Basic Setting for ADVC 300

[brisney]

Hi,

My sister and I went together an bought an ADVC 300 so we could convert all of our old Hi-8 videos to DVDs.

Does anyone have a recomendation on the probable best settings for the 300 such that we get the best video capture? Things like Noise reduction and Black expansion, and AGC, etc.

Thanks.

brisney

[GrassValley_BH]

It'll really depend on the condition of your tapes... Play with the settings and see what you like best.

[THoff]

The Picture Controller application will be very helpful for this. If your camera supports S-Video, use that to connect the camera to the ADVC 300, start playing a tape, open Picture Controller and use the Preview window to see the video in realtime while you try the different filter options.

[kbosward]

Quite honestly, 99% of the time I have found the default settings the best! Particularly if you have good quality source tapes, which Hi-8 tapes should be. As THoff said, make sure you use S-video connection (you will still need the white and red plugs for audio connection) if your camera has an S-video output as that will give better video quality than using the composite (yellow plug) video connection.

Also note that your computer monitor probably won't show the video exactly as it will appear on TV. For example, you will most probably see a thin strip of video noise at the very bottom of the video in the preview window. This is normal for capture from analog tapes, but you won't see this when you burn the video to DVD and play it on your TV. You may also see thin horizontal lines (fringing) on vertical edges in fast moving scenes in the preview window. This is because the source video is "interlaced", while your computer monitor is "progressive". Those lines won't be there when you play the video on your TV. Finally, the video may appear a little dark on your computer monitor. If this is the case, you should adjust your computer's video "overlay" settings in display properties.

So what I am saying is, once you feel you have the best picture in the preview window, burn a small clip to DVD (rewriteable DVDs are great for this) and watch it on your TV as a final test.

Ken.

[brisney]

Awesome answers folks. I sure appreciate everything said. I did not know you could do a preview mode with Picture controller and I would have never known that it makes a difference if I us e S-video vs composite. I really like the idea of doing a test dvd burn, and also the advice to no panic if I see wierd stuff on the monitor.

Thanks again. If I have further questions after I ran the test I'll come back for sure.

brisney

[barney]

Originally Posted by brisney

Hi,

My sister and I went together an bought an ADVC 300 so we could convert all of our old Hi-8 videos to DVDs.

Does anyone have a recomendation on the probable best settings for the 300 such that we get the best video capture? Things like Noise reduction and Black expansion, and AGC, etc.

Thanks.

brisney

I'm currently archiving old vhs and s-vhs tapes, and started by using the Windows capture wizard included in Vista x64. Using that, I tended to increase the brightness a bit, or I lost a lot of detail in the blacks. I'm currently capturing with the trial version of Edius Neo 2, and I'd highly recommend you try that. I'm getting musch better results.

Edius Neo can give you a much larger preview window, which in itself gives you a much better idea of the effect your adjustments are having. And choosing the Canopus DV codec to be used in your project, I think the preview is more accurate since it's the same codec the ADVC300 encodes with. And the file saved then has a fourcc of cdvc rather than DVSD that the Windows capture wizard creates. It's also saved as type-2 rather than type-1 avi.

At any rate, Edius Neo requires less tweaking on my part. I hit "default", then turn off all noise reduction except weak 3d luminance. It had a good effect on reducing noise in tapes that I made with a video enhancer that I made a lot of tapes with years ago. It didn't seem to reduce detail or introduce artifacts at the weak setting. I leave that turned on for all captures, whether the tapes were made with that video enahancer or not.

I didn't see any benefit to the other noise reduction settings. 2d noise reduction seemed to be a simple blur. Higher settings on the 3d ones introduced artifacts like trails or blurring.

With the large preview window I now add a little sharpness without overdoing it. I chose a setting that works and leave it at that for all captures.

A lot of tapes made with the enhancer were never captured adequately because the whites were overdriven. The ADVC300 is the only thing I've found that can bring that back to normal. Previously I could only turn down contrast. Now I can leave contrast at default and control it with the white peak and white step adjustments. I turn it off for un-enhanced tapes and turn it back on for the enhanced ones. If you have anything with blown-out whites, it works wonders.

I've found no use for the black expansion on any of my tapes yet.

I do adjust the hue a bit. I've got a little shift to green somewhere, either in my tapes, the ADVC300, or my monitor. I found an adjustment to my liking and leave it there.

AGC, brightness, and contrast are at default with Edius Neo. I play around a lot with them using Windows capture.

There's a lot of things I don't like about Edius Neo 2, but I'll probably buy it just to capture with the ADVC300.

[GrassValley_BH]

...and if you're not in Japan (or digitizing Japanese sources), be sure to set the ADVC's IRE Setup Level to 7.5 to get the proper black level.