Advice on my proposed video capture setup? (MPEG vs DV?)
 

I have a large collection of VHS cassettes (pre-recorded and home recordings of various quality) and am looking to get as transparent a transfer to digital as I can (on a fairly limited budget :D).

Here is my proposed list of kit:

PANASONIC NV-FS200B
Canopus ADVC-55
Use freeware to capture (WinDV / Exsate)

Should this do the trick?

Many Thanks!

the VCR is good

i would stay away from that canopus device as it is DV only
go with a ATI capture setup

...any particular ATI card you would suggest?

PCI or PCI-E, my motherboard supports both.

the best ATI cards are AGP
but there are a couple that are PCI-E
it is best to use Windows XP for capture
it you have to use windows 7 then you can use an ATI600USB
but the older All-in-Wonder cards are best

i have a PC tower i built just for capturing
probably cost less than $150 to build and it is pretty damn good

it has an Asrock board that has AGP and uses Socket AM2 and DDR2 ram
so i have a 3.0ghz dual core AM2 and 4gb of DDR2 with an ATI AIW9200 and a Datavideo TBC-100 PCI TBC card.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I could always build a new box if needed.

Any specific card you could suggest? (AGP) I will be running on XP.

As the player has TBC built-in, would there be any benefit with having an additional TBC Card?

Many Thanks,

most of the All-in-wonder AGP card are good
avoid the higher 9000 series as some are susceptible to interference
i have 2 9000PRO cards and a 9200 card, but 7500 and 8500 are good too

a separate TBC is always a good idea as it serve a different function than the one built in tho VCR

read this thread:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...time-base.html

I'd recommend, instead of the ADVC-55 that you look for the ADVC-300.

even the 300 is still just a DV converter
you are using PAL (assuming with NV-FS200) so at least DV for that is 4:2:0
but for NTSC DV really sucks with 4:1:1


DV is made for shooting video with a camcorder not for capturing VHS

with the ATI setup you can capture uncompressed or straight to MPEG-2

I wouldn't even recommend a straight transfer to MPEG. And DV captures VHS just fine, considering that by analog standards VHS is already a compressed signal. Uncompressed for VHS is overkill.

you can capture DV, but you are sacrificing quality

direct MPEG-2 is better than DV for NTSC
and capturing lossless is way better for both NTSC and PAL

search this site and you will find numerous posts on the subject

I disagree with you on the MPEG because whether you go MPEG or DV for NTSC, you are losing 3/4 of your video signal, but DV manages to spread it out what you have left across both chroma channels instead of just one.

But also MPEG uses a lot more compression to give you a smaller file size. I would recommend going to DV and then to MPEG.

I'm doing the same thing right now. After 6 months, I'm starting to get a little normalcy in my life, and I decided to spend the next year or so doing my own tapes since I can't work yet. If I capture one tape per day, I may get rid of all my VHS tapes finally.

I'm using a JVC 9800 or AG-1980P (I have both), to a AVT-8710 TBC, to an Elite Video BVP4+ proc amp, to an ATI All In Wonder AGP 9200 card. I'm capping to 15MB/s MPEG-2, and then saving it to a 4TB Fantom hard drive. I'm not authoring DVDs for personal stuff anymore.

The only thing that's missing is an external TBC -- you must have one.
The TBC sticky has why. See http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...time-base.html

I would also skip the DV only card if capturing NTSC (4:1:1). It's not very good for that. For PAL, it's fine (4:2:0, the same as MPEG). Either get a card that can do Huffyuv (lossless compression) video, or go straight to MPEG-2. Either an ATI 600 USB or an ATI AIW card is ideal, assuming you have Windows XP, Vista, or 7.

Good advice, as usual. :congrats: (I may not reply much yet, but I read all of your posts.)

There's one PCI model, and about 2-3 PCI Express models.
You should use Windows XP. Vista works, but it's really hackish. Win7 does not work with ATI AIW cards.

This is the best advice. Build a dedicated computer -- it's "old" and cheap to do! -- and KVM it. Don't try to force a new computer to do a task that was best done 5-10 years ago.

Only the 9600 and 9700 have this issue. But so does the 8500DV card. It's random, because the issue is really with the computer in question most of the time. It's a power supply, motherboard interference issue.

Do not use the ADVC 300, both PAL and NTSC. The filters are terrible, and when turned off, it's the same as a ADVC-55 or 100/110 anyway. Plus it's ridiculously expensive. Most people think it's good because it has a high price tag, but it's not, A $20 card can do better capturing as Huffyuv. As volksjager says, search the site for this topic. There's lots of warnings and accompanying advanced tech reasons.

Quoted, because it's 100% correct. :congrats:

MPEG @ 15MB/s is easily as good as DV because the compression is better than DV. And unlike DV, it can be watched in numerous modern devices, like the WDTV or a Samsung Blu-ray player. (This is what I do now.) And when it comes to NTSC, the color is much better, being 4:2:0 and not 4:1:1.

The DV stuff is theoretical only. In practice, it loses color information and quality for conversion.

And as stated, MPEG is more than DVD (9.8MB/s or 10.08MB/s max). Blu-ray is 15MB/s. Broadcast can be anywhere from 10MB/s to 50MB/s. The a reason that DV lost to everything but home camcorders, while the rest of the video industry used MPEG-2, then MPEG-4.

If anything, DV is honestly obsolete, and it was always relegated to the back of the bus. I, for one, am glad to see it go. The tape was flimsy (Hi8 was better!) and the compression was mediocre. Not that it was replaced by better (cheapo MPEG-4 junk), but at least it's been a step in the right direction. Some of the low-end pro / semi-pro cameras left DV to go on to more advanced methods.

I'd only use DV if shooting on a budget. It's okay for that.

It was never really intended to be a conversion method. That was Canopus hare-brained idea, and others really didn't follow.

Remember that I've been around digital video for about 20 year now. ;)

Digital-8 "fixed" the tape problem, but didn't catch on.

DV still remains one of the few cases that budget level camcorders got a professional level intermediate codec for shooting. Its replacement, AVC-HD, still isn't considered "pro".

The existence of analog-to-DV boxes are due to one factor, Apple. Their single handed killing off of analog capture devices in OS X and including Firewire-DV drivers by default (paired with Final Cut Pro) led to the creation of the market. Canopus never really made a push to market to Windows users. Now that the DV workflow (popular in 2001-2007) is being replaced by HD formats, the boxes are disappearing.

just another reason for me to hate Apple :)

i irritates me to think of all the people who got poor quality transfers of irreplaceable video because of crappy companies like Apple and Canopus.

the EZcrap devices all over ebay irritate me as well
one ebay seller even includes them with the video8 decks he sells
everytime i see his auctions i roll my eyes.

MPEG may playback a decent picture, but I find MPEG-2 is the S-VHS of the digital world, it stores that information in a junky way.

And I never understood why, to use an analogy, people would rather store three-strip technicolor in a two-strip format, in terms of the 4:2:0, since you are having to have the computer then recreate from nothing the one channel, whereas with 4:1:1 you have at least a tiny amount of information for both channels. I would rather go 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 or 4:1:1.

Well, 4:1:1 would be three half-sized strips, in that analogy.
It was fine to natively shoot video, but conversion was seriously lacking. Hence the lack of popularity.
Uncompressed AVI, lossless AVI, and even MPEG was therefore better.

MPEG can use 4:2:2 also. It's a very wide video spec. The 4:2:0 is just DVD-Video and broadcast specs.

MPEG only uses 4:2:2 with High-Definition video. For Standard Def it's 4:2:0. Either way, MPEG was only meant as an end product, not as a capturing device, since you loose quality in multiple generations because, to work with it, it is constantly compressing/uncompressing/compressing. Plus 4:2:0 only works good with PAL/SECAM material, otherwise for NTSC you are sacrificing quality while giving the illusion of better quality video.

No, DV is the better encoder for analog video.

you are just plain wrong Tom
DV sucks.. period..thats all there is to it.
but if you want to keep on doing sub-par transfers than fine.

Lordsmurf and KPmedia are 2 of the foremost experts in this field

No it's MPEG that "sucks" for capture. I've been looking at various technical papers that I have and MPEG is always mentioned as being a good end product. But I'd just to point out that the two major MPEG formats Betacm SX and MPEG IMX never really caught on, even in the broadcast world (and SONY's MicroMV system crashed right from the get go on the consumer level). The only time that MPEG enters the equation is when it's sent out in its final form.

Quite frankly this seems to be the only place that pushes conversion by MPEG. I can understand importing video by MPEG if you are coming fromHDV or even Betacam SX. But for VHS it is the worst.

actually they tend to push lossless around here

reading books and papers does not make you an expert
i met plenty of ASE certified mechanics i wouldnt let work on my wheelbarrow

DV 4:1:1 is complete rubbish
ive had several mini-DV cams and decks and they are worthless as passthroughs/converters as well
the only people who push DV are the ones who spent a bunch of money on Canopus crap and have sour grapes that a used $20 ebay AIW card blows it away- most are MAC users too and MACs suck for video transfers as well.