Going to DVD

[Rob Lohman]

1) you are thinking about this wrongly. The ADVC100 is not an
analog capture board that will give you control of the quality
or setings. Why? Because there aren't any to tweak.

The ADVC100 is converting the analog signal into DV (yes, the
same signal that is coming off a miniDV camera). As with a camera
you cannot tweak the DV signal. There is not such things as
resolution, framerate or brightness that you will find on analog
MJPEG capture board and TV boards.

The conversion happens inside the device and it send a DV stream
over the firewire connection to your computer. The only tihng
you can do, same as with a camera, is to copy this stream and
lay it down to disk. This is still called capturing but really should
be called copying or something else.

So just capture DV like you would with your DV camera and that's
all there is to it.

2) this also doesn't make sense. Both encoders are very good
and will give similar results and similar sizes. You can't make
something 500 MB in one package that is 1 GB in another and
expect the same quality. It doesn't work that way.

How many minutes are you encoding?

[Carlos E. Martinez]

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : 1) you are thinking about this wrongly. The ADVC100 is not an
analog capture board that will give you control of the quality
or setings. Why? Because there aren't any to tweak.

The ADVC100 is converting the analog signal into DV (yes, the
same signal that is coming off a miniDV camera). As with a camera
you cannot tweak the DV signal. There is not such things as
resolution, framerate or brightness that you will find on analog
MJPEG capture board and TV boards.

The conversion happens inside the device and it send a DV stream
over the firewire connection to your computer. The only tihng
you can do, same as with a camera, is to copy this stream and
lay it down to disk. This is still called capturing but really should
be called copying or something else.

So just capture DV like you would with your DV camera and that's
all there is to it.-->>>

I didn't catch it wrongly, as what you described is the way I looked at it. But I wish there was some way to test the signals coming in as they pass through, so we can change them BEFORE going into into the Canopus. E.g.: what are the specs of video and audio so as not to get clipped or cause any kind of artifact?

Some way of setting levels, that's what I mean, before going inside and being converted onto a DV stream. You can't do much afterwards if levels are too low or too high.

<<<--
2) this also doesn't make sense. Both encoders are very good
and will give similar results and similar sizes. You can't make
something 500 MB in one package that is 1 GB in another and
expect the same quality. It doesn't work that way.

How many minutes are you encoding? -->>>

Main interest are old films that are not available in DVD, musical shows, etc. lasting 90 to 120 minutes long. Which is the standard for capturing, who did set it so as to be the same no matter the encoder? When I was gathering information I did get comments that some encoders were better than others, so there seems to be a difference. Or not?


Carlos

[Rob Lohman]

1) okay. Now I'm following you, heh. That's an interesting to which
I don't have an answer, sorry. Trial and error is the best thing I
can come up besides the usual like using the highest quality
cables and analog sources (VCR's etc.).

2) well, yes and no. Yes a lot of encoders will producer very
different results and some will even encode smaller while mainting
a visible quality on par with another encoder that produces larger
files.

BUT, I was comparing two quality encoders. The difference between
the top of (affordable) software encoding on the PC isn't that
much in qualiy. Yes there will be a difference, but they are all
fairly close. Including filesize versus quality.

Ofcourse if you take a high quality encoder and compare it to
a low quality one the visual quality as well as encoding efficiency
will highly fluctuate.

[David Ennis]

If the source is analog and the destination is DVD, the best way to go is a hardware MPEG-2 encoder like Dazzle's DVC-150 or one of ADS Technology's products. It's silly to capture as AVI then software-encode to MPEG-2. The DVC's output is at a flat 600 kbps, but the ADS lets you tinker, and thus control destination file size somewhat.

The MPEG-2 output is as good as you're going to get, and can be handled by TMPGEnc DVD Author without re-rendering, which is a huge plus if you have a lot of material to do.

This is as good a production chain as you're likely to get: 90 minutes to capture 90 minutes of source material to high quality MPEG-2, plus whatever time, if any, you devote to editing or menu creation, then just 30 minutes or so to create the DVD set of files (w/ 2.4 Ghz processor).

[Carlos E. Martinez]

<<<-- Originally posted by Fred Retread : If the source is analog and the destination is DVD, the best way to go is a hardware MPEG-2 encoder like Dazzle's DVC-150 or one of ADS Technology's products. It's silly to capture as AVI then software-encode to MPEG-2. The DVC's output is at a flat 600 kbps, but the ADS lets you tinker, and thus control destination file size somewhat.

The MPEG-2 output is as good as you're going to get, and can be handled by TMPGEnc DVD Author without re-rendering, which is a huge plus if you have a lot of material to do.

This is as good a production chain as you're likely to get: 90 minutes to capture 90 minutes of source material to high quality MPEG-2, plus whatever time, if any, you devote to editing or menu creation, then just 30 minutes or so to create the DVD set of files (w/ 2.4 Ghz processor). -->>>

The suggestion looks interesting, but I would like to read some comparison tests between this Dazzle and other converters. It's unusual that the DVC-150 uses an USB 2.0 interface instead of Firewire, which is superior. But who knows?

In any case I am not too much inclined to buy another capture jig, and the extra time on the PC is cheaper.

Now if you would tell me of a cheap DVI system that might be interesting. DVI seems to be superior to standard DV.


Carlos

[Patrick King]

One other note. You mentioned that you wanted to capture old movies and print to DVD. Some hardware and software encoders will not defeat MacroVision or other anti-piracy schemes. For instance the Canopus ADVC100 will capture anything but the Canopus ADVC300 will not even though it costs more and provides additional controls to clean up old VHS input. If all your old movies are home-movies, you're OK. If some are old VHS hollywood movies, you may have more to think about.

[Carlos E. Martinez]

<<<-- Originally posted by Patrick King : One other note. You mentioned that you wanted to capture old movies and print to DVD. Some hardware and software encoders will not defeat MacroVision or other anti-piracy schemes. For instance the Canopus ADVC100 will capture anything but the Canopus ADVC300 will not even though it costs more and provides additional controls to clean up old VHS input. If all your old movies are home-movies, you're OK. If some are old VHS hollywood movies, you may have more to think about. -->>>

An smiley would be in order here. Fortunately the ADVC100 defeats Macrovision, even if they don't provide that info.

Are you sure the 300 does not? I think it does using the same 100 routine.


Carlos

[Patrick King]

Actually I read a pretty long and vehement thread in another forum about the ADVC300 not being able to defeat MacroVision when the ADVC100 does. The 300 owners were pretty pissed. I'm also wondering if Canopus has corrected that by removing that ability in their new ADVC110 which replaces the ADVC100 which is no longer advertized by Canopus.

Can find the thread to post and can't recall if it was in a Sony Vegas forum, here, or DV.com forum. sorry