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09-11-2020, 07:09 PM
SoCalBoy SoCalBoy is offline
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Hi,

I've been testing out my Hauppauge 610 capture card and old Canon ZR100 MiniDV camera and for kicks decided to try using the camcorder as a pass through device.

Wow, whenever I captured straight from the VCR to capture card to PC the video looked incredibly distorted, like the tracking and frames were highly distorted. I can see why TBC is needed.

Then I connected my VCR to the camcorder and just watched a tape on that and the video looked pretty much just how it looks like on my TV, no frame sync issues at all.

So I decided to then plug my capture card into the camcorder, dumb I know, at least until my FireWire PCIe card gets here, and the quality was again much better than if I directly connected it to the VCR.

Basically I feel like the capture card was useless at this point if I can get the FireWire connection to work on my PC.

Will the ES10/15 or Canopus device give me the same effect as the MiniDV camcorder? I just care about everything not blinking and the edges not being wavy/blurry.

There's those silly YouTube videos of the AV to HDMI converters which also seem to have the same effect as my camcorder I think. Perhaps I should exchange my AV to USB capture card for an HDMI to USB capture card and buy an AV to HDMI converter box?
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  #2  
09-11-2020, 08:02 PM
traal traal is offline
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For MiniDV, just download the video through FireWire, otherwise you're adding digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions, and then you still have to decide whether to store the video uncompressed at around 25-40 GB/hour (versus MiniDV's 14) or compress it lossy for what would be the second time.
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09-11-2020, 08:38 PM
Formica Formica is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SoCalBoy View Post
...and buy an AV to HDMI converter box?
That stuff is generally for convenience, not precision.
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09-12-2020, 05:16 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SoCalBoy View Post
Wow, whenever I captured straight from the VCR to capture card to PC the video looked incredibly distorted, like the tracking and frames were highly distorted. I can see why TBC is needed.
Yep.

Quote:
Then I connected my VCR to the camcorder and just watched a tape on that and the video looked pretty much just how it looks like on my TV, no frame sync issues at all.
So I decided to then plug my capture card into the camcorder, dumb I know, at least until my FireWire PCIe card gets here, and the quality was again much better than if I directly connected it to the VCR.
Do not confuse frame sync, TBC, and dropped frames. Those are all separate concepts, even if closely related, and often connected.

Quote:
Basically I feel like the capture card was useless at this point if I can get the FireWire connection to work on my PC.
No.

The problem here is that you're lacking perspective. You're like a caveman that just discovered fire. "Now I can cook meat! This is the best that food can ever taste!" ... says the caveman that hasn't yet discovered spices.

DV has many flaws and limitations. It removes and dulls color, adds blocks, etc. DV is literally the tech of the 1990s, a crippled video format to work on the Pentium II/III computers of that era. Lossless is from the 2000s-2010s, the heyday of video capture.

Quote:
Will the ES10/15 or Canopus device give me the same effect as the MiniDV camcorder? I just care about everything not blinking and the edges not being wavy/blurry.
Canopus = no
ES10/15 = sort of, arguably stronger, but also weaker depending on exact camera

Quote:
There's those silly YouTube videos of the AV to HDMI converters
That guy is an idiot. Youtube is also fulls of videos that deny the moon landing, show Elvis sightings, etc. Any goober can make a video, and many do. He has zero perspective about video, and many of his videos are "wow, look at what I just learned!" (info that has been well-known for literally decades), with lots of myth and misinformation sprinkled in ... and then he tries to be a teacher 5 minutes later. Reminds me of modern homeschooling, and how as a society we're allowed mass miseducation -- and the future will pay dearly for it (the movie Idiocracy is looking more and more like a documentary).

Quote:
Originally Posted by traal View Post
For MiniDV, just download the video through FireWire, otherwise you're adding digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions, and then you still have to decide whether to store the video uncompressed at around 25-40 GB/hour (versus MiniDV's 14) or compress it lossy for what would be the second time.
As added info here: DV shot on consumer camcorders rarely resolves to a true 720x480 of detail, and so you can capture DV over analog methods using s-video (~540x480). Very often, DV vs. analog lossless capture is indistinguishable, even to A/B testing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Formica View Post
That stuff is generally for convenience, not precision.
Those were made to play old video games system on current HDMI-only HDTVs. The output is stretched 16x9, and you're expecting to use the TV 4x3 mode to unstretch. These items were never intended as capture, and look quite bad when used this way.

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