Pyro A/V Link Not a good look!

farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 03:23 Uhr
Believeing this box to be as good as the ADVC-100 if not slightly better I've bought one. To be quite honest it's bloody aweful.
It does nowhere near as good a job as my D8 camera that I bought it to give a holiday to.
I have the Pyro connected to my SVHS deck via S-Video and thence into VV.
Problem is it probably works fine with very clean video however slightest glitch on the analogue tape and forget it. Major macroblocking and/or lock onto last frame. Sometime as it recovers again macroblocking and hideous artifacts.
With the D8 camera hooked up to the VCR even the VCR default video ouptut and menus get passed through, the Pyro needs a few frames of clean video to even start to get its act together. When you are trying to restore old tapes every frame is vital, every bit of garbage should still go through. The A/V Link should be transparent and it isn't.

I guess I can still use it to drive my external monitor (I hope! it can cope with that simple task!)

Which does lead me to a question, under these conditions anyone care to recommend an A to D converter? How does the ADVC-100 stack up in real world situations. Can I buy something even better than than ADVC-100 and get more reiable capture? Accuracy of color rendition isn't much of an issue, wiith what I mostly have to deal with even having any color is a luxury!

Kommentare

Leviathan schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 03:46 Uhr
I have an ADVC-100, absolutely no problems...HIGHLY recommended. It purrs right along no matter how bad the video is...and the audio is always in perfect sync with the video. I don't know of any other converter box that does everything it does, as well as it does it, excellent little converter. However if you want component I/O or something like that then the ADVC-100 won't meet your needs, but if you just need high quality analog-DV and DV-analog conversion for composite and s-video then go for an ADVC-100.

Sincerely, Leviathan
JohnnyRoy schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 03:57 Uhr
Which Pyro A/V Link did you get? There is an API-550 (~$160) and an API-500 (~$270). I’m just curious because Spot said the Pyro A/V Link is as good as the Canopus ADVC-100 and I assume he means the API-500 model which is in the same price range as the Canopus.

~jr
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 04:03 Uhr
Leviathan,
thanks for the input. I was going to buy the ADVC-100 but saw the Pyro at USD 149 so by the time I imported it was half the local price of the ADVC-100.
I based my decision on SPOTS review of the Pyro elsewhere where he claimed its color rendition to be as good if not better than the ADVC-100.

Having component input as well seemed mildly attractive. All I can say is BIG mistake. Next week I'll be buying the ADVC-100, I guess the Pyro can either go onto eBay or else keep it for those times I need component in, usually those sources are pretty clean. I guess that was the mistake SPOT made in his review, he was looking at a feed from a SP machine, sheesh if it cannot lock onto that!
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 04:05 Uhr
I have the API-550, only paid USD 149, mostly based on SPOTs recommendation. By all accounts its color rendition may well be as good as the ADVC-100 but that's about all it's good at!

Actually I cannot see the API-500 on their web site! Maybe that's an older model.
JohnnyRoy schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 04:11 Uhr
I believe Spot was using the API-500 (at least that’s what’s pictured in his review). Since it’s $100 more than the API-550 I would hope it does a better job. What’s unfortunate is the ADS gives these two the same name. (i.e., Pyro AV Link)

~jr
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 04:21 Uhr
John,
I'm confused. Sure looks the same from the picture as the unit I've got!

Component in and the whole bit the same as SPOT descibes in the reiew on which I partially based my decision to buy. I can findno mention of the 500 on the ADS web site.
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 04:39 Uhr
Update:

I just read deeper into the forum at Creative Cow for this beast.
The ADS guy is suggesting for recording off VHS you need a VCR with a TBC! Holly S... Batman. He suggests the the JVC deck, well the only one I can get ove here is the one with a MiniDV deck in it at around $2,500, I can buy TWO D8 camcorders for that which it seems have A/D passthrough WITH TBC.

All I can say is last time I'll buy anything from ADS. Their website specifically says 'Hassle free' transfers from VHS or Hi8, ha! Some poor guy over there spent two days pulling his PC apart trying to work out why he was dropping frames out of this thing before he realised there was nothing wrong with the PC or his NLE.

ADS response is to say VHS is not a perfect medium to capture from, well duh. What the hell else source do they think Joe Average is going to try capturing from, SP? Oh but don't worry they say, captures fine off air, isn't that encouraging people to break th law in most countries.

The only thing worse than this box I've seen is the Dazzle, it just never recovered when it lost the plot, at least it's no longer being made.


Spot|DSE schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 07:24 Uhr
I was using the API 500, the 550 was not available at that time. It's actually a newer unit, and has the 701 chip in it. It's since been changed out from what I'm told.
I don't feel the ADS is *better* but it IS more accurate, just as the stills bear out. It also converts to MPEG on the fly, and encodes to MPEG better than most software encoders. Of course, hardware is nearly always a better encode.
I'll be reviewing their newest converter sometime soon, expecting it any day now. I have several converters, I still personally use the Canopus or my DV2000 for most convert work, but... the ADS is indeed more accurate when set up correctly. Accurate isn't always better.
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 08:42 Uhr
SPOT,
for some obscure reason it seems to be working much better now, I'd say it now captures most of the time, before out of 60 secs of video I got 4 secs captured?

I think ADS are even more confused as to just what they are shipping. In the box is piece of paper that says to replace the dip switch diagram on pages 12-13 with it. Well, there isn't any dip switch diagram on those pags for openers!

So now that I've set it up according to the manual it seems much happier, I think I had it set to 32K audio - NTSC when I was feeding it PAL. Despite this it's still not as rock solid as the D8 camera.

I've had a look (again) at the ADVC-100 and the ADVC-1000 and cannot even determine if they have a built in TBC. It seems that short of buying a JVC SHVS deck with a TBC I might be better off just buying a second hand D8 camera, after all I don't even need a working transport! Problem with buying the good JVC VCR is JVC don't sell it here so looks like another import job from the UK this time.

Can I suggest if you are going to review these type of units, performance under sub optimal conditions is a good thing to be benchmarking. There's quite a demand for retrieving old VHS tapes and as I've now discovered actually getting the best processing possible makes a big difference.

kevgl schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 09:33 Uhr
Farss: I'm ordering an ADVC-100 PAL from Mark Harwood at Sigmacom in Sydney next week and can do some tests if you want?

Cheers
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 09:38 Uhr
Kev,
I'd sure appreciate some feedback on how it goes, particularly with bad VHS.
The Pyro although working better now is still nowhere near as good as the D8, even driving the preview monitor with it is pretty dodgy.

If you like email me at:

farssAToptusnetDOTcomDOTau


We can post our conclusions here.
kevgl schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 10:29 Uhr
No problems

I might go missing for a week, I've got a project for Australian Motorcycle Week where Telstra are providing us their OB van with a satellite broadband uplink. I'm shooting on a couple of VX2000s, editing Vegas with the Canopus for monitoring, etc so I don't tie up my TRV8 (that will have a lipstick camera fed into it attached to my helmet) and each night we package up a minutes news footage, convert it to Mpeg2 and uplink it back to Southern Cross TV for network distribution. This is going on for 10 days, so the gear should get a good workout :-)

Cheers
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 22:42 Uhr
That sounds like a fun shoot. I'll be interested to hear how the TRV8 holds up on the motocycle. We've hired out the 300 DV walkmans for that kind of thing but found the G forces kncok the guides out of alignment. A couple of times the effect was permanant. Machine would still play its tapes but they wouldn't play on anything else.
farss schrieb am 08.11.2003 um 23:27 Uhr
The guys at ADS will be looking at the problem. Me thinks they are not going to have any easy fix as the damn thing hasn't got a TBC. That's mandatory for any box doing analogue to digital conversion in my opinion.

Anyone know of a box that has one?

I cannot determine from the Canopus site if any of their products do either.
farss schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 00:45 Uhr
This thing really is a heap of junk!

I could not recommend it for anything. Even PTT which should be a no brainer is a disaster. At times having it connected casues VV to loose the plot during prerender and when I can get past that point it still looses it and inserts flashes of a green screen into the feed out to VCR.

Ah well, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

I don't really care about the cost of the thing it's just that I've lost a whole weekend where I could have been earning money.
Spot|DSE schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 01:03 Uhr
Farss, if you are getting color flashes, it's a wrong setting on a DIP switch. I had this issue too, and then fixed/found the problem in the switches. Blue, green, or grey flashes indicate a missed setting. Are you PAL or NTSC?
farss schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 01:28 Uhr
I'm very much in PAL land!

According to the documentation for PAL SW1 should be UP.

I'll try it around the other way.

Nope that just caused VV to get an error.

It's not just flashes, it starts to judder for a few frames and then just ouputs a continous green frame.

I had to do a complete rebuild on my system during the last few days and I don't have my D8 camera back until tomorrow so I'm going to wait until I have that back to confirm that I have VV and my system at 100% before I do a Zippy and hurl it out the window.

There is a couple of other very unlikely things I'll check out as well, I'll also try going from camera DV out to monitor and see how it performs. Still that's not going to let me do what I had hoped I could do with it, PTT onto NTSC VHS.


At least it came with a lot of useful cables!
kevgl schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 01:44 Uhr
Farss: I did tests on the TRV8 a couple of months ago, it went fine. The camera is sitting in my backpack hooked to the lipstick's CCU which is hooked to my helmet via cable out of backpack. This isn't race conditions, it's a touring event, (www.motorcycleweek.com.au) although I will be out on the racetrack on a couple of occasions but not at full race speed. The backpack buffers the camera pretty well I think. I've got a small LCD display mounted on the front of the tanks so I can see what I'm shooting (that turned out to be the biggest problem when we did the tests).

Should be good fun :-)

Be interesting to see how DV stands up, I usually shoot Betacam or DVCPro, never tried to do a broadcast project on DV before. The remote locations and delivery system deemed it the way to go though (not to mention a tighter than normal budget).

Hope you get your Pyro problems sorted...

Cheers
jcg schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 02:35 Uhr
I got my PYRO AV Link yesterday, making my new Sony monitor operational. Thanks to Vegas, everything was simple. Unfortunately, there are two problems. First, when I switch from external monitor back to internal, the last image remains on the Sony monitor FOREVER. I have to go back to external monitor setting, put the cursor somewhere on the timeline where there is a black frame, then switch back to the internal monitor (or try to remember to leave it on a black frame before switching to internal monitor). Otherwise, of course, the screen burns. Second problem is that, after a few minnutes of using the external monitor, the audio synch becomes asynchronous, progressively getting worse with time. I am dealing with that by stopping and starting periodically.

I have all 4 dip switches set to the correct position. I am disappointed in this converter. Anyone have a suggestion as to fixes? I cannot afford to dump this and buy the Canopus at this stage. Thanks for listening.

JCG
JohnnyRoy schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 04:48 Uhr
> I'm confused. Sure looks the same from the picture as the unit I've got!

If you look up Pyro AV at Amazon.com it shows the API-550 with both inputs and outputs on the front and the API-500 with inputs on the front and outputs on the back. So they look different in the picture.

~jr
farss schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 04:55 Uhr
jcg,
pretty much the same as my experince with the thing.
I'ev tried every switch combination just to get it work either driving the external monitor or for passthrough for PTT. As you can see from my previous posts this thing is simply not reliable.

I've sent some screenshots of what it does as a cpature device to the rep in England who will be passing them on to ADS. I don't hold out much hope for a fix on that issue as it doesn't have a TBC theer is no way it can reliably capture from analogue. I can live with that, I guess you gest what you pay for, I just wish they'd been a bit more specific about that point in their advertising.

But the problems using it for PTT are another matter. As i said this should be a no brainer, converting DV to analogue is much easier and still it screws even that up. What's happening with mine is during PTT it gets about 20 secs in and then just locks up, outputing only a green frame.

My last ditch effort involves its power supply, as I imported this unit from th US myself it came with a 110V power supply. The unit needs 5V and as luck would have it I had a spare 5V 10 Amp laptop power supply so I've pressed that into service. I left a very long lead on it so maybe the 5V isn't clean enough and the micro in the Pyro is resetting. I'm goign to try making the lead a lot shorter.

Soldering is heating up, stay posted...
Spot|DSE schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 05:47 Uhr
Farss, I'm starting to wonder if you have a defective unit.
JCG, even if you use a stock cam, or other device, the last frame edge shown will stay on the external monitor whether its the ADS, Canopus, or deck. It's part of the buffer in the device.
farss schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 05:55 Uhr
jcg,
making power supply lead shorter made no difference.
I've taken a sort clip, rendered it as broadcast legal with uStoft codec and striclty conform to AVI2 spec as well and then gone through every combination of the centre two dip switches. Best I can get is PTT only inserting a few seconds of green frames.

I can find nothing that explains why the thing is behaving this way. In its current state as you have found it is basically useless for anything.

SW1 clearly controls PAL/NTSC, switching it to NTSC causes PTT to fail with VV getting an error.
farss schrieb am 09.11.2003 um 06:23 Uhr
SPOT,
you could well be right. There is a number of possibilities:

1) I've imported this unit myself direct from the US, worked out at half the local price so I'm using my own plug pack. The one I'm using has double the current rating and is very well regulated so i doubt that's an issue.

2) I live about 1000 feet from a TV transmitter, this has caused the odd bit of electronics to get really screwed up around here. Still it's mostly digital devices so it should be pretty immune although the thing's only housed in a plastic box.

It does seem as though the unit must have a uProcessor in it and the code in it is getting lost, at times to get it working again I have to power it off and on again to give it a reset.

Other possibilities are that I've screwed something up in VV since I had to do a complete rebuild two days ago. This seems unlikely as I've never had these sort of problems with VV before, it always goes straight out of the box.

Anyway tomorrow I get my D8 camera back, I know VV will work with that so I'll test my install with that to make certain everything is OK with VV then switch back to the Pyro.

The fact that theer are different switch combinations on the back for different operating systems also puzzles me, I thought all these things were transparent. After all cameras and VCRs seem to work on any Wintel or Mac OS and application, what sort of shortcuts have they taken in the design of this box that needs this kind of tweaking.

BTW this is not the first time I've had dramas with this kind of unit, we had a Dazzle and it was absolutely useless.