to its height. So if the screen is 30 centimeters tall the horizontal resolution is quoted over 30 centimeters of it's with. If that number is 240 lines, and the screen has the usual 4:3 aspect ratio, the resolution across the entire width of the screen is 320 lines (240 * 4 / 3).

That is why I specified my "40 to 50 lines" of chroma resolution was across the full width of the screen. A video engineer would call that 30 to 37.5 lines.