Have new ADVC100 - what software do I need?

Just purchased an ADVC100, installed a new Firewire OHCI card in my Dell 8100 running XP Home, along with a Plextor DVD burner (708A). I want to copy my VHS home video collection to my PC (also installed a new 120 GB drive just for this). Once they are on my PC, I will edit them before burning the results to DVD. For now, I just want to get the VHS stuff onto my PC. What software do I need just to get the VHS video to my hard drive? Will Microsoft Moviemaker 2.0 suffice?

I will be copying the VHS tapes from an RCA analog camcorder hooked to the ADVC100 box.

Second question - the Plextor came with Roxio 6.0 and Photosuite 5 SE. Any recoomendations for inexpensive ($100 or less) but decent editing software?

I'm sure these question has been asked before and as a newbie to converting and editing video I implore your pateince and very much appreciate your help. Many thanks.

 

What would be best is if you get a Capture/Editing Program that will do the Capture and editing and export your edited Files as Mpeg2/DVD Files that you just need to Author to DVD with a DVD authoring Program like DVD-Lab....Something like Vegas Video 4 or Adobe Premier Pro would be perfect as they are Both Fully compatible with the Canopus ADVC-100...These Programs are Very expensive but
If you PM me I might be able to find you something that is Cheaper but will do a Simular Job...Cheers

 

Well the nice thing of the ADVC100, is, you don't need
any special drivers, so you can use any software to
capture, I use WinDV to capture, works fine, simple,
The part i need of this avi, i select in CCE Basic,
Encode in 2 pass VBR to mpv and wav or mpa files,
if you want AC3 audio, you can encode the wav in ac3
with the Besweet and AC3Machine combination.
encoding audio in MPEG changes the sound quality,
so better use AC3.
With DVDLab you have a lot of choices to author,
and have "pro" results, it takes some effort though,
TMPGEnc DVD Author works simple and easy, to start
with, and less choices, but give good looking results.

 

btw. a nice thing about authoring with TMPGEnc DVD Author is, you can edit-out several parts, like commercials, through setting in and out editing points, this works very easy, with DVDLab you can too,
but, it's harder to do, confusing also, and i gave up on this method, because it's so easy with TMPGEnc DVD Author.
I guess for editing video, Pinnacle's Studio 8 comes in mind, it has a easy GUI, but is slightly above your budget, but others are too expensive, or not that friendly in use, or have too few features.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small]Bedankt, Thanks,

Fugitive.[/small]

 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I am still looking, thinking and investigating.

Joe

 

@ Joep42,

What kind of editing you want to do ? DVDLab has some
nice features, you only have to encode the resulting
avi's that DVDLab makes, and use them as "assets".
I have enough, using CCE Basic and DVDLab...
this way.

 

Is there any other device a bit cheaper than the advc 100 to convert vhs to dv?

 

Hi Fugitive, not sure how deep into the editing I want to go other than basic stuff like making chapters and titles, deleting a few scenes, some basic fade in's, etc. So much I have to learn yet.

I can report the ADVC100 worked right out of the box, the only setting I made was dip 5 to analog, plugged in my camcorder in VCR mode and I was in business. I downloaded MS Moviemaker II (MMII) and it recognized everything and I was capturing my VHS tape to my hard drive. Was that easy!

I also will try WinDV, DVDLab, & Scenalyzer as a comparison this weekend.

Question, I didn't care for the results (as viewed on my PC) when MMII captured the video as a WMV file, nor when I "saved as" my story board as AVI file - plus it took a long time. However, when I captured directly to an AVI file (DV-AVI mode), it was faster and the results were quite good. I have an older video card (NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400) so I'm not sure if the results I see on my monitor are being negatively impacted by my video card.

I noticed the captured test video was visibly darker than the original. I assuming when I get to the editing phase I can increase the brightness. I didn't like the way MMII handled it.

Like I said, I have a lot to learn and thank goodness for this site and the wonderful help from everyone here. I "troll" the forum from time to time just to pick up tips here and there. It was here I first learned of the ADVC100.

Didn't mean to ramble but plugging in the ADVC100 and capturing my first video with no sweat or frustration made this old geek's day!

I'm sure I will have more questions soon. Thanks everyone.

JoeP

 

Hi ,Don"t use MMII(Movie Maker 2) and save your files in WMV format, If you can capture in DV AVI and leave it in that Format then that would be best, A good Video editing Program that has a Good Quality Mpeg2 encoder built in would be best, Something Like Vegas Video 4 or 5, With it you can capture from the ADVC-100 to DV AVI and then add effects and adjust the Color and Brightness and edit the file the way you want and finally output your Project as a Mpeg2 DVD Compliant File and then render a project again but as as a Dolby AC3 audio file and then author the files to DVD with your DVD authoring program....
The less often your files have to be rendered and/or edited the better the final Quality will be so doing it this way you only render the Video Once so there is the least ammount of Video degridation....Cheers

 

Use WinDV to do the DV to AVI "conversion"
Most people, me to, call this process "capture",
but i was told it isn't, but that's not important..

Important is, to use a good "encoder" to encode to
MPEG2, you should set WinDV to capture DV AVI type 2,
Editing you can do with Studio 8 (it also encodes)
it is less expensive (a bit though) you can do titels
and disolves/fades with it, but if you are just
starting i should focus onto the whole process >
capture > encode > author > burn.
Later you might want to use AviSynth for some effects,
Because you can use this in combination with
CCE Basic, which is a very good, and affordable
encoder.

 

Q: jazzyg:
>Is there any other device a bit cheaper than the >advc 100 to convert vhs to dv?

A:
How much trouble you want to go through ?



_X_X_X_X_X_[small]Bedankt, Thanks,

Fugitive.[/small]

 

There are a Couple Variants to the ADVC-100 that are Cheaper...
Like the ADVC-50 or ADVC-55 which I believe sell for about $175 or the one I will eventually get is the Canopus ACEDVio which does the same thing as the ADVC-100 but it is an Internal PCI card and I have seen them for at low at $169 on e-bay....

These ones will produce the same Quality but just have fewer features than the ADVC-100 accept maybe for the ACEDVio which has a few differant features.....

Cheers

 

Hi everyone, I have tried a few standalone programs to capture my VHS videos (using my great ADVC100 box) including: MovieMaker 2, Scenalyzer, WinDV, TMPGEnc-Plus 2.5 - all with a varying degree of success. Capturing seems to be the easy part, where the fun begins and what starts to tell these products apart is the editing, converting to MPEG and writing the final product to DVD's - which I haven't even got to yet! All of these products require additional and separate software to edit, convert and/or write to a DVD. (sorry if I am not using the correct terms - I still haven't got the lingo down yet).

Now I'm thinking of a "one solution" package to simplify things and asking you folks if you have any experience or thoughts in this area.

Specifically, the all in one packages I have investigated are: Power Producer or Power Director (both from Cyberlink), Ulead Video Studio 8 and Pinnacle Studio 9. All were top rated in the Top Ten Review Site (http://www.video-editing-software-review.com/). Cyberlink and Ulead allow trail downloads which is a big plus but Pinnacle does not.

Any suggestions on the one solution packages (or anything else) will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone.
Joe

 

Well, if you want a all in one package, go for Pinnacle's Studio 9 i've good experiences with the Studio 8 version, i have heard some bad things
about the 9 version, they changed codec with this one,
which wasn't an improvement... but the GUI is easy to handle, the other prog's you mentioned i have no experience with.
I got started with Studio, because it was sold with the(lousy) hardware i bought then
Not too long ago, i bought the Gold edition, but was disapointed by it, and also soon after that, the 9 version came out...

 

@ joep42:

It's maybe the best way to start, with a all in one package, when you do some experience with it, you
see very fast results, you need that, to keep positive, later you can "brush up" some tasks, by taking control over it, by using stand-alone tools.

 

Hi again. I have tried several capture packages with my ADVC100 box and without exception the captured (VHS) video appears much darker on my PC monitor than it does on the camcorder LCD monitor or when the tape is played in a conventional VCR machine hooked to a TV. I have tried several VHS tapes and I have tried different screen resolutions and I have the color set "Highest (32 bit) on my video adapter. No help. I tried using the composite video-in and the S-Video-in (with the supplied jumper) on the ADVC100 box - no difference.

Other video files that I have downloaded or that are included with Windows or as sample files with the video software display at what I would say is an optimum level of brightness and contrast on my monitor.

I know that I can adjust the brightness & contrast (of my captured VHS video's) when I am in the editing phase, I just find it disturbing why they aren't being captured at the same brightness level as when they were recorded. Any suggestions or is this normal?

Again, I'm using an ADVC100 box, Firewire connection to my PC, RCA (full size) analog camcorder in VCR mode. All the DIP switches on the ADVC100 are off except #2 (NTSC Setup Level).

Capture software tried so far include: MovieMaker 2, Scenalyzer, WinDV, TMPGEnc-Plus 2.5, Power Producer and Ulead Video Studio V.8.

Many thanks.
Joe

 

On my ADVC100 all dip switches are off too,
exept the first one, but that's because i use PAL
here in the Netherlands, but when capturing a LaserDisc, that's NTSC, i also switch this one off,
and they're all off...
Are you sure, all inputs or outputs of video are
only "in single" use ? so, not used twice, two devices
on one and the same connection ? no bad connections ? or short-cirquit's ?

 

joep42: Are the VHS Tapes that you are trying to capture with the ADVC-100 Retail store Bought VHS Tapes??? Because one of the things that Macrovision Copy protection does is it makes the Image much darker than it should be so if the tapes you are trying to capture are Copy protected then this could be the Problem....
If not you can allways adjust the colour in your Captured File while editing as most good editors have filters for clearing up Dark or bright Video...Good Luck

 

All my VHS tapes were store bought blanks of various brands (RCA, Maxell, TDK, FUJI).

I just plugged my camcorder directly into my TV's front video jacks and again, the picture displayed at the brightness it was recorded at so that eliminated the camcorder as the culprit.

Maybe I should write a note to Canopus Tech Support. I hope there is nothing wrong with the ADVC100.

Joe

 

As I said in earlier posts, I have tried several different analog VHS capture programs with my ADVC100, both standalone and those included in all in one packages. I would say most produce about the same quality of capture to avi an file but some have more features and/or are easier to use.

I figured the real acid test would be taking the caputed images, burning them to a DVD unedited and see what they look liked when I played them back on my DVD-TV.

So now I'm at the step of converting these avi files to MPEG II. I want the highest quality possible. It seeems based on the particular software I use, my 2 minute avi samples are converting to MPEG at about 10 to 24 minutes each.

So for one hour video captured as an avi file, am I looking at 5 to 10 hours or worse when converting to MPEG? My PC is usually on 24/7 so I can let this stuff run in the background. BTW, I have a P4 1.5 Ghz, 256 Mb Ram.

Any suggestion on which software converts to MPEG the fastest? I would add another 256 Mb Ram but I got stuck with that expensive Dell Rambus stuff so I would rather put the $$ into better video software.

Many Thanks.
Joe