Analog to DV conversion - which approach?
 

I have a Canon Optura 100MC miniDV camcorder. I capture DV via a Pinnacle Firewire adapter, edit with Studio 9 and burn to DVD+R.

I also plan to buy a standalone DVD Recorder (most likely a multi-format Sony) with analog and Firewire inputs.

Now I would like go back and migrate my old S-VHS and Hi-8 tapes to DVD...

For some of the old analog tapes, I'll just burn them directly to DVD with the DVD Recorder. For others, I would like to do some basic editing, so they'll need to be captured to the PC.

Given the above, would it make most sense to buy a standalone analog-to-DV converter (eg, Canopus AVDC100?) or an analog capture card (Canopus AVDC1394)?

Would a standalone like the AVDC100 work with my existing Firewire adapter in the PC:

analog VCR -> AVDC100 -> PC Firewire adapter ->Pinnacle Studio

Would the ACDC100 also work with my standalone DVD Recorder:

analog VCR -> AVDC100 -> DVD Recorder

Would this be higher quality conversion than using the DVD Recorder's onboard analog conversion?

Any advice would be appreciated,

DT

Whether or not the ADVC has a higher analog conversion quality
than your DVD recorder is unknown. What you can probably
say though, is that a good quality software mpeg encoder on
your PC will produce a better result mpeg quality wise.

ADVC is *made* to connect to your firewire port, so yeah, it
will work in that way. Personally I would go down that road
for more flexibility. You can capture to something else than
mpeg2 (DVD) if you want and you can use it as a monitor out
to watch your editing on a TV or studio monitor (without a camera)

You may also want to consider the pyro A/V link (the one with both component in and out as well as firewire). It is somewhere between the AVDC100 and the 300 in functionality, and is generally cheaper than both.