ADVC-110 vs Canon HV20, HV30, HV40

[jan3sobieski]

New to the forums!

I'm trying to capture VHS tapes to PC and I'm trying to figure out if it's worth purchasing the ADVC-110?

Source tapes are regular tapes recorded on older VHS camcorders. I have two vcr's available: A Mistubishi HS-U448 and a JVC HR-S5902U. I know they are both not top of the line, but that's what I have to work with. The S5902U has an S-Video out. I'm not sure if it would make the output of tapes better though.

I currently have a Canon HV30 camcorder and it has an option to convert analog to digital using composite (not S-video). The captured file (uncompressed) is 720x480. If push comes to shove, I can just use this, but I noticed the video that gets converted seems to be a little "washed out" like the colors are there, but not very pronounced. I was wondering if the ADVC-110 would do a better job with it?

I've also tried numerous older capture cards from Hauppage, some DVXplore capture card, an ATI Wonder TV tuner PCI (all had S-video inputs) but it seems they can only capture 352x288 video and most of them had issues capturing. I also tried an ATI all in wonder Radeon 7500 VE with an input breakout box, but also, only 352x288 video and quality was not that good. I also tried an ATI Wonder 650 USB box, but the video seemed to be doing a weird "shift in colors and reset" I dunno how to accurately describe it. Needless to say, it's going back to the store.

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TL/DR: Will analog>digital conversion quality of ADVC-110 be better than Canon HV-30 when trying to capture regular "home videos" recorded on a VHS?

[danno78]

All the the cards that you have tried can capture Full D1 resolution (720x480). Something is wrong with your setup. Try VirtualDub and select video size to 720x480. About the "reset" the meaning may be this: vertical jitter is to high and the capture card lose the vertical synch signal and turn off for a short time the capture.
Canon HV30 is one of the worse way to capture because his poor comb filter. The comb filter separate luminance signal from chrominace signal on composite inputs. See below why:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/349161-Are-these-VCR-s-Super-VHS-machines-to-use-fo...=1#post2194154
With your vcr in order to get a good quality you need: with an capture device with good comb filter. The comb filter from Canopus boxes is decent, but the time base errors from tapes can cause issues (it depend of the number and magnitude).
To fix times base errors you need a S-VHS vcr with TBC inside or a an external TBC or an DVD recorder with built in TBC (Panasonic ES10, ES15).
Short answer: ADVC 110 is much beter than Canon HV30 but not all possible issues are fixed by Canopus.