Idk if this really needs to be a discussion on here. Feel free to delete it if you want but this guy is so bad about misleading people and acting like some kind of expert. I made bad hard wear choices before because I was new and it was the blind leading the blind. Premier crashed constantly. Intensity shuttle was a waste gonna recapture all that later. Idk maybe those people are best off just ignoring. Some ppl are just gonna think what they want but it’s be nice if they wouldn’t act like experts and tell everyone else to do that. https://youtu.be/e2Qt0rQVRhc

-- merged --

You know I guess it was kinda my fault for not researching those choices better. There’s always gonna be someone like that. Probably better off ignoring them. Unless they come to the site with incorrect information.

TechTVusa is just another low-knowledge misinformation peddler. I'll be glad to obliterate his ridiculous BS when time permits.

Quick hint: his "proof" video is crap. DV chroma issues are most stark in reds, and he is showing a noisy green/blue pond clip

I left a comment on that video:

I am glad that he is at least mentioning this site now. Maybe some people well look at this site and see some facts and make some good decisions and not use one of those crappy shuttles and deal with adobe crashes constantly and audio sync problems and have no idea why, then finally find this site and sell there old hardware and get new recommended hardware that’s actually meant for sd video like I did. That guy uses no frame TBC as far as I’ve seem. He just uses a line TBC in his vcr. Then talks about audio sync issues in some of the cards. Then he talks about videos he did for a client. If anyone is thinking about following his advice read through the guide on this page save yourself some time and get a lot better quality videos.

The SOB is backpedding now, and deleting my comments. :rolleyes:

For posterity, since not yet deleted there:

It does me no good to tell people not to listen to to that guy because I still need some hard wear and it could make more competition for that gear but at the same time I got really thrown off track by this guy and it’s better for people to at least have factual information. It’s annoying because he acts like he knows it all but he doesn’t really know and the fact that I fell for his BS. Ow well I’m gonna make it to where YouTube stops recommending me that guys videos. That stuff is really misleading to new people.

Youtube is full of people that go to a random store, random buy something, and then defend their purchase as the best item ever.
- Very often, it's not best.
- Too often, it's actually the worst, praised simply due to cheap costs.

Many Youtubers exist solely to have their egos stroked, not help others. They need to be reassured (coo'd like a baby) that they made the right purchase, and ignore/delete any dissenting comments. Many more go bonkers when confronted with facts, and turn into raving lunatics that spout myth and conspiracy.

And sadly, it's not just video, but everything. :screwy:

I'm not here to convince dullards that they cannot buy the world for $1. I'm here to share helpful info, facts, seasoned experience (both hobby and pro), to guide others to successful (AND QUALITY!) outcomes. Your average Youtuber only cares about himself or herself, and loves to stand in front of the camera. Some are successful at it, but most are wanna-be TV hosts. Always remember this. Camera whores that know less than you do -- that's most of Youtube. Not all, of course.

Okay Point taken.

Do you feel like Neo in the Matrix?
For too long, you were subjected to BS. But now you see the capture world as it actually exists! :laugh:

Sadly, some prefer to stay in the Matrix.

Lol no I understand what you’re saying. You don’t want to waste your time trying to help people that don’t want to help themselves and are not willing to do what it takes to help themselves. You know it’s funny that you bring up the Matrix. My niece is named Trinity after that movie and I’ve always been a really big fan of that movie. Didn’t care for the last one but I know there was a lot of symbolism there and I see what they were going for anyways back to the subject. Yeah it kinda seems like that because I spent a really long time listening to goofballs. That’s a good comparison.

That was "babygdav" (sometimes referred to as "babydav" with 'g' missing) a former member at Videohelp, he was arguing with everyone at the forum about how great DV is for capturing and linking videos in his posts as proof, We quickly found out that they were his own videos and has been reported and banned for his agressive behavior.

I posted a comment there, hopefully i'll stick:

Nice. :cool:

What an odd individual. He pushes his methods to people that have the knowledge to judge him aggressively to the point that they feel the need to ban him then he goes to a place where he can reach a ton of uneducated people on that topic. Then seems to really want the attention of LS debating him on some stuff that really is a waste of time debate. Strange guy.

Some people worship the look and easiness of devices, they don't care of the technical details behind it.
I personally had captured all my family tapes using the Edirol VMC-1, while the overall quality was not that bad I felt like I got stuck with those DV files, anything you do to them, further degrades them, especially when I really needed to de-interlace them and encode them to h.264 or Youtube for sharing with the family in private links. So had to start the project all over again 7 years later and go lossless AVI. So I know what the difference was before processing and I can imagine how it will look like after processing.

That’s cool you got them done right later on.

This implies that DV takes only 20 samples per scan line. Actually the 4:1:1 translates to 180 samples per horizontal scan line, and a scan of every line. (720 samples of the B&W image per line.)

IMO, with respect to the color-under consumer SD video formats the problem is not the sample rate but the lossy compression, implementations of that compression, and data rate limitations, especially with the noise typical of home recordings which combine to make DV less than optimum for video enhancement and restoration purposes.

Read the post again, It says analog video, DV is a digital format not analog. I was talking about passing analog video via a DV device, you shortened my comment and took it out of context.

Yep. :congrats:

Yes, luma suffers too under DV but it is less damaged than chroma, Some consumer tapes look almost like hand painting or animation in terms of color, I take DV luma anytime but I can't stand DV chroma, looks horrible. The trick with DV capturing is that the better the quality of the original tape the less noticeable the difference is compared to lossless. At least we all agree that DV is not ideal for proper archiving.

The main sin is completely obliterating colors of smaller objects. You end up with excessive gray splotch areas, where not enough color saturation existed.

Tints changes, and you get lots of color artifacts (especially saturated red or green).

When you further toss out data, ie deinterlacing, it starts to look like MPEG-1 VCD.

What I find astonishingly stupid is that we're having to discuss late 90s tech in 2023, and explain to people that something from about 30 years ago is not "the best". It's about as idiotic as explaining that "no, records are not better than __" (insert current format here). Different, often worse, not really better. What's next? "Phone booths are better than cell phones!" At some point, "babygdav" or TechTVusa, or whatever he wants to call himself, is just the video capture equivalent of a flat earther. Just another raving lunatic seeking lemming followers.

He doesn't even know how to use "Reply" in the comment section, Now I'm trying to work thru his stuborness and show him how to propery use the reply feature, He's been asking me questions quoting my name manually and he said he wasn't asking me, he was asking someone else.

Looking at some schematics of legacy gear from the 1980s/90s that included digital processing on conjunction with analog tape I see some cut corners and used 6-bit processing for chroma, not 8-bit. The natural dot blur of CRT display, noise, and dithering essentially masked the artifacts that would otherwise be apparent. I suspect some DV gear retained the reduced bit depth processing because it "worked" back then; it hid the flaws in the image.

I believe some more recent flat screen and LCD/LED computer monitors did less than full bit depth signal processing as well, discarding the least significant bits to save a few cents production cost.

Yes, if one needs to change into their super hero costume.:old:

Ha! :laugh:

How does Superman change now? :hmm:

Haha he block/hide Capturing-Memories, vhsvcrbest, and lordsmurf because your comments are confusing and he gave some other reasons in a comment. That’s kinda funny. He was the one calling ppl out. He blocks everyone that really knows what they’re talking about. No one cussed and everyone was polite. You guy’s are a bunch of trouble makers I guess lol.

In general, I vehemently dislike the term snowflake, but that's exactly what this babygdav/TechTVusa person is. He's a complete assclown that peddles misinformation, distorts facts, obviously due to not actually having knowledge of the subject material. When confronted, he initially doubles down, before eventually crumpling like tissue paper. So he's gone for the moment, like an insect in winter. His ilk is nothing new to the video community. Every 5-10 years is some new "it" nonsense, but DV is the cockroach that won't be snuffed out. Sadly, he'll probably be back.

I don't understand why he can't simply say "I wanted cheap and easy, even if quality takes a hit, so I got this $200 DV box". And there are many valid reasons for going down that DV path (PAL, Mac, budget, etc), and indeed it is a path I've sometimes suggested to others. But it's very case-by-case, not something that should ever be general advice. It has downsides, sometimes severe.

What I don't like seeing is his BS about it being "bestest ever!", "nobody can tell the difference", etc. Again, classic defending the purchase mindset. So misleading to others.

Again, in general, DV really has no place in an NTSC capture workflow in the 2020s. Nor really PAL, even if more tolerable. It's neither cheap enough for cheapskates, nor quality enough for quality seekers willing to spend good money on gear.

Thanks for making this thread. :congrats:

Believe it or not that guy deleted all of you guys’s comments and mine. Lordsmurf, Capturing-Memories, vcrvhsbest and now he has deleted my comments too. What is the point of deleting those? You guys left a bunch of well informed good comments. I just called him out on deleting comments and wrote a little negative stuff. Really it’s an easy subject for you guys to pick apart. You guy’s destroyed him in the comments section so he just wanted to get rid of all the evidence. Then his video is still up where he’s saying all that crap. He’s supposed to put up a follow up video. The comment that he made saying he block/hid all of you three’s comments is gone so it just looks like none of us left any comments and all that didn’t happen. That guy is a joke.

Do you now see why Youtube is so full of misinformation? :salute:

The "content creators" are allowed to simply remove comments that disagree with them. The intention is to remove spam or harassment, but clearly it's abused.

That guy is a giant wuss, a fragile little snowflake, that cannot stand it when others disagree with him, or point out his errors and weird bias for aged tech.

Look at my post history, on multiple sites, going back 30 years. I'll gladly debate anything, but with facts/truth, or at least opinions based on facts/truth. When I'm wrong, I say so. But I generally abide by the ideal of keeping my mouth shut when I don't know something. That's why I tend to be very confident in my information and answers: experience, knowledge, sometimes educated guesses (and stated as such).

Sadly, most people don't understand that principle, and all you get is pulled-from-ass misinformation.

BTW, I can still see my own comments there:

... and others.

His comments look really stupid now, you can tell the he's replying to comments he deleted. :rolleyes:

Yeah I see what you’re saying now about YouTube being a bad source of knowledge. I didn’t know expect him to block/hide all of you guys’s comments just because they were intelligent. Then he said he did it because “most viewers” wouldn’t understand what you guys were talking about. Not because he didn’t understand. That’s an ego thing. He thinks he’s an expert in this because he did something to do with television work a long time ago. He doesn’t want factual information or he wouldn’t delete you guys’s comments. He would look into them. He would gather information. I guess his response is predictable once you figure out he has a huge ego and he’s really stubborn which became obvious when you guy’s confronted him with facts. That guy is definitely a blue piller. The ironic thing is that he was trying to say that you guys were stating myths when actually in the comments he said that the ADVC 110 had an integrated chip that kept everything at 29.97 fps. Vcrvhsbest pointed out that that chip doesn’t exist and you need a frame TBC for that. All of his points were either pointed out as bad practices or just myths in the guide on this site.

It is predictable that people won’t get good information when searching it on YouTube. YouTube’s algorithm isn’t designed to give people the best hardware or software advice. It’s especially bad to look at YouTube with this topic though. I would have been better off skipping YouTube for sure. I’ve captured with easycrap, intensity shuttle and now in recapturing with good gear but I’ve seen the results and how difficult premier was to work with and the audio lag from not having a frame TBC also a lot of stuff I didn’t pick out due to lack of knowledge. It’s enough to finally make you wanna take the red pill but if someone takes that sooner they’d be better off.

Anyways that guy’s the one actually spouting out myths.

... smack guys like that in the face with a VCR. :laugh:

Lol. He will just try to cover it up and deny that it happened. He’s sweeping up vcr pieces with a red face. I didn’t get hit in the face with a vcr.

I would say more a unreliable source, mixed source. Some info is bad and some is good, with no real way to vet it beyond one's own personal knowledge and combined with some common sense. Youtube itself is by and large neutral (politics aside) - just a delivery method. The individual posters are good, bad, and in between.

I have found both good and bad information, and some that was good within a very narrow sphere and not applicable outside that limited sphere.

Let the buyer beware.

You’re right but common sense on this subject isn’t that common.

-- merged --

I just wanted to update this because I’m someone who followed that guy then found digitalfaq. I can capture now without dropping or inserting frames and I have low CPU usage. The capture process is enjoyable now. I bought no new computer hardware either. I’m utilizing the stuff I already had better like I am capturing to my 720 RPM HDD instead of one of my SSDs and I’m going to calibrate my IPS. A lot of the YouTube guides are push this then this where this place gives you information to really learn what’s going on. It was easier for me to learn what I was doing wrong and fix it then it would have been to sit there and struggle more with bad hardware, software and other problems I didn’t know about.

I think TechTVUSA does make some fair points. I don't think he's trying to be malicious. He wants proof (not promises) that there's a visually significant difference between readily available plug and play solutions that will work with modern Macs in particular. I don't think he's claiming that the ADVC-110 is going to give the best quality of any possible conversion chain on all video sources or that it is for archive-level transfers.

Main thing I think he gets wrong is not stressing enough that the Shuttle really can't be relied upon as a single device to capture due to time base error intolerance unless you have decent equipment in front of it in the chain, which most aren't going to have.

These points I think he gets right about the ADVC-110:

-ADVC-110 is superior to what *most general consumers* are already using for their home movie captures - Think Elgato Video Capture/Clearclick (at least if using it with the bundled software) - many "professional" services actually use the Elgato Video Capture - There are several YouTube channels showing this - GotMemories and EmeraldCoastDigitizing come to mind. GotMemories does have pretty high google user reviews I must say - 4.9 stars on Facebook and 5.0 stars on google reviews with several hundred reviews on each. If most people (in general) weren't happy with "Elgato level" quality at super low bitrates, those reviews wouldn't be as high as they are. And they are paying a minimum of $30 per tape at least over at GotMemories.

-ADVC-110 is driverless on modern hardware and never has audio sync issues. No external hardware or fussing with audio settings required.

-He basically begged for anyone here to do a head to head challenge with what is suggested here vs the ADVC-110 with sample videos and have that posted to YouTube to prove him wrong - this STILL has not been posted to YouTube to my knowledge. If it has been posted by anyone here, I'd love the link.

Conclusion: For a plug and play solution for 95% of users that'll be an improvement over what they'd otherwise be using (Elgato video capture with bundled software) - particularly for Mac users that aren't interested in using Windows (and there's plenty of those) - the ADVC-110 does have a place in video digitization for the average Mac user in my mind.

I have a bunch of capture cards including recommended ones here as well as the ADVC-110 and I will eventually post that comparison to YouTube myself. I think it would be more interesting to initially not label what each sample is at first and see what the community votes as best overall capture on something like a Reddit poll. One could argue that YouTube compression will dull details, but most people will be sharing their captured content via YouTube or similar, so the conclusion of "which makes for best YouTube-destined capture" would be the more accurate conclusion there.

No, he's trying to be intentionally obtuse, as he has removed comments from myself and others that gave him the "proof" he claimed to seek. Those comments also pointed out the problems in his very own samples, as well as obvious problems in his assertions. He's a low-knowledge user spouting BS that only newbies or other low-knowledge users believe. Education is the cure to all.

The ADVC boxes are 1990s technology. It butchers color, and adds blocks. In the 2020s, it's as inexcusable as an Easycap (Easycrap) USB stick from China. Only in certain narrow cases do I begrudgingly nod my head in approval -- much like Dr. Strange in Avengers, "it's the only way". That's when all other avenues of conversion have been exhausted, and it presents as the least-worst option in the scenario.

There are some "meme cards" in recent times, such as the GV-USB2 and Live2. Those are not suggested cards, with documented concerns and problems of their own. And yet, still better than DV boxes (Canopus, DataVideo, and some others). So there are options between lousy DV and lousy Easycaps, that are less/not lousy.

I'd even consider vhs-decode before I would a DV box. It has problems, but it's better than DV. Both methods will require you to tear apart gear, fiddle and futz with adapters and parts. Install this, tweak that, reinstall that, re-tweak this. If that's how you want your capture experience to be, knock yourself out. Capturing, and with quality results, does not have to be that difficult.

No, a Reddit poll is just random people, with random opinions, based on random data (good or bad) or even no data. Surveys without vetting are completely worthless, and generally bias to the question or unqualified expected outcome. Just this morning, I was reading about a survey of college seniors, where they could not determine what a good starting salary would be in their field. Some thought $15k was good (ridiculous), while others thought $250k was not enough (ridiculous). And that was a survey of an audience that should know the topic more than the average person!

Youtube is only a small % of the overall video ecosystem. And it's the junk food (Twinkies, chips, candy bars), the fast food (McDonald's, Taco Bell), of the video industry. It's largely low-quality user-generated content, and was not even profitable until recent times. A single movie, from a single studio, can dwarf Youtube in terms of content success, quality, etc. In terms of financials, Youtube made $30B revenue in all of 2023. By contrast, Disney's The Marvels made "only" $47B revenue and was considered a flop, widely panned. Perspective matters. So this Youtuber is a tiny pimple on a gnat's ass.

I'm pragmatic when it comes to video. It is what it is. And it isn't what it isn't. This dude ain't it.

I was just giving an update but maybe I shouldn’t of revived this thread. IDK about the ADVC I haven’t tried it before. Anyways he put out a video talking about myths that digitalfaq spreads but he tells people that there is a TBC chip in his ADVC 110 and he thinks digitalfaq is spreading myths.

He had a video over the shuttle and he uses a 500 dollar Hi-8 camera with a TBC built in, which is the same camera he shot the videos he’s capturing with, to show that he can capture with the shuttle and he uses brand new VHS tapes that he freshly records from premier pro to the tape so that the shuttle functions for him to capture VHS. He does mention in the video that the only way he is able to capture with the shuttle is by doing all that but then he tells me hey you need to get a TBC in your VCR for that to work. He doesn’t say hey I don’t have a TBC in my VCR and I haven’t tried that. He just ignores frame TBCs and thinks of audio delay as strictly a card issue. He was a know it all. He would rather give advice on something that he hasn’t tried himself, hasn’t heard from a reputable source and doesn’t really know about then he would just say idk. I asked him about that later and he said his HI8 tapes got out of sync after about 30 minutes. For some reason he uses a DV codec with the shuttle in that video. Some of mine were in DV. I saw how the colors behaved too and I was thinking wtf. Premier crashed constantly and I had my three SSDs set up for different things. One was for scratch, one had my files and premier then one for my OS. When I tried to play my timeline back in Premier it would really struggle and with corrections it wouldn’t play back at all.

It really was my fault for following him and not looking into stuff. There’s a lot of misleading people on YouTube. Some people wind up here after they struggle or after there videos horrible. They don’t sugarcoat stuff here but I’m liking my results now. YouTube can be good for some things. It’s not good for VHS transfer strategies. There such a huge amount of misinformation on this topic. There’s a big lack of education. Marketing feeds on that lack of education. It’s tempting to go with that information because it looks easy. For me from first hand experience this is the easy way out of the two by far.

Showing my old videos that I made back then and my videos I am making now and saying this is the difference between the methods would be very misleading to some people because it doesn’t tell the whole story. That’s part of why he was misleading to me is because he showed a video of his cherry picked source and I didn’t know anything about timebase errors. The videos I got out of that method back then were a pain. If I just show the video if doesn’t show all the issues I had. I can warn people a lot better with telling my experience then I can with a video. All the little advice that you get over here really adds up to make things smoother. Now things are just push button and capture. Playback is smooth as ice. My CPU usage is in the singles teens and twentys. It’s nice. I’m listening to people that actually know what there talking about and correct each other so that I’m getting very good information.

And because it cannot be said enough, ADVC boxes do not have any frame time base correction whatsoever.

The ADVC-300 model has a very weak line TBC, that generally does nothing, or actually makes the video quality worse. It's based on a beta-quality Panasonic chip, with later mature iterations used in the ES recorders.

Furthermore "audio lock"* is Canopus marketing, and does not mean audio sync cannot be lost. ADVC boxes are not special, not magic, and can (and do) lose sync like any other capture card, when proper frame TBCs are not in use. And can (and do) lose dropped/inserted frames (which are silent, zero reporting capability).

* One must first understand there is not a single "DV", but rather multiple variations. Professional/non-consumer DV (DV50, DVCAM, etc) has an optional feature called "audio lock" which is essentially a digital genlock of sorts. Digital audio samples can waiver, and it was a problem for offline and online (NLE) editors in the 90s. Adam Wilt still has a long article about audio lock online. DV25 lacks any such features. Wilt was only covering DV in a strict vacuum, and some DV cameras of the time. DV was never made for digital ingest of sources like VHS, so that added another layer of complexity beyond what was even discussed there. So whatever Canopus did was likely a simple clock, PLL at most (I doubt it), zero true locking. Not that it mattered, as that "locking" had no effect on digitizing external analog sources. The term "audio lock" was clearly misunderstood by Canopus marketing, and it still gets parroted around by low-knowledge DV lovers in the 2020s from time to time. For the most part, the dumb myth of "Canopus ADVC doesn't lose sync" disappeared by the late 00s, when most newbies realized they were BS'd, and had to re-capture their tapes. By then Canopus was long gone, bought out and liquidated by Grass Valley for their non-consumer tech.

Another thing I don’t like about YouTube as far as capture methods is it is new people learning from new people. Here you can see how long people have been there and see if everyone is correcting there previous post and figure out who to listen to. Lordsmurf, latreche, Sanlyn, Dpalomaki, Lollo and some other should be listened to. New members like me and dramkolt really are still learning and shouldn’t be giving out advice to new people and if we do it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Just replying to say that I totally agree here. I remember following one of those YouTube videos that recommended an Elgato capture card, digitized my first few tapes with that and a crummy Panasonic PV-V4611 VCR. While it "worked" the results were pretty bad and compressed, I do remember horizontal wiggling occurring thanks to a line TBC not being in use.

After feeling like the quality I've was getting from that method wasn't good enough and didn't do those precious tapes any justice. I caved in and bought a workflow from Lordsmurf a few months ago. While it costed a lot of money and time, it has all been worth it in the end, being the perfect equipment for the job of digitizing VHS and Video8 tapes and being equipment that I know will allow me to capture them in the best possible quality they can be before going through with giving them light restoration work.

Most of us don't have ADVC boxes to make the comparaison he is looking for, He can feel free to check my youtube channel, but I'm not gonna go out of my way and buy an ADVC box to challenge him. I had used a similar device before, the Edirol VMC-1 for PAL VHS-C tapes, it is actually miles better than any Grass valley box, but the captures looked like shit, That was the reason I got into this hobby, to do a proper re-capture of all my family tapes.

To clarify my holdings, I have:

- Canopus ADVC-300
- Canopus ADVC-100
- Canopus / Grass Valley ADVC-110
- DataVideo DAC-100
- VMC-1

.... and many other capture cards. 100+ cards, easy. From all over the world, from the 90s to 2020s. So I can compare quite a bit.

I do comparisons for my own reasons, to my own timelines. I do advanced video things that people of this site (or any site) are not even aware of.

Sometimes I entertain request, time permitting. But generally not, as no extra time available.

What I don't do is make comparison videos because some nobody, on some site, demands I do so. They can piss off. Or pay for my time/services, which of course will never happen, because people of that ilk are just cheapskate windbags.

Yes, you are 100% correct, the VMC-1 is vastly better than the Canopus boxes, but it's still just DV for internal encoding.

Notes:
- not Mac compatible
- Macrovision respected (not ignored), image darkens to almost pure blackness

Yes, I'm aware you have some DV boxes, I was talking about the rest of us who most of don't have such devices.