Canopus ADVC-100 - noisey/grainy and scaling?

[Gibson's Squares]

I got hold of a second-hand Canopus ADVC-100 after reading favourable reviews on here, but am initially disappointed with the capturing. I wonder if I've got a dodgy one?

I'm capturing from PAL VHS tape which is in pretty good condition still, but there seems to be a lot of noise/grain in the captured picture. Even when I capture live TV there's noise that isn't in the picture I can see on the TV (lineage: outdoor arial into VCR, VCR to Canopus via 3 phonos, Canopus to MacBook Pro via firewire, import via iMovie).

So I remembered I'd previously made a DVD of an old VHS tape using a borrowed JVC VHS/DV combo machine. I've just recaptured the same footage (an off air recoring) with the Canopus to compare, but instantly became distracted by it seemingly scaling the picture down. Or maybe the original DV capture scaled the picture up to fill the frame. Please could someone advise which?!


Here's Capture 1 (lineage: VHS to DV tape using JVC HR-DVS1, then imported to iDVD (G4 Mac) and burnt as DVD at 'best' quality setting)



Here's Capture 2 (lineage: VHS playback via Panasonic NV-VP33 to Canopus ADVC-100 via 3 x phono, Canopus to MacBook Pro via firewire, importing as DV via iMovie)


See how the 2nd capture has black borders on all sides and the first doesn't? Also the 2nd capture is 720 pixels wide, versus 768 pixels for the first.

Regarding the graininess - you can see it in the brickwork of the 2nd capture (top right). I've tried capturing from a different VCR to the Canopus and it still looks more noisey than I'd hoped.

Help/thoughts/advice appreciated!

[DB83]

Impossible for a DV capture to have 768 pixels width. DV is 720 pixels.

As for the noise issue, the Canopus ADVC 100 does not do any correction in the transfer process - only the ADVC 300 does that - so you will need to do any correction at the editing stage.

[lordsmurf]

And the ADVC-300 is lousy at it.
You need a better VCR at the front end of the process.

[jagabo]

It's also impossible for a DVD to have a 768 pixel wide frame. The DVD has a 720x576 wide frame and your software is resizing for a 4:3 display aspect ratio.

The ADVC image has several problems including mishandled interlaced 4:2:0 chroma and in improper resizing of interlaced video. It's not possible to tell which problems are in the video and which are byproducts of preparing the screen caps. But I think the problem is in the processing, not the DV video. Basically, the software stretched the 720x576 image horizontally in the first image, and shrank the 720x576 image vertically (and added borders top and bottom) in the second. Ie, just two different ways of adjusting for the 4:3 display aspect ratio.

[Brad]

Worth noting that the ADVC image is more saturated, which will make chroma noise in the source more visible.