ADVC100 vs. ADVC300: Questions
 

Questions: Would the Canopus ADVC100 give just as good results on a NTSC monitor as the ADV300 would? Secondly, I realize the 300 has noise reduction capabilities/etc., but wouldn't I be able to use Vegas to do what the 300 offers? If the additional $200 wasn't a factor, would you prefer one over the other?

I just realized the 300 is fairly new and probably not many have tried it yet.

This may or not be helpful, but I've got the 100, and it works great, far-exceeding my expectations. The quality of video captured from analog sources surprised me. I looked really closely at the captures and could detect almost no noise. Synchronization was also not a problem.

Also, I'm assuming you want to output to a monitor during editing? I don't know about Vegas, but Premiere disappointed me in this area. It outputs, sure, but not real-time (i.e. while editing). Real-time monitoring requires some really expensive plugin. I don't know if Vegas also has this limitation, but if so, and your main deliberation b/w the 100 and 300 is the quality on the monitor, I'd say go with the 100, and put the extra $200 towards the plugin.

Just my experiential, non-professional advice. =)

I'll give this thread a little bump. I'm currently considering both the 300 and the 100 for use with Vegas. I just don't know if the sync restore and noise filtering are worth the extra money.

I really like the ADVC300. if you've got piles of old VHS / anlog video tapes in varying degrees of quality, it is a godsend. Here is what I had to say about the ADVC300 when I gave it a Videoguys Top 10 prodcuts of 2003 award:

The Canopus ADVC100 has set the standard as the best quality AV/DV converter in the industry. Digital editors at every level and on any platform use it. What sets Canopus DV converters apart from all others is their superior DV CODEC. The CODEC is the actual encoding algorithm used to convert your analog footage to DV and visa versa. Canopus uses the same CODEC in their converters as they do with their state-of-the-art real-time NLE editing solutions.

With the ADVC300 Canopus has answered one of the biggest problems facing DV editors trying to incorporate older VHS/8mm footage into their productions. Lets face it, the quality of these older VHS tapes is average at best, and the years of sitting on the shelf or in the closet has degraded the video quality further. The ADVC300 has built in digital image enhancement technology that cleans, enhances and stabilizes old analog video. We tested it with some really old footage that wasn't properly white balanced to begin with, and the results were quite impressive. I realize all of the new NLE applications have fantastic color correction tools, but the old adage "Garbage In = Garbage Out "still holds true. Older analog footage doesn't always offer a good enough signal and the AV to DV conversion degrades the image further. This degraded footage often isn't 'strong' enough for even these powerful color correction tools to do the job. With the ADVC300 you can will get the best possible video quality out of your older analog footage.

Gary
Videoguys.com