Is the Canopus ADVC-300 the best for analog to DV conversion?

[Paulo Teixeira]

I may be tasked to convert Pal SVHS-C videos to NTSC DV and wondering if there is anything as good as the ADVC-300. I’ve been researching for the best converter and this unit always pops up but the prices are around 441 to 550 dollars and luckily B&H has it for 450. There are similar units for $200 to $250 but they don’t have the picture enhancements that this one has.

The ADVC-300 been out for a few years and I’m surprised Canopus never released a successor. Anybody know if they will? If not, then does it get firmware upgrades? Has anybody seen this thing priced cheaper from a reliable dealer?

[Bob Grant]

I have one and well I doubt you'll get anything better.
Boxes such as the SD Connect from Convergent Design have perhaps got better converters but it lacks the Time Base Corrector built into the ADVC 300 and it's way more expensive.
I've also used my trusty old Digital 8 camera for the same purpose and it's pretty much as good in many respects as the ADVC 300, still has a TBC and Dynamic Noise Reduction but lacks all the other image tweaks that aren't all that necessary anyway. So if you can pickup an older camera on eBay it might be a bit cheaper, just make certain you get one of the old models, a lot of the newer ones don't do A>D conversion.

Please bear in mind that the ADVC 300 can handle PAL and NTSC but not convert between them, you'll need to do that in your NLE.

[John Miller]

Since I have a Sony DSR-11 DV deck, I use it for analog conversion (PAL and NTSC).

Is it better than the Canopus? I don't know! But the results are excellent.

[Geoff Dills]

With a DSR 11 you won't get any time base correction....old tapes can be completely unwatchable. The 300 cleans it up beautifully. I have both, and even if I don't need the TBC function, the images are cleaned up by the 300 and look MUCH better than the DSR 11.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Bob Grant,
Getting a Pal camcorder is a very good idea and I was thinking about that but for this situation, I want to get a very good reproduction and since you say it’s the best then maybe I should get the ADVC-300. I already know about the conversion part and I’m glad NERO has that capability.

John F Miller,
Sorry, but 1700 dollars is a tiny bit out of my price range.

Geoff Dills,
You’re tempting me to get this even more.

Here is another product I was looking at:
http://www.jvc.co.uk/product.php?id=...=feature#table
It also has picture enhancements and because it’s discontinued, I could probably get a good price but I don’t think it could playback PAL tapes. You’d think for a professional product that it should.

I guess the best solution for me is the ADVC-300 after all.

[Dave Stern]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

Bob Grant,
Getting a Pal camcorder is a very good idea and I was thinking about that but for this situation, I want to get a very good reproduction and since you say it’s the best then maybe I should get the ADVC-300. I already know about the conversion part and I’m glad NERO has that capability.

John F Miller,
Sorry, but 1700 dollars is a tiny bit out of my price range.

Geoff Dills,
You’re tempting me to get this even more.

Here is another product I was looking at:
http://www.jvc.co.uk/product.php?id=...=feature#table
It also has picture enhancements and because it’s discontinued, I could probably get a good price but I don’t think it could playback PAL tapes. You’d think for a professional product that it should.

I guess the best solution for me is the ADVC-300 after all.

I have that same JVC deck (the us version HR-DVS3U and love it.. also the advc 100 (earlier version) .. together they are great... (also with an external TBC and also color corrector)..

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Dave Stern

I have that same JVC deck (the us version HR-DVS3U and love it.. also the advc 100 (earlier version) .. together they are great... (also with an external TBC and also color corrector)..

So does that mean the one I linked to is in fact a PAL unit? PAL only would be considered since it does convert PAL footage to DV but it’s a shame I wouldn’t be able to use it for other projects. Now if I can find one for under 450 and if its able to playback and record PAL and NTSC I would choose this over the ADVC-300 but realistically the ADVC-300 is still my best bet.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Anybody ever used this one as well?
http://www.canopus.com/products/Twin...winPact100.php

[Dave Stern]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

So does that mean the one I linked to is in fact a PAL unit? PAL only would be considered since it does convert PAL footage to DV but it’s a shame I wouldn’t be able to use it for other projects. Now if I can find one for under 450 and if its able to playback and record PAL and NTSC I would choose this over the ADVC-300 but realistically the ADVC-300 is still my best bet.

hmm..not sure... did you try to find the manual online? I know the manual that came with mine specifies NTSC, although the manual is the for the U model (which I thought was US), so it doesn't list all the models and their specs, but if you can find the manual online, that also means it would say...

would be worthwhile to confirm .. in my manual, under the DV deck, it days 'NTSC type colour signal, 525 lines, 60 fields'..odd to me b/c I didn't know that DV had a pal spec (I don't think it does), but since they wrote it that way, I'd recommend to definitely make sure it will convert pal to NTSC DV before spending the $$ (I wonder what the other manual says under DV specs)

[Paulo Teixeira]

Sorry that I misled you guys when I wrote my first post. What I’m really trying to do is covert PAL analog to PAL DV and then when I’m done editing, I will convert to NTSC DVD so basically if the HR-DVS3 was strictly a PAL unit, it would benefit this project but I think the price would be a little bit too high. I saw a used NTSC version on EBAY for 580 so if I were to ever find a PAL version it would be at least 750 dollars. The ADVC-300 is 450 dollars and even that’s a bit pricy.

Last night I found out that certain picture enhancements only works with NTSC signals.
http://www.canopus.com/products/videoconversion.php
“Image controls and filtering include video auto gain control, 3D Y/C separation (NTSC) and 3D noise reduction (NTSC). ADVC300 also provides controls for line time base correction, digital frame synchronization, edge adjustment, black expansion and white peak adjustment.”

I might still get the ADVC-300 but it’s a shame that not all picture enhancements can be used for PAL.

[Bob Grant]

The 3D Noise Reduction isn't that big a deal in my opinion as it can introduce ghosting. There's some pretty good dynamic noise reduction plugins available for most NLEs in any case.
Coming from SVHS the video should be reasonably clean.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Bob Grant

Coming from SVHS the video should be reasonably clean.

That is a very good point and since I am going to use an S video plug instead of composite on the camcorder, I don’t need to worry that much about 3D YC separation.

I don’t know if B&H read my post or not but I found out earlier today that the price of the ADVC300 have been lowered from 449 to 399. That’s about 70 dollars cheaper than Amazon. Anyway I couldn’t resist and finally took the plunge. I’m glad I got to do it before Passover.

If I were to ever win the lottery I would have gotten this as well so I don’t have to use the old camcorder.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...goryNavigation

Thanks everybody

[Curt Wrigley]

Although my focus is event and corp video, I get more and more call to convert misc old analog footage to DVD or DV. So, I thought I'd give the ADVC 300 a try.

Here is my mini review:

I found the manual for the box badly written(badly translated Japanese in many spots; ex: "When the S-Video input, Y/C separation of the [Filter} tab can not set". Aside from the bad translation there is little detail about most of the features. Still, I was able to poke around and divine how most of the settings work.

I tested on a variety of old vhs footage and found the box does a pretty good job. The 3d noise filters do cause ghosting so I found any footage with alot of motion was not a good candidate for the 3d filters.

For me the biggest benefit of the box is doing the color correction in real time as it is captured while cleaning some of the grain at the same time. This is faster for me than correcting it in PPRO. Also, it is better to attempt the clean up while the video is analog rather in post; there is more information available. I liked the AGC (auto gain corrector) for video and audio. As scenes change it does a decent job making adjustments. (Sometimes the changes are too abrupt, so it depends on the footage)

Note; My VCR has a TBC built in. So, it does a pretty good job on its own stabilizing footage before it even gets to the ADVC300. So, the results would be more dramatic if I was using a VCR without TBC.

For the curious, below are links to 5 videos I output to WMV showing the videos captured via a DV deck -vs the ADVC (using split screen)

My setup is as follows:

- Capturing without the ADVC300:
JVC HRS9911 SVHS VCR connected through a sony DSR-25 DV deck via Svideo. The sony DV deck simply provides analog passthru to DV. Of course the deck is connected to my NLE via 1394.

- Capturing with ADVC300:
JVC HRS9911 SVHS VCR connected to ADVC300 via Svideo. ADVC300 connected via 1394 to my NLE

Test 1: Old VHS Beach footage
http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/advc300/beach.wmv
This was using the default settings of the ADVC right out of the box.

Test 2a Home movie with 3d NR filters on strong
http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/advc300/home_movie1.wmv
This compares original to advc with the 3d NR filters on the strong setting. The 2D filters are off. Note; you will see some of the ghosting problem during the fast movement.

My WebpageTest 2b
http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/advc300/home_movie2.wmv
Same Home movie capture showing NR on AND off
Same footage as the previous clip. This time the left shows capture via ADVC300 with NO Noise filters on. Right side is with the same 3D NR filters on Strong.

Test 3 Wedding footage vhs dup in EP mode
http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/advc300/wedding.wmv
Here's everyone's favorite. A VHS wedding copied to another VHS in EP mode. No magic here, but the NR does improve the background quite a bit.

Test 4 Old super8 footage that was transfered to VHS several years ago
http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/advc300/super8.wmv

I encoded these to WMV ata fairly high rate so you can hopefully see the differences. I hope these help others who may be considering this box. It cant fix everything, and there are tradeoffs to the 3d NR, but my quick testing reveals the box does improve footage. And thats what I was after.

Conclusion: If you have a VCR without TBC or are just using a cam Passthr, you will see improvement in the video quality if you route though this box rather than a cam or non tbc vcr. If you do analog xfers alot, this box can really help.
If you have a VCR with TBC (or an external TBC) then the ADVC300 will provide minimal improvement, but nothing spectacular.

I hope this is helpful to anyone looking at this box.

Curt Wrigley

[Ervin Farkas]

These questions linger in many videographer's mind since we all have to do some sort of transfer one time or another. Personally I tried only the camera pass-trough method so far, and cleaned up the video in PPRO, but if I ever get a large amount of video to transfer, I will definitely lean toward the Canopus box.

[Dave Stern]

if you ever get a real lot of tapes to transfer, if they are not going to be edited (or even these days if they are), using a good quality dvd recorder, recording them to a rw disk, then ripping the disk to pull out the mpegs can be a lot quicker since all the encoding is done in hardware. depending on the recorder, this can even do a lot of cleanup with nice results (serious cleanup is best done via the avi file captured from the canopus, but for stuff that isn't that bad, it can be a lot quicker). maybe too far OT.