I'm going to transfer my 1/2-inch VHS tapes (most of which were originally shot using the VHS format, with a regular VHS camera) to the digital realm using the Canopus advc 300.

Capturing Question: Would using my SVHS VCR and S-video produce better quality than a standard VHS player using composite only? I will be using Vegas 6 to capture the footage.

I think the SVHS will better utilize what information is on the VHS tapes versus a VHS deck. SVHS decks normally have better heads and components than say an off the shelf VHS deck. However its all limited to how good the information on VHS tapes are. Source, age and tape stock all can impact how well the inofrmation on the tape has been recorded and stored. Hope this helps.