Anyone with Canopus ADVC products?

[broken_bricks]

I am using a Canopus ADVC-50 analog to digital capture card.
Mainly using it to capture from VHS and convert to DVD. I was just wondering what capture program peopl were using that use this product and which one seems to work best (quality).

Thanks.

[Ookami]

There are at least three people here with an product from the ADVC series (I will soon be the fourth :) ).

As for the quality, if you don't have dropped frames and you use a good DV codec (Canopus etc.) then it shouldn't matter what program do you use, AFAIK.

Scenalyzer (live?) is very popular... But, there are so many programs out there...

Cheers,

Ookie.

[Swan]

I was just wondering what capture program peopl were using that use this product and which one seems to work best (quality).
I have an ADVC-100, and have had it since about a month back.
I am using it with Vegas Video the most for DV capturing from a satellite receiver (haven't tried VHS yet). Vegas is very stable.
I have also tested Adobe Premiere. Although it doesn't crash or anything, the preview window is too small for my tastes, plus I lose audio after capturing for a while and then stopping. When I hit capture the second time, the audio is gone. Only the audio on the "preview" so to speak, the captured files do have audio. Just that I don't hear what I am capturing in Premiere.

For more sloppy recordings, to save space on the hard drive, I've "captured" direct to Mpeg-2. I've used Ulead DVD Workshop. It also works great, much better than it did with my "regular " capture card, a Pinnacle PCTV Pro.

The quality of the captured files doesn't depend on what DV codec one has installed. The encoding to DV is done in the Canopus ADVC-100, not by Vegas, Premiere or other softwares (unless you compress the incoming DV video data to Mpeg-2 on the fly, of course).
There seems to be some confusion about this. This is not really capturing, like with a "regular" capture card, but rather transferring data from the ADVC to the HD. No codec in Windows is involved in the actual data transfer.

A DV codec is only needed if you want to *play* the files using another codec than the default Microsoft DV renderer. And if one wants to edit the files in VirtualDub, which needs a VFW codec.

I've also heard good things about Scenalyzer and will test that one too.

/Swan

[Psychotourist]

I have the ADVC-100 (which I think is the sh*t in it's niche - lol)and have used Ulead, Pinnacle, Sonic, Dazzle, and Scenalyzer products with it. I personally prefer the Scenalyzer product for capturing. 2 reasons mainly:

1. So simple even my wife and 11 year old nephew can use it too. lol.

2. I use a variety of editing/finishing tools depending upon the desired end product for the capture and prefer to use standalone niche products rather than all-in-one solutions. But that's mostly due to my personal preference/opinion that niche products can be more stable, full-featured for the 1 task that they're intended for rather than something that tries to do it all and misses the boat on some things.

And as Ookami and Swan said, the ADVC unit is doing the DV encoding. Quality won't be effected by the "capture" program you choose but rather by how you process it afterwards. So it really boils down to what you're going to do with it afterwards and which programs's work process flows the best for YOU.