Hi Lordsmurf,

I read you criticism od the Canopus ADVC300 with interest. I used to capture uncompressed huffyuv witha a Matrox g400tv. I seem to remember the quality being near perfect. Do you think the old G400tv would be better than the DV capture of the ADVC300?

Best
Paul

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Canopus ADVC300 vs Matrox G400TV - DV vs HuffYUV
 

Yes, the HuffYUV lossless compression codec applies

• an approximate 2:1 compression (lossless)
• in 4:2:2 colorspace

as compared to DV's

• harsher 5:1 compression (lossy)
• in 4:1:1 (NTSC) or 4:2:0 (PAL)

The Matrox Marvel G400-TV card is an MJPEG hardware card, but I'll assume you've found a way around the hardware compression, bypassing it for lossless or uncompressed AVI capture. (Bypass is common on a lot of hardware encoders, such as Hauppauge or ATI MPEG encoders.)

No, the Canopus box is DV only, it can't be used to bypass fpr HuffYUV.

An MJPEG is like an I-frame only MPEG-2, and it can be argued that a high bitrate MJPEG or MPEG-2 is just as good or possibly better than DV compression. So either way, I'd suggest the Matrox card is better.

And we're talking a Matrox product here, too! That's top-of-the-line gear, without a doubt.

Thanks for the reply Lordsmurf. Yes I did use the uncompressed hack on the G400TV and must say it was quite good with huffy in Win98. I don't think any of that supports XP besides I don't have AGP anymore on my i7 motherboard.

You seem to be familiar with the Canopus ADVC300s DV shortcomings. I think I have been noticing the DV compression in VHS archiving where I need the best quality.

Could I expect better results using an ATI all in one with huffy?

I have to admit the convenience of the ADVC300 is quite nice especially the macrovision bypass. Since I use a AG1980s TBC I don't need an external TBC with this setup for pesky macrovision tapes.

When it comes to video, upgrading computers these days is often a big mistake. A lot of folks (such as yourself) are learning this the hard way.

Adding a new system is fine, but replacing a known-good capture box is getting really hard to duplicate. The best capture cards were made around 2005, and were built around AGP and PCI slots, with drivers that are only workable on Windows 98/2000/XP.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 mostly just work with PVR cards intended for recording TV shows, as opposed to any kind of pro or even semi-pro capture work. Did you trash the computer? Or is it in a closet now? I'd dust it back off, if available, and set it back up.

FYI: You don't need extra monitors, etc, to have more than one computer. Use a KVM to use a single monitor, mouse, keyboard and speakers setup on multiple computers. More at http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/show...trol-1615.html -- it's easy to have a desk of 4 computers set up, with everything fitting on or under the desk.

Better than the Matrox? No, it would be about the same, I'd think. However, some of these ATI All In Wonder (AIW) Radeon cards did outperform some older Matrox cards, back in the day. It's one reason the ATI cards were so popular, as it gave near-professional capturing results but at less than half the price (~$300-400 for ATI) of comparable $1K cards.

It's unreliable. The box does not always ignore or "bypass" the Macrovision/error signal. It will still fail on bad signals (including those with signals made artificially "bad" by copy protection schemes like Macrovision) a good portion of the time.

This actually isn't true. The full-field TBC inside the Panasonic AG-1980P does not necessarily correct the signal errors created by copy protection schemes, such as Macrovision.

Even those "copyright defeater" boxes they sell online don't work well more than about half the time. Again, very unreliable.

The only way to completely remove garbage from a signal, including both natural video errors and the fake Macrovision-made errors, is to use a full-frame external timebase corrector (TBC). This is explained fully at http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/show...8710-1853.html

It's about the same as DVD artifacts, though not quite as bad. There's also some color cooking for NTSC, although people disagree on this. I see it. It's noticeable on a Canopus box, but not so much on the Matrox cards.

Interesting. Since I don't want to go back 10 years I think a TBC-100 and a Matrox mx02 will replace the Canopus nicely. I really don't like the NR in the Canopus as my source decks have better.

The Matrox G400TV was revolutionary in it's day. Uncompressed huffy 0 drops perfect sync and great quality.

I must say though the ADVC300 never had any problem with any macrovision using the undocumented bypass. Shame Canopus didn't integrate DV50.

Yes, DV50 would have been a much better option for VHS conversions. Of course, it comes at a higher price. Then again, Canopus boxes are overpriced -- I imagine a DV50 box would have been very costly to keep them at what I would guess is a high profit margin per unit.

The Matrox MXO2 Mini is a nice little unit. I've not had the opportunity to test drive one, but the specs are appealing, and I've read about them quite a bit in Videographer, DV and Broadcast Engineering magazines.

I suggest B&H for the TBC ($330) and Amazon for the Matrox ($450), if you don't already have both items bought.

I did just now notice that on the B&H Matrox mini pages, there is some kind of "email me for a better price" icon, so maybe see what that's about. It's listed at $450 too, but maybe there is a better price? (I hate all that "add to cart" and "email for better price" stuff -- just show me the price!)

Enjoy the new setup! :)

I've moved the new 2013 conversation here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...archiving.html
It's related, yes, but a new/different topic.

Thanks. :2cents: