high quality capture hardware...

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

S>I'd like to be able to control the levels, not have some auto-mechanism doing it behind my back.

as with everything in life perfection is NON EXISTANT!

but as i remember this was discussed on my NG and i'll see if i can dig it up.....

[Darksoul71]

@Swan:
Wanna hear me sing ? Better not...or only if I´m drunk :D

One thing I wonder is how one sets the level on the audio?
How does the ADVC regulate the level on the incoming audio? From working with digital audio sampling (transferring LP's to CD) I know all about how difficult and crucial it is to leave headroom so no clipping *ever* occurs and at the same time, not set a too low level either. Is this configurable on the ADVC?

Hm, I never thought about this but you´re correct. Unfortunately the ADVC100 is NOT configurable. As I NEVER experienced clipped audio when editing my audio streams using Sound Forge. I normaly fade in & out, do some denoise and equalizing. You can see clipped audio in SF very easy. I think the ADVC does some "auto leveling" as sometimes seen on some cassette recorders. May be I´m wrong......

Feel free to e-mail Canopus about his.



Also, is it possible to screw up the sync on the files by editing?

Never had any problems with this....


What if one opens the DV compressed avi from the ADVC in Vdub and wants to extract a portion (using DirectStream Copy). Can this screw up the sync?

No, and VDub is my FAVOURITE editing software. Even better than Adobe Premiere :P


Or, opening the video in Vdub, extracting the wav, normalizing and such in BeSweet, then muxing it back into the video. Will this be risky in respect to audio/video sync?

Normaly not. I´m normaly extracting wave from DV AVI with VDub, processing audio with Soundforge, encoding to LAME VBR MP3 and muxing with Nandub. I never ever experienced async audio.

But on this "audio input level" I´m not shure......

-D$

[Swan]

@Darksoul71
Wanna hear me sing ? Better not...or only if I´m drunk
As fiiiine as you look, I'd wanna hear you sing, no matter what you sound like. You look an awful lot like that Hunk-o-funk Wesley Snipes. Yum, yum! ;)

enoise and equalizing. You can see clipped audio in SF very easy. I think the ADVC does some "auto leveling" as sometimes seen on some cassette recorders. May be I´m wrong......
Hmm.. Interesting. Do you capture from a cable/analog/satellite receiver? At what level do the levels normally peak when capuring from TV?
Yes, it must have some sort of compressor/limiter. It's the only explanation. I'll write to the support at Canopus and ask about it, if I don't get a reply in their ADVC forums.

I've read some complaints in their forums about low audio levels.
This is also what I experienced when I toyed around with a Dazzle DV Hollywood Bridge about six months ago.

But you are extremely pleased with the ADVC-100, right?
I've read that DV compression is similar to Mjpeg. Would you agree? Do you get top quality video from the ADVC? Good enough to re-encode to DVD compliant Mpeg-2?

Does the audio ever go out of sync? Do you use the Locked Audio mode all the time? This quote from the manual sounds so weird to me:
Locked Audio Mode — toggles
between capturing locked audio or
unlocked audio. If you are capturing
a lot of long clips, you should leave
this switch in the OFF position to
make sure the audio stays locked to
the video.

??

Glad to hear you use VirtualDub and that it's safe to extract the wav from the captured files and do some editing on them. Then that concern is no longer a concern for me.

Have you found any software with a scheduler that can control the ADVC?

Many questions, I'm sorry. :)

/Swan

PS For everybody interested in Locked Audio, this is a good place to read more: http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#LockedAudio

[markrb]

Well my Mom just offered to buy me a capture card for Christmas. Only thing is it can't be much over $50. Would the MSI TV@nywhere be my best bet for that price range?
I don't really care about the tuner.
I only want to capture from S-Video or Composite sources to an AVI.

Thanks,
Mark

[dar1us]

I would gess so, and btw, I asked for one of those too from my mom:)

Hope you have fun and a good xmas

see our collected samples at http://www.aa981752.force9.co.uk/


dar1us

[cjv]

Originally posted by markrb
Well my Mom just offered to buy me a capture card for Christmas. Only thing is it can't be much over $50. Would the MSI TV@nywhere be my best bet for that price range?
I don't really care about the tuner.
I only want to capture from S-Video or Composite sources to an AVI.
@markrb:
Basically anything with the CX23881 appears to be the best around right now. That would be the MSI, the XCapture, or the new Asus one. You mention only SVideo/composite, maybe you live in U.S. and can get the XCapture for $39.
Check out this thread (these guys appear impressed)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=182360

cjv

[markrb]

Thanks very much. I think Mom will be pleased. She was afraid that she wouldn't have anything to give to me this year.
I usually have everything I need or it's just too expensive for her.
I think I will ask for the PixelView card since I have no need for a tuner and according to that thread the tuner on the TV@nywhere is poor anyway.

Thanks,
Mark

[Ookami]

>I've read that DV compression is similar to Mjpeg. Would you agree? Do you get top quality video from the ADVC? Good enough to re-encode to DVD compliant Mpeg-2?

IIRC, hhe very same site (Adam Wilt) you've linked explained DV and MJPEG. You're probably refering tho the same answer (for the lazy people, see below).

As I've asked DarkSoul the same question, I can confirm that. He said that his ADVC resultst are better than anything else he got with his other cards (like Voodoo 3 3500 TV, Elsa Erazor 3, Asus Deluxe, MSI GeForce 3 Ti200, etc.).

As he wrote the answer, he was reencoding his captures to MPEG2.

Also, DarkSoul and many others are very pleased with the quality. As for reencoding, of course, for many video editing people DV is the format they use in the editing process.

@Mark

Glad, you've made your decision. Hope you'll have much fun and sucess.

Can I transcode between DV and motion-JPEG, MPEG-2, or DV50?
You can. Depending on the amount of compression used, you might not even see a difference.
It seems to be generally accepted that M-JPEG compression at 3:1 is roughly equivalent in quality to DV's 5:1 compression. It's also worth remembering that DV and JPEG are both DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) codecs; they tend to have similar artifacts and effects on pictures. (DV gets its additional compressive efficiency through block-level optimization of quantizing tables, whereas JPEG uses a fixed quantizing table for an entire image).

Thus, one might venture to guess that whether one is compressing via 5:1 DV or 3:1 JPEG, similar amounts of damage are done to the image, and that transcoding between these two compression schemes might cause less degradation than the initial compression caused.

Indeed, at NAB '96 Panasonic had hidden away in a corner a most interesting demonstration. A D-5 (uncompressed ITU-R-601) signal was fed to a component digital switcher on input #1. It was also taken, compressed via the DVCPRO codec, decompressed, and fed to input #2. The processed signal was further fed through a Tektronix ProFile DDR using JPEG at around 2.5-3:1 compression, and played back to input #3. That signal was again fed through a DVCPRO compression/decompression chain, and brought up on input #4.

A wipe pattern was set up, and by pressing buttons one could see a split-screen of any two signals on the switcher. Remember, this was a digital component switcher, and the monitor was one of those gorgeous Panasonic digital monitors where the image data stay digital all the way to the modulating grid (really, these are amazing monitors; if you haven't seen one, you don't know how good video can look).

The original D-5 image was deep, quiescent, lucent: as good as 525/59.94 images get. The first DVCPRO-processed image showed the usual sorts of DV artifacts we've all come to know and love, but it was still pretty darn good; you had to look closely to see any degradation.

But that was it: the further stages of processing showed no noticeable difference. The initial DV compression had already thrown away the troublesome transients and difficult details. What survived the initial DV codec was a DCT-friendly image that suffered very little from further compression in the ProFile, and the ProFile-processed image ran through the final DVCPRO codec with ease.

I'm not saying the images were identical; there were probably minor truncations and losses occurring in the ProFile's JPEG codec and in the final DVCPRO codec. However, these were very minor and visually imperceptible. Because the entire signal path was digital, the image stayed in registration throughout; there was no shifting of 8x8 DCT block boundaries nor were there level shifts and noise introductions as could occur in analog connections, both of which could degrade further compression. Moreover, the compression on the ProFile was very mild; it was at least as good, visually speaking, as the DVCPRO compression.

So, it can be done. Bear in mind that the level of JPEG compression used is a big determinant of whether you can transcode successfully. If you're using low JPEG compressions of 3:1, 2:1, or less, and transcode in the digital domain (through a serial digital connection or software conversion, rather than via an analog connection to a JPEG codec), you will see very, very little degradation of the image. If you dump your DV data into the JPEG world via an analog connection, or if you use higher compression rates, you will see a progressively higher amount of degradation.

Even so, there's always the risk of some loss. As a fellow said at SIGGRAPH '86, "Dealing with floating-point numbers is like shoveling sand: when you pick up a handful, you get a little dirt, and some sand trickles out..." and the same can be said about moving between different codecs.

I-frame-only MPEG-2 is said to be comparable to DV format compression at the same bit rate. Thus 25 megabit MPEG-2 should yield results (and transcoding errors) similar to DV, and 50 Megabit MPEG-2 should be comparable to DV50.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[\AX]

@Swan...about high quality camera's meeting the standards

You are correct, however i did read in pc magazine (dont know the validivity of the source of course), that the Sony MicroMV DID HAVE to have the supplied codec installed. I might be misunderstanding you on what you said...probably am. Anyways, it said without that codec you couldnt edit it. The also said that was silly and they couldnt understand it but overall it's a good camers.

However, the friend and other people i know that work at H.H. Greg here in the states...say that the camera is crap. They didnt try to edit at all. They just filmed customer's and stove's in the store and they said it had to one of the worst picture qualities they have seen in that price range. They, all told me i would be better off with the cheaper Panasonic model (cant remember exact model name).

Again i probably did misunderstand you. However what PC Magazine said in their DV issue (like 9 months ago or so), is that you have to have that codec. So here is were my ? comes in. Is there a "possible" way to get it to the pc WITHOUT that codec? From what i got from pc mag. made me think that the standard of mpeg-2 format is not being upheld with this camera.

I was thinking about getting my public access channel here locally into getting one. Howeve i don't want to have to be held down my that codec. So im wondering if you HAVE to have it or there is a work around.

The PA channel up north of me just got a (another...first one somebody broke) GL2. I like that camera alot. However, the MicroMV and camera's that small really appeal to me. Very portable and there, or so it would seem, is less of a chance to break. However i do know that is dependant on the person and quality of the camera but in general it would seem like that to me.

I dont do BIG budget stuff with DV camera's. When i got a DV200 i felt compelled to try variuos one's out. The sony DV2000 i like the best so far...however it wasnt mine due to price. So i must go with a model that is lower end. (when i get the money again)

Im obviously not experienced with DV Cameras...but i have read many times over at DV.COM that a Cannon Optura (is that the right name?) is one of the best there is to have at the -1000usd price ranges.

I know that software has alot to do with also beside's the gain level's and so forth of a camera. I have not heard of any of the applications that Ookami and other's are mentioning. I have only used the Avid DV Xpress 3.0 since i got a train cd with it (which btw helps ALOT).

I have tried premier...ehh..i dont know. I feel like adobe is better with the photoshop so i dont use it. Plus i didnt like the interface.

I have tried FC3 pro...I liked that but i dont have a MAC at home so i really never got a chance to get anywhere with it.

Swan i hope you get a good DV camera if you decide to buy one. I have yet to get one but want one real bad. Also, which you probably know, it is NEVER recommended to use your camera as a deck. That is another $$$ issue i have since i dont have another 500usd to dish out on a DECENT deck. 500usd isnt alot either for a deck..the ones at the PA channel are only like 1400usd and those even at that price are not considered HIGHER end. Dunno maybe we could swap some footage. I got some REDICULOUS stuff we made for the PA channel that we never aired.

Probably typing too much...but i got to add this. (one day i will get a fast connection and put it on the web).
The show was set as 70 disco rat's living well past their time in the new millenium. Some of the stuff was really funny. The theme wasnt my idea, since i really dont like disco, however it worked out well. The show was like 5% JackAzz, 50% Seinfeild, and 40% Married With Children. The other 5% i really cant compare to anything else.
We did one scene, which falls into that unknow 5%, and to be honest how i type it here is not nearly as funny as it is when you watch it. Anyhow, we did a scene where I dressed up in the 70's cloths from the thrift store, and everybody else was totally dressed like they were TRUE Pro's and were somebody in the whole hollywood production scene. So there dressed up holding lights, booms, mirror's, and some other stuff. They filmed me and my friend at a bar. Well i went in, totally into a bar that is "hip" with the "in" crowd as far as "yuppies" and "frat boys and sor. girls". It was a total shocker to them because we just busted in there like we were somebody. I sat down at the bar carrying a satellite reciever and the remote for it. I pretended like it was my date. Totally. The bar tender laughed when she saw me...then she looked really confused when i said "Can i have a double scottch here for my lady friend" and i was pointing at the satellite reciever. Well i sat there...in a room that nobody was sitting down because there was no room...acting totally like it was my date. Anyhow i dropped the remote...and my friend who went in like 5 minute's before us who was TOTALLY fitting in with the crowd...made a move on my "date". When i bent down to pick up the remote i could see that we where NOT going unnoticed..also i saw my friend move in so when i leaned up i got all offensive. Anyhow, wound up we got kicked out, not because of the zhit me and my friend where doing...but my friend almost burnt someone with the light.

It really doesnt sound funny when you read it..but if you see it does.

Anyhow that is why i like video :-P. Because you can put your self in it and make total fun of yourself and friends and not worry about a drop. The video capturing which im sure you and everyone else here knows...i only do for children. This is EXTREMELY fun dont get me wrong...but not as fun as watching your stupid self making a azz out of your self.

Anyhow hate me for posting that...but i really take pride in that. It was something i did all for Video. I truely take pride in it...that is why i posted it. Which btw this is the frist time i posted it in such detailed now after it has happened.

That was just a idea of mine that came true...all due to the greatness of Video. For that, i will always find Video in all fields something of a mysterious, yet pleasurable, AWESOME way to spend your time.

Also for if it wasnt boards like these and ALL these helpfull, honest, and friendly people here and everywhere else...i would not know aslittle as i do just to get by.

Thank you to everyone for actually taking the time to sit in front of a light bulb in a box, with a board with buttons, and help people of the world with all your knowledge knowing you will most likely never meet them. This is truely a statement of how humanity can truely be great.

Sincerely \AX

(what the...i know im typing too much now. When i posted this the first time like 10 sentence's from 3 different parts of my post got switched around completely at random)

[Swan]

@\AX You are correct, however i did read in pc magazine (dont know the validivity of the source of course), that the Sony MicroMV DID HAVE to have the supplied codec installed. I might be misunderstanding you on what you said...probably am. Anyways, it said without that codec you couldnt edit it
No, its' my bad. I misunderstood you. I thought the Sony MicroMV was a DVD Recorder, not a digital video camera.

/Swan

PS No news from Canopus regarding the audio levels. I have also mailed support. No reply yet. Plus, someone else has posted in the Canopus forums, asking the same question I did about regulating the incoming audio levels.

[prom3theus]

Do you really think the aiw quality is bad? All I've ever used is an aiw, and I just ordered a radeon 7500.

I'm not sure what qualities you are trying. Have you tried capturing at basically RGB bitrates? I capture at 640x480, and at about 20MB/sec (1.2G/minute), and it seems like good quality, but I can't compare.

What are your results for same bitrate captures? Can you capture something fairly consistent, like CNN/MSNBC live news, and send up two pictures at the same bitrate, no compression, just single frame bmps?
Or if they are too big, how about jpgs compressed equally? I'd be really interested in seeing a quality comparison, as I'd sell the aiw in a second if I thought I could get something better without much price difference. But right now, I can capture video without frame drops at its highest settings and 640x480.

[cjv]

I captured with my AIW 7500 for over 6 months, and in that time I was happy because I never really gave it much thought. Thus, if you're happy, then there is nothing wrong with ATI.

Yes there is better quality available (CX2388x, BT8x8) and better compatibility (BT8x8).

I will say, though, since I've stopped capturing with the ATI, they've released 2 sets of WDM drivers. I did some short tests, and surpisingly, they have improved quality considerably. The ones that came with Catalyst 2.4 (not 2.5) appear to be the best. Even though XP and win2k use the same drivers, XP appears to give better quality. (but i refuse to keep XP on my main computer) :)

The bad points: radeons have no sharpness control, and they already blur the image quite a bit. It's hard to describe, but they can make the image "flat" looking and kinda 2D. (this was my biggest complaint, and this is much less noticable with the 2.4 WDM drivers). They have no built-in comb filter that I'm aware of, so crosstalk is even a problem when using the S-Video input.

If you already have a video card, you can get a BT8x8 card for probably $30-40. With defaults, it will have the same/better quality as the ATI, but with tweaks should perform much better. For $50-100, you can try one of the cards based on the new CX2388x chips. They have poor compatibility right now, but give great quality, allow tweaking, and have a bright future.

I don't have my ATI set up for capturing right now, but I think dar1us set up a web page with lots of samples. I did 2 captures of the same program: 1 with a MSI and the other with my Radeon. You can check them out (and many others) if you want, look for the "samples" thread.

I always capture samples at 720x480, HuffYUV, YUY2. Oh yea, check out a.b.m and download some short samples along with the NFO. Some of those captures are amazing...they sometimes list the card/capture settings used. You can see what is possible with a great source.

cjv

[fasttimes]

Originally posted by cjv
For $50-100, you can try one of the cards based on the new CX2388x chips. They have poor compatibility right now, but give great quality, allow tweaking, and have a bright future.
Could you describe what you mean by "allow tweaking"?.:confused: What control do the OEM's drivers give you on the CX2388x based cards, vs the control BTWinCap drivers give the BT8x8 based cards.

[cjv]

Sorry, by tweaking I just mean that with the ATI, you cannot adjust sharpness, and with the CXxxxx you can. Most feel this is a _very_ important control/tweak that many cards lack (all ATI AIW ones for sure).

AFAIK, there are no improved drivers for CXxxxx other than the OEM ones, but the OEM ones work quite well.

cjv

[fasttimes]

Cool. :D So, maybe the OEM drivers won't be the horror that OEM BT8x8 drivers have always been! I've been looking at the CX23880 based cards, but the lack of open-source drivers is/was a big concern to me. :scared:

[cjv]

The way I see it is like this. The developers of Dscaler are working hard to support this chipset, because many HTPC users love the improved quality, but need Dscaler support. Once Dscaler has good enough support, this will probably the suggested chipset. Then, once Cxxxxx has replaced many BT8x8 cards for high end users, enough people will have them that there will be demand for improved capture drivers, tweakers, etc..much like BT8x8 has now.

cjv

[Darksoul71]

@Swan: Wow, it took me over a month to think about an answer....
Well, not really :D
I was very busy with my diploma but yesterday I had my presentation and now I´ve more time.
As fiiiine as you look, I'd wanna hear you sing, no matter what you sound like. You look an awful lot like that Hunk-o-funk Wesley Snipes. Yum, yum!

But unfortunately I haven´t got your "swan white" color of skin ;)

Do you capture from a cable/analog/satellite receiver?

I capture from cable using my Panasonic VCR as tuner via SVHS.

[At what level do the levels normally peak when capuring from TV?
/QUOTE]
Hm, that is a good question. I´m currently compressing from AVI->MP2 with BeSweet from a ADVC100 capture and it reports 13,6 dB overall track gain. I never experienced any clipping / compressing as both Soundforge and BeSweet always reported a normalized to 0dB which wouldn´t be possible with "clipped/compressed" audio. But I still agree that there must be a audio limiter. You could still use a mixing panel between your AV source and ADVC100 to avoid loosing any dynamic information in Audio.

[QUOTE]I've read that DV compression is similar to Mjpeg. Would you agree? Do you get top quality video from the ADVC? Good enough to re-encode to DVD compliant Mpeg-2?

I would agree that I get top video quality from ADVC100. On this DV vs. MJPEG I´m not quite shure. Previously I used a hardware MJPEG card and the quality was on par to DV only at higher datarates (> 5 MB/s). On lower data rates up to 3.6 MB (data rate of DV video) the DV codec will crush MJPEG qualitywise if your DV source is good enough.

For re-encoding to MPEG2 I can get "broadcast" quality using CVD at 1.8-2.5 MBit. This looks as good as the original TV broadcast from cable. If I apply some noise filters (Convolution3D) it looks even better. You´ll loose some sharpner because of the lower width and deinterlacing but I can live with that. If you plan to archive analogue video in it´s original form I suggest that you use a full DVD-R per movie encoding interlaced in 2pass VBR mode.

Does the audio ever go out of sync? Do you use the Locked Audio mode all the time?
Honestly I´ve never touched these DIP switches. I´ve been using "locked audio" all the time and never experienced any async video. :)


Have you found any software with a scheduler that can control the ADVC?

No, not really. There might be a PVR software done by electronic-design (a small german company), that supports timed recordings from DV sources plus encoding to MPEG2 in realtime. Have a look here: http://www.videocockpit.de/
But it seems to me that this is still under development. Honestly doing timed recordings with the ADVC isn´t really a big deal. You can do this the same way that was possible to do timed recordings with VirtualDub be4 VirtualDub Timer came out. There are ton´s of tools out there to control programs. Winbatch, Macroscheduler, GhostMouse (in combination with scheduled tasks of Windows), windows scripting host (WSH) just to name a few. This is no "out of the box" solution but should be easy to implement.

Some final words on the ADVC100:
-Should you buy a DV cam with analogue in instead ?
I don´t know. This depends on your budget. I use an analogue Sony Hi8 cam and so I decided NOT to buy a DV cam.

-Is the ADVC100 cabable of capturing really old VHS/Video8 tapes ?
Not really ! If your source is really f...ed up (old VHS tapes, etc) the DV hardware codec "breaks" and you´ll either get black screen or some funny flashing colored squares in your capture. If this is a concern for you (i.e. you have 200 old VHS tapes to digitize) then you should get another capture solution. I sometimes use the video in from my MSI GeForce4 and VDubSync in order to capture screwed up material. If I´ve got through all my old material I wan´t buy a graphic adapter with VIO anymore.

-Does the ADVC100 produce good quality video ?
Hm, depends on your personal opinion. From my point of view (as Ookami already wrote) the quality is MUCH better than anything I ever owned or tried out. More vivid colors and more details will also your encoded movies look better.

-Is this quality worth to pay 300-400€ ?
This depends on. It really takes some time to get used to the higher amount of quality you get from using a ADVC100. If you´ve captured with a cheaper solution earlier (esp. if you only used composite as input), the material from the ADVC100 will look more "grainy". It´s hard to explain this effect. You get more details but also more noise from analogue captures. These "extra" details make only sense if you spend enough bitrate for your encoding to keep them. If you only store your movies to 2 CD DivX or VCD then you can also get happy with a cheaper solution.

IMHO the ADVC is worth every cent if I think about all those crappy "realtime to MPEG2" solutions for USB like the Adaptec VideOooooh or Dazzles DCS200 for up to 300€. You get some driver independent video capturing device. Hook it up to a Mac and it´ll work. Use it under Linux and it will work. Show me any other external (!!!) capture device that is able to do this (of course all other IEEE1394 cap devices like the Hollywood bridge can do this also).
Also the ADVC100 has hardware compression which means that you´re able to work normally with your system while you´re capturing a movie. With any software based codec this isn´t possible. I have an Athlon XP1700+ and can easily browse the web, write e-mail, develop, etc while capturing without having a dropped frame. This wasn´t possible before even when using my hardware MJPEG card.

Hope this helps.

-D$