I use a ADVC100 currently and am quite pleased with it. My source is quite old VHS which usually contains short dropouts and sync errors - the source is camcorder recorded, and the camera is usually treated rather rough (as in a lot of jolting amp; bumping).
The ADVC can handle most things, but it does have trouble dealing with quot;wobblyquot; horizontal sync. It also drops frames, and doesn't report them. I know this because multiple captures of the same sequence have different numbers of frames in them, and I can step frame by frame and identify where frames are missing.
Unlike the DC30 I have, with the ADVC100 dropped frames are just skipped altogether. The DC30 just repeats a frame until things turn good again.
Upon perusal of the Canopus site, the claim is that the ADVC300 has been especially designed for bad VHS signals. In particular the quot;repairingquot; of bad horizontal sync through a quot;line time base correctorquot;. There is also a whiff of the device also using an enhanced vertical sync mechanisim (ie: an 'enhanced' frame buffer) to acheive better vertical stability as well.
Does anyone have experience with an ADVC300? In particular when using with dodgey sources?
In addition, does anyone know if any external DV capture devices are capable of reporting dropped frames?
Thanks,
MustardMan.
i've been using pinnacle DV500 since it was version 1...and i did experience some quot;dodgyquot; VHS and it didnt capture very well..dropouts and such...then i switched to the ADVC-300 and the same VHS captured perfect...i never had any problems with drop frames with the 300...im very happy with it...the main reason why i chose the 300 over the 100 was the TBC support and the NR system which works very well
Does the ADVC-300 really remove the quot;rainbow effectquot; and remove the amount of noise they claim? Looking at the before and after pictures Canopus has on their website you would think that this was a miracle box.
i never noticed any rainbow effect when capturing and it does a good job IMO at removing noise...it's hell a lot better than the DV500 that's for damn sure
In addition, does anyone know if any external DV capture devices are capable of reporting dropped frames?
If you only want to get informed about frames being dropped you should try another capture tool like ScenalyzerLive. It reports dropped frames. I think DVIO, which is freeware, does this too, but I'm not really sure.
You could also load the captured avi into Virtualdub and look for dropped frames.
By the way, I'm still looking for an option or command in Virtualdub which scans the whole avi, detects dropped frames and deletes them. It's really annoying to do this manually, and in order to convert the file to mpg I always want to get rid of dropped frames.
Greetz,
Abaddon666
If you just delete the dropped frames wouldn't the video fall out of sync?
I was also wondering about something. The ADVC300 has a video out, so how can you use that then? Can you make it output whatever video files your are playing on your computer?
Hi there,
@Abaddon666
I tried DVIO as you suggested. It always seemed to show 1 dropped frame when the recording was started. Apart from that, none.
I also tried Scenalyzer. It showed no dropped frames.
I ran a short test on a VHS camcorder original. The camera got a really bad jolt during the scene (filming standing out the sun-roof in a bumpy paddock doing about 40km/h). The jolt is so bad that the tape almost leaves the drum judging by what happens to the picture when viewed on a TV.
Unfortunately, it also makes it really hard to see if a frame was actually missed because the shake is so bad. I manually advance the (captured) frames and try to see that the movement is uniform (eg: a fence post moves by 1 cm per image. if it moves 1,1,1,2,1,1 then I would say it is safe to say a frame has been dropped - try and accelerate 1kg within 1/50th second to double its' speed and then slow it down again to almost exactly what it was before!!! I don't think so!).
I have yet to try it on other material. Scene changes on odd fields are a good candidate....
However, at the moment, both programs give me the same results I get with WinDV. I strongly suspect the quot;dropped framesquot; they report are the frames that were not stored on the hard disk because of computer limitations - not due to dodgey source.
@2ZOD.COM
Using VDub, the video amp; audio remain in sync, but yes, deleting frames results in the 1,1,1,2,1,1,1 effect mentioned above. Looks disconcerting, but unless the viewer is alert, this sort of thing is usually not noticed.
It may be because I am quot;tunedquot; to noticing it, I see it all the time. A bit like macroblocks - I really see them, but some others don't!
For capture :
VCR(analog) -gt; ADVC100 -gt; TV(from the video output) AND -gt; IEEE1394(firewire) simultaneously
For playback :
IEEE1394(firewire) -gt; ADVC100 -gt; TV(using the same video output)
You need to press a button on the device to tell it to accept analog or firewire input.
WinDV can output only DV files, so you can put them to VCR, watch on TV, etc. CPU use is real low.
There is another app (forget it's name) that can output any renderable video stream to the ADVC100 (or any DV device for that matter). It does the conversion in real time (eg: DivX to DV) so it requires a real fast computer. Mine is not fast enough, so it craps out with obvious stuttering, etc.MM
Since you already have the Canopus ADVC-100 why not just get a TBC device such as the DataVideo TBC-1000
Granted it costs around $300.00 but that is cheaper than buying the Canopus ADVC-300 for what ... something like $550.00?
Last but not least you could sell your Canopus ADVC-100 used and get the Canopus ADVC-300 but ... and granted this may not affect you ... but the Canopus ADVC-300 cannot be made to ignore copy protection such as Macrovision whereas the Canopus ADVC-100 has such a quot;trickquot; that makes it ignore copy protection.
This can be important if you are backing up old rare studio released VHS tapes with macrovision.
People seem to forget that many movies once officially released on VHS have yet to come out on DVD
- John quot;FulciLivesquot; Coleman
Yeah, I had thought about the quot;upgradequot; to the ADVC300, and selling my ADVC100, but I thought, how often do I really need the capabilities?
If the '300 had been available when I got the '100, I would have gone for that.
I'm from Australia, so the '300 is about a grand. Too expensive for a hobby. I recently bought a camera that does analog-gt;DV. The original reason why I bought the '100 was for exactly that. If I could read the future, things would have been different! (and I'd be rich)
I suppose my initial question was asking if there were any significant advancements to be had from the '300. Certainly the macrovision thing is a minus. Capturing movies is not my thing (but at least being able to is good!)
I am really concerned about dropped frames. Although the '100 does an exceptional job, I accidentally came across a dropped frame in the middle of an ordinary (no camera acrobatics going on) sequence. The only thing I can think of is that the '100 has a fixed output of 25.000fps. If the input, due to a faulty VCR or bad sync on the original has an average of 25.020fps, then, sometime, a frame is going to have to be dropped to maintain sync.
This is the root of my problem, and most TBCs will suffer the same. I don't know of any TBC that can quot;floatquot; it's output fps between two bounds!
I would really like to know when, and if, this occurs (hence the last bit of my original post - do external DV converters report dropped frames? All I have been able to glean at the moment is that they do not - the only dropped frames reported are those that don't get written to the disk due to a bad PC, but do actually make it over the firewire).
MM
Hi there mustardman, I bought one of these cheap TBC's to run inline with my ADVC100. It has solved the freezing I was getting when capturing older tapes, not a bad buy at $AU329.
dtbc.html
Do you use the ADVC to capture PAL or NTSC?
On my last visit to HKG I strolled through Golden Cneter and picked up a canopus paper at indexprofile.html which has a table that lists the differences between the two. It says the AVC300 has
-Video auto gain control
-3d noise reduction (NTSC only)
-life time base corection,
-Digital frame sync
-Edge enhancement
-Black expansion
-white peak adjustment while the ADVC 100 has not, but it doesn't explain any details. Doe this help you?
Since I am still undecided and look for exeperience from some owning the Canopous 300.
THe other one I still look for is the Monster TV P2H, which uses a Phillips SAA6752 which is also in use in their DVD-Recorder
@snn47
Interesting what you say (or what canopus has to say) about 3d noise reduction. NTSC only eh! Very interesting (and dodgey).
I am in PAL land BTW.
@dilligaf
The device looks very interesting. I'll have to start saving my pennies (or should that be 5c pieces!).
Everyone in the forum should add which TV-Norm they are talking about because without this info the advice given or statements are often misleading.
I am mainly looking for
- PAL-50Hz while
- PAL 60Hz (=NTSC with 60Hz playback in PAL Modulation with 60Hz)
- NTSC 60Hz
- NTSC 50Hz (=PAL 50Hz playback NTSC Modulation with 50Hz) would be a welcome bonus.
So far I still use my old (S)VCD Video Disc Recorder from Amoisonic (VDR2000) when I need a quick backup.
Allexternal grabber I tried so far didn't convince me. The problem with all I saw in Honkong or Singapore, was that that I didn't had the option to return them if they would not function the way promised and the warrenty laws are worse then in Europe.
Unfortunately for e.g. the MonsterTV there is no distributor in Europe yet. |
Post at 2011-4-15 16:19
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