DV Converter Hardware for Capturing

[sturmie]

i just wanted to get ur guys/gals thoughts on DV converter boxes like the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge and the Pinnacle MovieBox (USB2 and/or FireWire). i tried the Dazzle bridge and really liked its ease of use and compatability w/ the video editing software out there (ie, Pinnacle Studio, Vegas Video, etc)...comparatively, my PCI capture card (w/ the Conexant 23881 chipset on it) had trouble getting up over 352x288 for capturing.

well, since i sent the card back, i wanted to know what all the "gurus" thought about capturing using these boxes...especially the USB2 version(s)...one thing i really liked about the Dazzle (firewire) was that it used the Microsoft DV native driver....very cool when compared w/ having to deal w/ downloading the "latest drivers" of something.

fyi, all i'm looking to do is capture uncompressed AVI video and then encode it/cut it up later.

thanks in advance for the info...sturmie

[jggimi]

Moved to the DV forum.

[FredThompson]

Canopus makes a very good converter box.

The Microsoft DV codec is broken. It corrupts color over time.

When you pick a DV converter, make sure it can handle CG properly.

http://www.geocities.com/fredthompson6/

[sturmie]

Originally posted by FredThompson
The Microsoft DV codec is broken. It corrupts color over time.broken? so i shouldn't use the DV drivers? i was actually thinking seriously about getting the Dazzle Bridge for myself, should i look into the Canopus instead? also, does it "corrupt color" over the course of a single capture or over the course of weeks/months?

Originally posted by FredThompson
When you pick a DV converter, make sure it can handle CG properly.what do u mean by "handle CG properly"? i'm fairly new to video capturing :).

sturmie

[FredThompson]

The Microsoft DV codec has been somewhat notorious for making the image more green with each re-compression. I don't know if it still does that. I use the MainConcept codec. There is a sticky in this forum which says the Panasonic better because their sample looks softer. Is it softening or is MainConcept sharpening? Dunno.

Your files shouldn't change over time. Thing is, each time you edit the image is going to change a little bit. The more you edit, the more it changes. Um...well...you CAN copy/append/cut without actually editing the content of frame(s), that's not what I mean, I mean anything that changes the content of the frame will require re-compressing the frame so the image will change a little bit.

There is a way to use the free Canopus DV reader codec and file converter to read DV files. Most people register (or, they should) the MainConcept codec or use the Panasonic because it's freely available.

CG = computer graphic/generated

Look at the small screen grab of the History Channel logo and you'll see the edges aren't consistent. They change on each frame but the source was steady. It's hard to show in a single frame but the effect is one of a lot of false motion which is distracting. In this case, any variation was NOT evident when viewing the original source but WAS when looking at the DV-encoded version. That's why I'm suggesting you test a DV device to ensure this kind of junk doesn't happen. It would be a real shame to buy one then watch lines that should be straight and solid pulse and wiggle.