Grass Valley ADVC G1 reviews? Any experience?
 

Hey guys.

Someone just gave me one of these. Seems pretty powerful, at least from a real-time conversion standpoint. Think it has any value in a vhs-> lossless capture?

https://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc_g1/

Grass Valley = Canopus.

They've always been guilty of using loose terms like TBC too liberally, and the "TBC" did nothing discernible at all. So always be aware of this when reading their marketing material. Too much marketing, not enough material.

Knowing them, I automatically assume this is a BS statement:
Upconversion should always worry you, for analog sources, because deinterlace is never mentioned.

As with other high-end devices, realize it expects better-than-consumer sources.

No, I've not used it, but these are all things you need to keep in mind.

I purchased the G1 for the purpose of de-interlacing and it does the job perfectly. There are zero jaggies. But maybe my statement was too vague. The alignment of the two interlaced fields of a frame are aligned with absolute precision.

I have not however been without problems. It appears that the unit randomly loses contact with the video in source as if the end of the source has been reached. When a video source ends the G1 leaves you with the last frame of that source as a still-frame. It's totally random and therefore not repeatable. A source may play for 12 minutes or 3 hours before a freeze-frame appears. I then have to back up the source and begin another capture session.

Another problem I have had right from the very beginning was a radically attenuated audio capture. Amazingly, my workaround for this was to buffer the input source with an audio mixer set for 0dB gain. It is almost as if there is an impedance mismatch. But I have tried sourcing from varied audio line in signals and it is all the same.

The G1 probably is not the device you want for VHS-to-lossless computer capture. It is intended for professional applications converting a variety of input formats to SDI output formats - not common to consumer or home video gear. (It may be useful if your capture card only has SDI input.) A typical application might be using two boxes to convert a live camera and a PC output to a common signal type.

The device is designed for balanced audio input at 0 dBU or +4dBU, which are professional gear levels. Consumer and prosumer gear line level outputs are more like -10 dBV, much lower levels, thus the apparent low audio levels. Further the device is not designed to do adjustment of audio input, audio levels should be adjusted in the source stream, e.g., with an external mixer.

Its frame synchronizer is not intended to function as a TBC to clean up sloppy sync from a VCR as is commonly discussed on this site. It is to synchronize separate video signals to a common sync timing - a bit like genlock. The random "freeze frame" is likely due to a sync problem (i.e., frame out of spec) in the input signal.

Worth noting that Grass Valley bought Canopus in 2005. While Canopus was mainly an entheusast-focused product line, Grass Valley was more professional market (e.g., broadcast industry).