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05-17-2012, 09:09 AM
matthewmalk248 matthewmalk248 is offline
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Noob amateur here, I'm starting to build my VHS to DVD setup for about 15 home movies currently on VHS which are really special to me and my sisters & dad.

Was looking for a Canopus ADVC-300, but ended up finding a Canopus DVStorm 2 Pro for $225, is it worth that price?

My current stuff

Player -> JVC HM-DH40000U
TBC -> DataVideo TBC-1000
Capture -> Looking! (Trying to decide between DV hardware capture or ATI 600 USB Tuner)

Thanks for any advice, I'll take it!
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Someday, 12:01 PM
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  #2  
05-17-2012, 12:30 PM
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I'm about 25 posts back in the queue right now, but I wanted to bump you ahead in the queue and quickly give some advice...

Why? Well, the Canopus DVStorm2 is a card I used to want quite a bit, but it was just priced too high ($1k+). Your question waxes nostalgic here. At $225, it's a deal based against the MSRP. However, it may be an excessive expense based on what you want to do. Remember that this is an NLE card, not just capture card. It not only captures, but it accelerates specific versions of specific video editors of that era. You'll likely be locked into those editors, at those versions, using Windows XP.

Now I prefer Windows XP for OS anyway, and most capture cards will require it. However, being locked into a specific version of an editor is craptastic -- especially the old pre-CS3 (pre-2007 era) type editors.

I don't recall off-hand, but I believe the DVStorm2 was both DV and MPEG capturing.

The ATI 600 may fulfill your requirements at less cost ($50-100 range). This one will work in Windows XP, Vista or Win7.
In fact, ATI All In Wonder Radeon AGP/PCI/PCIe cards may do it, too. Windows XP required.

So it comes down to this -- what do you want to do? Do you really want/need an NLE card, or just a quality capture card?

Also, are you PAL or NTSC?

I personally would not buy the DVStorm2 at this late date, but I also have capture cards coming out my ear. If I had nothing, there's a chance I'd be tempted, given that it costs about 20% of the original street price.

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  #3  
05-17-2012, 01:33 PM
NJRoadfan NJRoadfan is offline
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Don't bother. The equipment was made obsolete by the advent of multicore CPUs. You can do realtime encoding of HD content with most hardware these days. Heck that JVC can output a MPEG2 transport stream straight out of its firewire port. Stick with the ATI600, it does its job well and works with Windows 7 without problems.
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05-17-2012, 07:19 PM
matthewmalk248 matthewmalk248 is offline
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Thanks for the bump lordsmurf! I can respect the nostalgia. Whereas you have capture cards coming out of your ears, I have Windows XP Pro machines coming out of my ear, all P4 2.8 Ghz, 1GB RAM, and Plenty of empty PCI slots lol. I originally planned on just using a crap USB capture card, and my Sony 4-Head VHS VCR to transfer the movies. But after I had trouble with gradual loss of audio sync, and overall poor contrast, I started researching these forums , became slightly OCD, and ended up with my current set up. The more I research the more I dive deeper into the rabbit hole, after the JVC D-VHS, I talked myself into adding a stand alone TBC, then I found I should dump my crap USB card and get an ATI, but then I ran into Canopus ease of use and simple editing. But now I'm coming back to wanting to restore the picture of these close to my heart tapes. I don't really need an NLE card I guess. I'm NTSC by the way. I think I might just low ball the guy and see if I can snag that old storm for a bargain, if I hate it, maybe I can resell. It would be cool to get an oldie but goodie.

@NJRoadfan, I tried using the firewire out on the back of my 40000U, but nothing would recognize it on my Win7 x64 machine. It would show up as a Player in my device manager, and even Windows Movie Maker would try to capture from it, but it was just a black screen.
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  #5  
05-17-2012, 08:38 PM
NJRoadfan NJRoadfan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by matthewmalk248 View Post
@NJRoadfan, I tried using the firewire out on the back of my 40000U, but nothing would recognize it on my Win7 x64 machine. It would show up as a Player in my device manager, and even Windows Movie Maker would try to capture from it, but it was just a black screen.
VLC, HDVSplit, and CapDVHS all support it without a problem using the built in Windows 7 x64 drivers. P4 2.8Ghz with 1GB of RAM can capture video via HuffYUV in real time. If you have an AGP slot, get an ATI All-in-Wonder card.
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  #6  
05-18-2012, 05:00 PM
matthewmalk248 matthewmalk248 is offline
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Got her down to $80, it's really tempting haha
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  #7  
05-18-2012, 05:37 PM
NJRoadfan NJRoadfan is offline
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That card doesn't even seem to capture uncompressed footage. Looks like it captured to DV and then ran stuff through the MPEG-2 encoder.
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  #8  
05-18-2012, 08:52 PM
matthewmalk248 matthewmalk248 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJRoadfan View Post
That card doesn't even seem to capture uncompressed footage. Looks like it captured to DV and then ran stuff through the MPEG-2 encoder.
I was under the impression that it could do either MPEG2 Hardware compression or lossless???
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  #9  
05-18-2012, 10:46 PM
NJRoadfan NJRoadfan is offline
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Their documentation is confusing regarding capture, which isn't surprising. The card doesn't have modern DirectShow drivers. It has Video For Windows drivers, which are a pain to get working right even on XP, so expect crashing. The capture plug-in for Premiere seems highly buggy if you try and use it with anything newer then the (highly buggy and horrid) Premiere 6.5. Old versions of Premiere have the 2GB AVI file size limit too.
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  #10  
05-19-2012, 04:38 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJRoadfan View Post
That card doesn't even seem to capture uncompressed footage. Looks like it captured to DV and then ran stuff through the MPEG-2 encoder.
It's a DV based card.

I don't remember if it hardware captures to MPEG-2 (like the Canopus MPEG Pro EMR/MVR cards), or if uses software encoding after capturing (which is likely based on Canopus Procoder 1.x).

This card is about a decade old. While age can be unimportant, the key factor is software. You'd want to heavily verify the card comes with all software, drivers, etc -- and that includes Adobe Premiere. I'd insist on having all of the original discs and documentation, even for $80. Canopus doesn't exist anymore -- Grass Valley bought out Canopus in 2005, and then proceeded to dump a lot of their hardware and software, especially the consumer products. So you'll have to rely on random websites to find the drivers, etc., should it not be included.

Yes, this card works, but other cards may, too.

It's probably more useful for nostalgia than anything else, to be completely honest.

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  #11  
05-19-2012, 07:25 AM
matthewmalk248 matthewmalk248 is offline
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Thank you all for the help, I think I'm going to forgo the card altogether now. Even at 1/10th retail price, it seems like it would be more hassle than it's worth. Diamond ATI 600 USB here I come!
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