Advice to choose a capture board.

[2md]

Well looks like my Marvel G200 refuses to work in my new computer
with WindowsXP.

Time for a replacement. This board has given me 5 years of good work,
now it's time to repackage all the Marvel-G200 items to the original box
and let it rest in the hall-of-fame shelf.

What do you think about the DV-Encoder Dazzle DVC150?
Looks like is a DV hardware encoder with analog inputs.

I'll be glad to receive advice from you, people.
Capture will be from VCR tapes and analog camcorders.
BTW, I'm in a PAL zone.

[schmosef]

Cyb, maybe you haven't figured out yet that no one can see what you write in your posts; you've been placed on a site wide ignore list.

Your "real account", has post rights to this forum and people will be able to see what you've written.

If you're trying to help people, post with your real account.

Who knows, you might even redeem yourself one day and get post rights to the rest of the site as well.

PS. Don't bother responding to my post as Cyb because I won't be able to see it!

[Brian Ellis]

The Canopus ADVC series has a much better reputation than the Dazzle DVC series. If your tapes are in good condition, the ADVC-110 will do the trick (or even the -55, but the analogue output of the -110 is VERY useful). If the tapes are very old and require correction, the -300 will restore the video to a better shape, although it is rather expensive.

I've been using the ADVC-100 (now replaced by the -110) for years and am eminently satisfied with the quality and performance.

[2md]

My needs

The most important thing that I'm seeking in the replacement capture board
is that captured videos are encoded so that it will not be very big.
Big files render to big encoding times and problems.

I enjoyed Marvel MJPEG because of its quality and the files were not specially big.

I use 576x768 resolution (PAL full size).

Looks like MJPEG encoders are being replaced by DV encoders nowadays?

Thanks.

[Brian Ellis]

"Not very big" is relative and is proportional to quality. DV is always 720x576/480 (PAL/NTSC) and is about 13 Gb/h. The quality is at least as good as MJPEG at reasonably high quality settings and the file sizes are smaller. Like MJPEG, it is easily edited and there is almost no loss of quality with repeated re-renderings. However, its great advantage is that it's hassle-free, unlike many analogue capture cards. There are no adjustments to be made and no choice of quality. You can have it only in high quality.

If 13 Gb/hour is too big, then you can transcode DV to MPEG-2 on the fly, during capture, but I don't recommend it as editing (other than cutting) will cause quality loss.

I used to use a Marvel G200 but I retired it years ago (no drivers for W2k), in favour of the ADVC-100 and I've never had a single moment's regret.

[Dr Mordrid]

In terms of a pure analog capture device I've been using the All in Wonder for about 6 months and it's working nicely, though unlike my RTX.100 it supports Macrovision and therefore isn't capable of capturing off VHS or DVD for fair-use.

Compatability with the old Matrox MJPeg files can be obtained by installing one of the better software MJPeg codecs; PICVideo and Morgan in particular since they have explicit support for Matrox's files, though I've never had problems with them using MainConcepts codec either. MC and Morgan both cost >$20 USD while PICVideo runs ~$28 or so.

Dr. Mordrid