Canopus ADVC 100 captures

[rhegedus]

Dear All,

I've just gone out and bought a Canopus ADVC-100 and want to make sure I've ironed out any problems before I post a review.

It is hooked it up to my VHS (via a sVHS and Line-in leads) and to my PC firewire card (via the lead supplied).

I've tried various capture software with various results:

Ulead DVD workshop
Ulead DVD Movie Factory
Ulead Media Studio Pro
Vegas Video
ScenalyzerLive

All able to capture the input with no frames dropped (but there is no sound during capture, even though the avi produced has).

Adobe Premiere 6.0

Unable to capture the input.

However, the avi file produced looks grainy/hatched in parts of the screen where there is a large area of constant colour i.e. blue sky. This effect is really noticable when the avi is viewed in fill screen mode.

So my questions are:

1) Is this to be expected given that the capture is 768x576, but is viewed on a 1280x1024 res monitor?

2) If not, where does the problem lie? (ADVC 100 / firewire card / software / macrovision)

3) Can I filter this out using other software and with what settings? (TMPGEnc etc)

Thanks, in advance, for your help.

Rob

[Lamont Cranston]

I have a Canopus ADVC100 so I will try and answer your questions. The ADVC100 captures DV Type 1 AVI NTSC 720 x 480 or the PAL equavalent. The audio is muxed with video in hardware in the ADVC100 transferred by the 1394 bus to the harddrive by your capture program. There is no audio going through your sound card so there is nothing to hear.

I do not use Premier but I would guess V6 does not support DV video. Just a guess.

When I first used the Canopus I too was disappointed in the DV video especially the artifacts. I learned quickly from Canopus tech support that this is way DV video looks. Canopus tech support asked me to capture the same analog video with my DV camcorder and transfer the DV video through the 1394 to the hard drive. The video looked the same as the Canopus..not very good and lots of artifacts. Then they told me to play the video from the camera on the tv. It looked great! No artifacts no noise. I then captured the same video with the Canopus this time I recorded the DV from the Canopus with the camcorder and played it on the tv. It also looked great! That convinced me that it was a characteristic DV video. Finally, I encoded the Canopus DV video with TMPGEnc and MainConcept's mpeg encoder, no filters, and the results were spectacular.

I hope this helps. IMHO The Canopus ADVC 100 is one sweet piece of hardware! Their tech support is great too!

Oh yes, if you are having macrovision problems hold down on the select for about 20 seconds and the problem will mysteriously will go away.

PS I have read posts on the forum stating the Canopus ADVC 100 does not create compressed video. Not true. The avi file stored on your hard disk is DV type 1and is just passed on by your capture software. 18 minutes of video/audio ~ 4G files size. The processor loafs on capture.

[xed]

Lamont Cranston is of course dead right on all points (after all, teh Shadow knows!).
Either ignore the illusory artifacts on your computer screen during DV playback, or use some dedicated piece of software designed to mimic an interleaved display (like WinDVD or PowerDVD). Those artifacts do exist and they are caused by the consie transform 5:1 compression in Type 1 DV AVI files, but rest assured they are completely 100% invisible when your Canopus capture files get played back directly to a TV set.
I am unable to see _any_ difference twixt the source and the direct playback of Type 1 DV files when they're played back on a standard analog TV. Type 1 DV has a bitrate of about 25 megabytes per second, vast greater even than the maximum DVD data rate, and it looks great.
So my advise is just not to worry about it unless you plan on getting some monster HDTV sometime soon. In that case, if you were to play back your Type 1 DV files over an HDTV set, you would notice some artifacts. But bear in mind that an HDTV set will reveal some fairly ugly artifacts in DVDs too! There is currently no commercial prerecorded video format able to play back on HDTV with sufficient resolution to make it look really good, to my knowledge. (Perhaps DVHS? Anyone?)
The standard advice for seeing what captured DV _really_ looks like is to hook up your Canopus' composite video output to your TV set and check the TV picture. Captured DV simply looks like crap on a computer screen because of the difference between interlaced and non-interlaced displays, the difference in phosphor persistence (computer screens have much shorter phosphor persistence) and the drastic difference in resolution (computer screens have enormously higher resolution and bandwidth than analog TV sets).
Believe only what you see on your TV set. The computer screen basically lies about the perceived video quality of DV captures.

[rhegedus]

I've just finished converting the avi to vcd mpg using TMPGEnc with no filters. The mpg produced has the same artefacts as the original avi, and when this is burned to vcd it is present on the TV screen.

It is almost as if the picture is 'too sharp'. I'll re do it with TMPGEnc - the preview looks to be better if I set the 'sharpen edge' filter to -127 for both horizontal and vertical.

Incidentally, is it possible to extract wav from the avi? Both Virtual Dub and GoldWave are unable to do so.

Many thanks,

Rob

[Bondiablo]

Just a couple notes, you actually can hear the audio while capturing with the ADVC-100 using Scenalyzer Live and Premiere 6, which I don't use but have tried. The fact that you can't hear the audio while capturing and can't get Premiere to work at all leads me to believe something else is going wrong with your captures other than just normal "DV doesn't look good viewed on the computer" though I can't imagine what since the ADVC is pretty much a no brainer to setup and only has 2 known problems.

ADVC-100 Known Issues
The ADVC currently has compatibility issues with certain firewire cards using the Texas Instruments chipsets.

Macintosh ADVC-100 Known Issues
Please note certain issues that have been reported on MAC OS 10 have been rectified within the MAC OS 10.2.1 update.

Also, if you use Scenalyzer Live, under Options, you can change the file type on the Capture tab to Type 2 DV and then it's quite a simple matter to seperate the audio to a wav file with something like Virtual Dub. Premiere seems to only save DV captures as Type 2 so it will work as well.

[Lamont Cranston]

Incidentally, is it possible to extract wav from the avi? Both Virtual Dub and GoldWave are unable to do so.
Rob

You can use TMpGEnc to generate the wav file. Go to File/Output to and select wav.

IMHO The encoder of choice for VCDs is TMPGEnc or Panasonic.

[vhelp]

Good morning everyone.

Well, if its DVHS then even if you are recording TO IT, the source still has
to be as good or better, else you'll end up seeing those artifacts when you
record to DVHS.

The ADVC-100 is a well popular item. It's recevied nothing but HIGH praises
in the Capture Card area to your left, and I would recommend it to anyone
here based on'em all.

-vhelp

[rhegedus]

Thankyou all for your advice.

The ADVC-100 is a well popular item. It's recevied nothing but HIGH praises
in the Capture Card area to your left, and I would recommend it to anyone here based on'em all.

It is because of the much valued opinions of those here that I chose this device specifically, (and spent about £100 more than if I'd have bought an ATI All-in-wonder card) and hold high hopes that you can solve my problems .

As I've got the same results with 5 different capture programs, I think I can rule out softare as the cause of my problems.

This leaves: firewire card / macrovision / mobo incompatibility / thick user

I'm not sure what chipset is controlling my firewire connection as it is on-board - Gigabyte 8IEXP http://tw.giga-byte.com/home/ieee1394.htm

I'm tempted to get a new firewire card (possibly in the form of the Soundblaster Audigy 2 soundcard) to see if this resolves the problem. However, seeing as I've just spent nearly £280 (yes, pounds not dollars), I don't wish to spend any more.

Would it be possible for someone to e-mail me a 1-2 meg clip of a VHS capture to see what standard I should be aiming at?

roberthegedus@yahoo.co.uk

Many thanks,

Rob

p.s thanks for the tips regarding Scenalyzer Live - I now get audio in preview (but, sadly, no improvement in picture).

[Bondiablo]

Sending you one now, even with a capture of just under a second the file is still slightly over 2MB even zipped.

[yg1968]

One way to test the DV is to export it back to your camcorder with Windows Movie Maker or a freeware program called DVIO. You can then tape the output on a DV tape and play it back on your TV. You should not have any artifacts when you do this. If you still do, perhaps your firewire cable is faulty.

I wonder if it might be a DV codec problem. Perhaps you can try (re)installing the Canopus DV codec.

[Bondiablo]

There is no codec to install to capture with the ADVC-100, the Canopus DV codec is in the box itself. Windows just uses the Microsoft DV codec to view the file.

[yg1968]

Perhaps but the Canopus DV codec or Mainconcept DV codec will give you a better image than the microsoft DV codec upon playback of DV on your computer.

[Lamont Cranston]

Perhaps but the Canopus DV codec or Mainconcept DV codec will give you a better image than the microsoft DV codec upon playback of DV on your computer.

Getting windows to playback DV video using other than it's own codec is no small task. This is a procedure required for Premier 6 http://www.mainconcept.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=90. What is the procedure you use to get windows to use the MainConcept codec on playback?

[yg1968]

I don't use Premiere but it seems that Premiere has difficulty in capturing with the mainconcept DV codec but this has nothing to do with playback. Besides, you can use another program to capture such as Windows Movie Maker.

My understanding is that your media player will play your DV files with the mainconcept dv codec if it's installed. If no other DV codec is installed, it will play the DV file with the hidden microsoft DV codec.

I personally have installed the Canopus DV codec because it is a playback only DV codec. In other words, my computer plays back DV with the Canopus codec but it will encode to DV with the microsoft DV codec. When encoding to mpeg-2, the encoder will read the DV file with the Canopus Codec and then encode to mpeg-2.

I did want to install the Mainconcept codec because it watermarks when you encode to DV. I would rather use the Microsoft DV codec when encoding to DV (and not have this watermark).

[Lamont Cranston]

yg1968
I use the MainConcept DV codec. I set the decoder to flip the field order. I checked the field order of a NTSC DV type 1 Avi file with TMPGEnc using Adam's method with the deinterlacer. The field order was not flipped which tells me TMPGEnc was not using the MainConcept DV codec for decode. How did you determince the encoder was using the Canopus or MainConcept codec?

[yg1968]

Frankly, I am assuming that it does. I think Vhelp mentionned something about this in another thread. TMPGEnc. 2.53 has settings for the Canopus DV codec (so I am assuming that it recognizes it). I am not sure that I understand what you were saying about the field order. I thought DV was bottom field (by default) when you capture it regardless of the DV codec that you use. The only thing that I can tell you is that there is a lot more artifacts when you play DV with the microsoft DV codec than the Canopus or Mainconcept DV codecs. I have compared the playback of the same DV file with the different codecs and the microsoft one was the worst as far as artifacts. That's my only way to tell that which DV codec is being used.

I found this link that might be helpful to check which DV codec is being used by Windows:

http://www.mrbass.org/dvd2svcd/1.0.8b1/dvd2svcd_avi2svcdref.html#3

[Lamont Cranston]

yg1968 When you configure the MainConcept codec you have the option to flip the field order on decode and encode. There are problems when you do this which is a whole other story. DV type 1 avi is bottom field first. When I configured the MainConcept DV codec I checked the box next to flip field order in the decode setup. When the codec is used for decompression, like TMPGEnc, the field order will be flipped, that is. top field first. If the MainConcept codec was being used you would see the field order was flipped and it was not. I would like to use the MainConcept DV codec for decode for the reasons you state but I have not found a way to do it.

[rhegedus]

Problem solved!!!

It turns out that the gold plated SCART/s-video cabel that worked well with my previous capture card (Hauppauge Win TV - ) wasn't up to the task. Well, it was 6m long and curled around my portable TV, VCR and monitor

So I'm now using a 1m L/R audio, video in lead and it works very well.

One last question - any benefit in getting a short s-video lead over the 1m L/R audio, video in lead I'm using now?

Thankyou all,

Rob