Will video card for Mac Pro improve results of ADVC-300?

[daiyi666]

I just purchased an ADVC-300 and am using it with a Mac Pro. I was somewhat disappointed with the results of digitizing a laser disk, which rendered poor quality versions of a black and white as well as color films. Although the default settings were used, the quality was clearly below acceptable levels.

Would using a pci video card work better than feeding in through the Canopus and Firewire? Which cards might work best? Or should I make some adjustments on the Canopus device itself? I have a dual-boot Mac Pro, so I can try it from the PC side with the Edius software as well. On the Mac side, I tried importing with iMovie, QuickTime, and BTV.

I'm very new to all this, but have gone through the forums quickly.

Thanks in advance.

[GrassValley_KH]

Are you sure you're not simply capturing Macrovision-protected content?

That will certainly cause image problems (with good reason - they're copy protected).

[daiyi666]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I'm assuming Macrovision would make the transfer nearly unwatchable, if not entirely impossible to view. But if not, I've heard that laser disks, which are what I'm working with now, were not able to implement Macrovision given certain properties of the medium.

I've heard great things about the Canopus products, so perhaps I need to make adjustments with settings on the device itself.

[GrassValley_KH]

What exactly is going wrong with the image?

Bright-dark-bright-dark-bright-etc? Or is it grainy/noisy?

Have you tried to author a sample DVD of your captured material to check it's not just the video overlay of the Mac software?

[daiyi666]

It's far too grainy given the resolution of the original. I also played the LD directly through the Canopus to the Mac Pro on a Samsung SyncMaster display without any Apple software. It looked nothing like a DVD or other digital video medium in terms of quality.

So I keep wondering if I'm missing something obvious here.

Thanks again.

[kbosward]

To confirm where the problem is:

• Try capturing into the ADVC from another analog source, such as a good quality video tape. This would tell you if there is something funny about the Laserdisk feeding into the ADVC.
• Get your hands on a DV camera, then try capturing directly to your MacBook with that. This would tell you if there is something funny about the MacBook side of things.
• As Kenneally said, author a small segment to a DVD and watch it on TV, to make sure there is nothing wrong with how the MacBook is displaying the video. Remember though that a high resolution computer display will magnify any graininess and other artifacts of standard definition NTSC/PAL video, particularly when viewed fullscreen, but on a TV it will look quite normal.

Ken.

[daiyi666]

Thanks for your reply and suggestions, Ken. I have tried the first two. The VHS was rather poor quality, but that could be the tape since I've used the Canopus ADVC 100 to transfer other VHS media with acceptable quality (so I'm assuming the 300 would work equally well, if not better).

I'm also using a JVC HR DVS3U to convert DV to DVD on this machine; that is working fine. So I don't think it's an issue with the Mac Pro (Dual Core 3 Ghz Intel Xeon w/4GB RAM).

As to your third point, I have watched DVDs on the Samsung display. DVDs and other media are all very clean. But I can try creating a sample clip to view on a TV.

Could my settings be less than optimal? Should I try using the PC partition to run Edius software? Or won't it matter since the actual PC is the same machine (Mac Pro).

Thanks again for your help and suggestions.