Personal Review: Canopus ADVC-100

[KuroNeko]

thanks

thanks very much for your elaborate answer.

A bit drop in quality is acceptable - people I would sell this to would be more intrested in ease of use.

I'll try and find a local seller for demo. Question: would a camera (Sony or the likes) with capability to transcode analog to DV on the fly give similar, better, worse quality?

The Dazzle I referred to was the DV Bridge you mentioned earlier. Seems it's not as trouble free, now also macrovision 'enhanced' and as you say the softness of the picture is caused by DV compression, will give the same quality, yes?

I really wish the Fire??? (don't remember the name) device hadn't been cancelled. Was by a Mac oriented company, would accept analog in and capture uncompressed and transport over firewire. In the end they cancelled that device, as well as many other devices when they got bought by another company...

Neko

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

The Dazzle DV-Bridge seemed to really crank up the contrast while the ADVC was more natural in color (in general, DV has more contrast to it).

From what I can tell, comparing the A->D capture quality of a camcorder to the ADVC is hard to tell. In general, I'd say they are similar. Going D->A is really dependent on the camcorder. Some are better than the others.

If you can shell out the extra money for a good DV camera, you might like that solution better. The reason is that you have the extra camcorder. Then again, you can save a few hundred along with the cost of extra camcorder accessories by getting the ADVC. That is really up to your needs.

I'm not sure about the Fire product mentioned. Almost sounds like the DVnowAV.

Thanks

[KuroNeko]

No, nothing like the DVnowAV.

It was an external box, which got hooked to Firewire cards. It would capture video in YUV like a standard WinTV card, and send that data uncompressed over Firewire (that's 20 MB/sec+)

They had also planned something similar to the Canopus ADVC100 - analog in, DV compression and then to Firewirecard.

They already had a lineup of MPEG2 cards. When Media100 company took over, they basically stripped all 'unprofessional' products from their lineup.

Neko

[Karen St Martin]

Here is a follow up report on my adventures with the ADVC-100

After beating Canopus sales over the gead for afew days, I finally was contacted by their tech support and spent a good chunk of Friday afternnon on the phone trying to find out what was going on.

As it turns out the problem with the "soft focus" (sorry Andrew, I can't think of any other way to say it) was the VCR. After going through all kinds of gyrations and jumping through a *lot* hoops, the Canopus techie asked if I had another VCR I could try. So I hooked up a really old VCR from the garage and no more "soft focus". So I thought problem solved!

Wrong. The next day I went a local store a bought a new VCR, a Memorex. I could use the one I tested with because it was mono only (I *did* say it was old). So I hooked up the Memorex and started in on the stack of VHS tapes I had ready to transfer to DVD. The first capture I made was totally hosed. The was a very precisely repetitive audio and video dropout on the capture, almost like it was only capturing one field of each frame. An 80 minute capture resulted in 40 minutes of video.

Okay, back to trouble shooting. Check, change, replace cables, VCR settings, etc. I was beginning to think that the ADVC-100 was truly broken but I decided to hook up the original VCR I used, the one with the "soft focus". This time the capture was exactly like it was originally, no drops but the "soft focus" was back.

So the next day I head back to the store and swap my :nearly new" VCR for a better one, this time an RCA. Got it basck home and hooked and began capturing a tape. Now I getting random drops ... and hair is starting to accumulate around my computer table. So it was back to trouble shooting again. Finally, in desperation, I tried a different tape and IT WORKED!!! A very nice capture that rendered well and transfered to a good DVD.

So what did all this teach me?

First, that the ADVC-100 is very sensitive to the VCR used. So far I gave tried it with 4 different VCRS and all give differing results.

Second, that it is also sensitve to the quality of the analog source material. Tapes which play, well not fine but okay, going to a TV have created problems with the unit.

Now that I understand what is going on, I know how to properly use the unit and am quite satisfied with it. Andrew made some good points when he listed the problems with MJPEG captures and normally don't occur with the ADVC-100.

Would I use it to make a DVD for distribution? Not a chance! But it is perfectly fine for moving your VHS tape collection to DVD or SVCD ... and now I feel compfortable recommending it.

Karen

[AndrewDV]

Hi Karen,

That's an impressive effort you put out!

Those drop-outs sound like Macrovision is kicking in. Did you try disabling it on the ADVC?

In general, I do capture from a Hi8 source. That provides a really great source. So far, no problems with captures from Hi8.

I have not captured using a VHS source in quite awhile (even use Hi8 for TV recording). The differing results you are getting between VCRs is pretty normal. In fact, it drives me up a wall when I output to a VHS tape from anything. SVHS machines (and a few pours of Remi) can help.

You might have tried this as well, but can you pass your source through a TBC? After getting a TBC-100 from DataVideo, I wonder how I lived without it.

Well, hope this helps.

[KuroNeko]

thanks much, Karen!

Thanks a lot for posting about your efforts, this has cleared up a lot of questions and doubts I had!

I find it strange that the VCR would cause the fuzzy picture, but stranger things have happened.

As for the drops - you're capturing old VHS tapes, without TBC?

Neko

[Karen St Martin]

Neko,

Yes, some of my tapes are 20 years or more old and I am *not* using a TBC device (gotta look into them first).

Karen

[wkulecz]

Be prepared for "sticker shock" when you price TBC units.

An SVHS deck with built in TBC might be the cheapest overall solution.

--wally.

[Karen St Martin]

Could you define a range for the "sticker shock" Wally?

Karen

[KuroNeko]

I think Wally already made it clear a TBC isn't a bad idea for grabbing video from VHS, especially older tapes On my DVCII, bad VHS sync results invariably in lost audio/video sync.

The locking feature of the Canopus may instead choose to drop frames...

Anyway, a good NTSC TBC should not be that expensive, I thing the Datavideo model is quite popular with you NTSC folks? About $300-350 I think.

Don't use one myself, my tapes are moslty very good and a built-in TBC is good enough for me. I don't know if the cheapo TBCs in SVHS decks like mine are good enough to resync older tapes.

There's plenty of stuff in the used market though. Those digital switchers like the MX1 grab analog video per field or frame, and then spit them back out in analog with new syncs. You can even add effects. There's some loss in the older models, but for VHS they should be fine.

Neko

[KuroNeko]

Forgot to ask - does the ADVC-100 sold in the US also allow PAL capture? Usually US capture devices are crippled to only support NTSC, to avoid Europeans buying the cheaper US version.

Here, the ADVC is rather expensive...

Neko

[KuroNeko]

Karen - Canopus forum

Karen, I noticed in the Canopus forum, there's quite a few people complaining that old VHS doesn't work right on the ADVC-100, without TBC.

https://www.canopuscorp.com

Neko

[FredThompson]

VCR and TBC

OK, wanna save money and have superior results from VHS or S-VHS tape?

Here's what works for me

I have a JVC HR-S7600U (S-VHS) VCR.

This is an upper-end consumer model.

use these settings:

turn OFF TBC on front of VCR
turn ON video calibration in menu of VCR
turn OFF Superimpose
turn ON video stabilizer

There, rock solid picture with no squiglies. More than likely you WON'T need to use the integrated TBC.

These units cost around $350.

But wait, you say, isn't that the price of a fairly decent standalone TBC?

Yup. The circuitry to actually perform this "cleaning" is very minimal. When you buy a standalone unit you're paying for all the support stuff (power supply, connectors, case, shipping, etc.)

Far better to put that money into a good VCR.

You probably won't find this deck in consumer stores unless they're specialty hifi shops. Best Buy and the like carry the cheapest possible. You get what you pay for.

Now, my shameless self-promotion:

I maintain the A/V links page on Donald Graft's site:

http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/

Please take a look and let me know about any truly good sites that aren't on this list.

[FredThompson]

ugh, forgot to add I don't have one of these Canopus units, the VCR method I use works wonderfully directly into a Canon ZR25MC camcorder.

Ok, now the quality questions:

I'm looking to add to my editing system. The options are improved direct capture method or using the camcorder.

Currently, I have a Radeon All-in-Wonder for analog capture but going to the DV camera is far better. However, tapes only hold about an hour compared to the hundreds of VHS tapes I have that hold up to 3 hours. Plus the Canon units do not give pass-thru so it means twice the time.

So...I'm comparing the G450etv and the ADVC100. Quality of tape input isn't an issue with the playback deck I have.

I'll be converting an hour (more or less) of video to a 690M DivX4 file.

Given all of that, which of these two options gives YUV output? That yields a tremendous speed increase in DivX4.

How do the G450etv and ADVC100 compare with the following types of "problem" video:

1) bright red on black
2) bright blue on black
3) light colors
(Best test footage easily available: Peter O'Toole in white
robes on sand dunes in Lawrence of Arabia.)

These are the things which the ATI doesn't handle well at all.

Oh, yeah, I'm using the Main Concept DV CODEC right now. My understanding is the Canopus one is slightly better (there's also, apparently, a German one used in dedicated equipment that's better.)