Canopus have a good reputation for encoders. However coming off VHS I don't think you'll see any difference. More important will be getting the best possible signal off the VHS tape. Try for a good SVHS deck to give you SVideo out and a TBC and a dropout compensator would also help.

Avoid any of the consummer VHS tweaking boxes. You can do much the same job of screwing up the video in VV at no cost. (No sleight at VV intended).

You mention a "...TBC and dropout compensator..." in your reply. I am not familiar with these? Can you briefly describe what they are, point me toward makes/models and give me some idea of costs? Thank you.

TBC is a Time Base Corrector, they are used basically to keep you video quality as good as possible during transfers. You will find them alot in video duplication houses when they make numerous copies of tapes at a time. You basically run your video through the TBC and then into your camera or VCR or whatever you're recording to. There are a lot of cheap ones out there, but you do get what you pay for. To get a nice quality TBC you are looking at $1000-$4000

Video signals contain a lot of synchronizing pulses and a 3.58 Mhz color reference signal (call "burst") Each line of video in the NTSC system has a duration of 62.5 microsoconds and there is a synchronizing pulse at the beginning of each line to tell the electron gun in the TV when to paint that line. There is also a blanking pulse to tell the TV when to shut off the guns and go back up to the top of the picture to start displaying the next series of lines in the next field. As you can tell, the timing of all this stuff is critical.

An analog VCR tape transport has a lot of mechanical instabilities (the same as wow and flutter in an audio recorder) on both recording and playback. When you make an analog to analog copy, these instabilities don't just add, they multiply, and that's why VHS to VHS dubs look so bloody awful. The unstable signal of the playback VCR gets recorded to the recording VCR which adds its own mechanical instability and gets even more unstable when that recording is played back. A video signal is a delicate thing and it can get messed up pretty quickly.

A television merrily goes along with whatever it's fed, if the signal is unstable, the image displayed on the TV will be unstable, but usually watchable. A recording VCR is not nearly so forgiving.

A Time Base Corrector converts the video from the VCR to a digital signal, delays it a frame by storing it in memory and then sends it back out with all the synchronizing pulses and the color burst regenerated fresh and stable. This makes for a VASTLY better copy whether copying to another VCR or capturing it through an Analog to Digital converter to your hard drive. (Of course, your audio is now leading the video by one frame so, if you're as OCD as I am, you will want to delay the audio by one frame for each pass through the TBC.)

Some higher priced TBC's also contain a "proc amp" which will allow you adjust color hue, saturation, brightness and contrast. But strictly speaking, a TBC cleans up the sync pulses and color burst, a proc amp allows you to adjust the visual quality of the video, so they are basically two different things. All you really need is a TBC, you can do much more sophisticated color correction after the fact in Vegas. (However, basic color correcting during capture will save a lot of rending time later.)

Videoguys.com has some decent, low priced TBC's in the $300 and up range.

Data Video TBC at Videoguys.com

Some consumer JVC S-VHS machines have a built-in TBC with chroma noise reduction, they work well and can be had for under $300.

John

The ADVC will add a slight luminance value to the image. I did a review of most of the better cards/boxes out there, and while it had the 'best' image, it was also not totally true to the original image. I really like the ADVC. I like the ADS as well. One small advantage to the ADS, it will convert analog to MPEG or DV on the fly. Handy for some to be able to capture MPEG directly.