Hello freinds: I have been reading the afterdawn.com forums for about 4 months now and I finally decided to join and ask a few questions. This is a great site with tons of great information. I want to convert my old high school football games from VHS to DVD, along with my childrens birthdays and other special events that is on VHS. Plus I would like to get a little side business converting other people's VHS to DVD as well. VHS tapes such as weddings, birthdays, anniverary parties, highschool soccer games etc. I will NOT do any copy-righted material. *What would be a reasonable rate to charge?(In American dollars) *Should I get an external hard drive for editing purposes? (I have 150 Gig hard drive, 3G Mhz Pentium 4 CPU, 1 Gig DDR RAM) *What about editing software? I have been looking at Power Director and ULead Video Studios. Any other tips would be greatly appreciated. I have been looking at the Canopus ADVC 300 and it seems like a great capture device. Now, I have been doing a little research on other capture devices and I have noticed a few people saying that the Edirol VMC-1 is even better than the Canopus ADVC 300. I can purchase the Canopus ADVC 300 for about $400 American dollars. The Edirol VMC-1 sells for about $600 American dollars. That is a $200 difference. This going to be for my second business and I am thinking long term. As the old business saying goes, 'time is money.' I want the best device that will create the best picture in the least amount of time. What are your opinions? Thanks a million.
Hi, I had actually never heard of the "Edirol VMC-1" but I did a Little research on it and it seems Like Pretty much the Same Device as the ADVC-300 ,Meaning it has all of the Same Features of the ADVC-300 so telling you which one is better would be Very difficult Unless I had One of them to Try but it seems that you can Not go wrong with either of them..... As For Drive space it would probably be better to just put a second Big ATA/133 or SATA 150 Drive in your PC as External Drives aren"t nearly as fast as Drives connected Via IDE or SATA Cable, So unless you need to portability of an external Drive then i wouldn"t get one... As For what editing Software to use I guess that is Up to you but if you are planning to start a Small buisiness you Might want to get something More Versitile and Higher end that "Power director" or "Ulead Video studio" as they are Pretty Much consumer oriented programs and do not have any advanced editing Features or Effects.... I would Suggest that you get a More professinal Level Video editing program Like "Adobe Premier Pro" or "Sony Vegas Video 6/DVD Architect v3.0" or even "Ulead Media Studio Pro v8" can do Pretty Much anything you would want to do and it also has Built in DVD authoring Capibilities....These programs are More Complex than other Programs but they can also do so Much more than those other Basic editors.... As For How much you should Charge for your services I suggest you Look in the Phone Book and Find other Businesses that offer the Same service and ask them what there rates are and maybe even Try to arrange to Look at there setup to see what Software and Equipment they use..... Good Luck
Cool, thanks for the advice Minion. I am sure that I will have other questions to pose to the message forum once I get started. Regards MJ
I'm kinda in the same boat as MaddJack (30Dec05) in that I want to transfer old home VHS and Hi8 video to digital and also start a side biz to help pay for the gear. All the accronyms are a bit unnerving, but will soon figure them out. I have used Adobe Photoshop/PreEl and Nero Express 6 to create slideshows with audio tracks to DVD. It was cumbersome but the result was pretty cool. Will either (both) of these handle the desired results...equal-to-better-than original tape? I've noticed thru this and other forums that Canopus gets good mentions and am considering this to be the converter of choice. I am unclear of the differences in the 110 & 300 models. Is there a great deal of difference in the doubled price? Also, should I concern myself with Video cards and encoders and whatever else. Or should I just relax and let the converter do it job and later, with more knowledge, worry about add-ons. Drive space won't be an issue. Apologies for the lengthy start-up message. Cheers.....Brer
Hi, These Type of Capture devices should not be used with a program Like Nero as it defeats the Whole Purpose of haveing a professinal Quality capture device (Nero is NOT Good Quality video Software)... Premier Elements is quite a Bit better and the Canopus ADVC-110/300 will work with it but Like I said to MadJack if you are going to start a Business you should Get High End editing Software and take the Time to Learn how to use it.... The Differance between the ADVC-110 and the ADVC-300 is that the ADVC-300 has Hardware Noise Filters and Digital Line Filters which really Help Clean up the Quality of the Image especially from Old and/Or Damaged Sources...You can use the ADVC-110 and do the Noise Filtering after Capture with the Editing Software but this also Increases the time it takes to render your project and the filters wouldn"t be as good as the hardware noise Filters used by the ADVC-300..... Cheers
Thanks so much for your reply. I will look into upgraded editing software, but as I already have Premiere Elements, it's a good spot to learn the process. Have you any words of wisdom concerning the need for upgrading the video card, encoders, etc. at this time...the very begining. The video card is a 128mb PCI Express that came with a new (Christmas)Dell. Cheers.....Brer
You don"t need a very Good Video card to Capture and edit video so what you have is Plenty Good enough unless you need a better Card for Gameing or something.... As For encoders your Editing Software should have a Software Mpeg-2 encoder for converting the Captured files to Mpeg-2/DVD format ....
One final question...heh heh heh... Is it possible/practical to purchase the Canopus in the USA if your plans are to move abroad to a country with different power i.e. Australia. I've been told I can get a power supply transformer for my computer, but are other electronics applicable? Cheers.....Brer
Yes you can get a power adapter that will work with the Canopus Device so you can use it in Australia and the Device is NTSC and Pal Compatible so it will work with the Video system in Australia ... Cheers
Those noise filters on the Canopus 300... can you adjust them if they're filtering out too much? I have a lot of dimly lit footage of dancers in black costumes against black backdrops... if the pedestal drops too much (in the interests of glossier less noisy blacks), I'll lose too much crucial information (I'm an archival videographer). Can one fine tune or turn off the noise filters on the Canopus 300?
No, I don"t think you can adjust them or Turn them off but they do not affect the Color or Hue or Contrast or Gamma and Only Remove Noise so they will not affect the Image in any Negitive way.... If you go to there site they show examples of the types of Filtering it does and it is Non-Destructive..... Cheers
Hey guys, I just ordered the Canopus ADVC 300 from Ebay, January 25, so hopefully I will have it in a few days. Can't hardly wait. ;-) Now, what is the fastest and best secondary hard drive I can purchase? I want to keep the price reasonalable but I want to get a good quality hard drive. I have been looking at Seagate and Western Digital, both seem to be of very high quality. I have a Dell Dimension 4700 series(purchased in August 2005) and it appears to have the Intel 915G Express motherboard. A freind told me that I can 'over-buy' when it comes to hard-drives which can cause problems on my PC. Will an Seagate or Western Digital SATA-150 400 GB, 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache be too much for the Intel 915G chipset? Should I look at a hard drive that is a little slower? Thanks, MJ
I think Who ever told you that was Pulling your Chain as I have never heard of Haveing too much Drive Space causeing Problems.... There are poeple with Several Terabytes of Drive space in there Pc"s/Servers without Problems related to Drive Size.... You should have No Problems Running a 400gb SATA Drive or several of them if you wanted.... I don"t have that Much space but I have 200gb + 120gb with no Problems at all.... Cheers
after months of reviewing, reading forums and research I just receivewd my new canopus 300... i tried about 5 other software/hardware converters before i realized that if i truly wanted the BEST quality from vhs to analog signal conversion, this was the way to go... i have an ibm dual core computer running two 400 sata's as raid strip and another 400 sata for backup.. i have been playing around with ulead, roxio and sony high end software.. i have found that if you want REALLY high end use the sony vegas software.. but there is a HUGE learning curve on this software.. i found the ulead media studio works really well with the converter box.. anyway, to make a long story a little shorter.. save yourself the headache and go ahead and put the money down (if you can) on the canobus.. it is VERY well respected in all video forums..
