" I was just wondering how to find a cheap way to get excellent resulsts with analog coverters"

Cheap and excellent don't live on the same block. The canopus advc-100 is a great little box, has good quality and has composite and s-video inputs for video. You can get it for around 250 dollars. This is an "excellent" price for the quality of this product.

If you want to spend around 2 grand, get the promax or something else.

I have the canopus advc-100 and love it. I got it with educational discount for 199 bucks.

Thanks for your repply and for your advice beer'n'chips.....what a good idea...lollll :P By the way, if I can't find Canopus around here, I'll have to buy a Pinnacle Studio Deluxe and capture with Studio v-8, isn't it? (since Pinnacle is not compatible with Vegas - am I right?)

before you waste your money-try ATI video card with tuner.Capture 720x480. I am using for 2 years and I am happy.

rebel44:

I'm using ATI too; great cards. Been using their cards for the past 6 years. I have the 8500DV card in one machine and discovered recently that it's been discontinued by ATI. Any idea what has replaced it -- i.e., with both analog and digital I/O? Any idea where to get an 8500DV card now?

>>...since Pinnacle is not compatible with Vegas - am I right?

That is correct. It's not compatible with any other video eiting software either, except for Pinnacle.

Pinnacle is proprietary hardware.

It, Pinnacle HW, does, however, work well with Scenalyzer.

You can order the Canopus ADVC-100, plus there are some other new models from CDW (www.cdw.com). Fortunately, I live within driving distance of CDW.

It's worth the effort to get the ADVC-100, in my opinion.

I'd highly recommend the ADVC-300. The advantages of it kick in when you've got less than ideal analogue signals to deal with. If all you're ever goimg to have to handle is perfect analogue then the ADVC-100 would be adequate. But you have to remember that even if say a VHS tape looks fine on a TV it may not capture that well. TVs are more tolerant of jittery syncs and noise.
Once these defects get to the A/D converter things can get nasty. Preprocessing such as time base correction and digital noise reduction and 3D Y/C separation can make a very big difference to the results. If you plan on working from high end sources such as SP then you should consider getting the signal into the A/D unit via components signals. This will push the cost of the unit up quite a bit, you're then into the realm of the ADVC-500 and 1000 or the Miranda DV bridge. The latter also gives you the ability to go from SDI to DV, be prepared for a big hit to the hip pocket though.

Thanks again to everybody who took time to respond. Monday morning I'm going to go to a workshop at Pinnacle in my city. I'll try to discuss this topic there. We must talk later about that.

If you want to go cheap, try a TV card. ATI, Hauppage, and others make them for under $100US. The problem with these is you need a fast CPU and hard drives to handle the video stream, even when encoding to MPEG, which you probably don't want to do to maintain maximum quality. Also, it is harder to maintain audio/video sync because the two streams are not locked. The AVDC has the ability to lock the audio and video so you don't have to adjust that in post. BTW, this problem will not go away with Pinnacle, AFAIK.

By the way, I have used ATI products for many years, including the 8500DV and now the AIW 9700Pro. They have some proprietary capture modes that work pretty well, plus, with a fast system, you can capture using HUFYUV for maximum quality (not that other cards won't do this, too).

Thanks again ;) We'll talk a little bit more about this topic after the workshop at Pinnacle's.

I use the analog outputs (S-Video and L&R Audio) to my DV Deck and then use Vegas to capture via firewire from the deck. I have also used my DV camera instead of the deck to do the same. I see no difference.
VHS or Hi8 footage captured this way can be cleaned up in Vegas.

If I am unable to get really good results I recapture it using my Proc Amp in the path to fix it before capture. That works wonders, but it cost $400 which doesn't help with keeping cost down as you said in your original post.
But as I said, the way I described above does work fine and you probably already have the equipment for it.

Some people here use Virtual Dub on analog footage first. They say it does a nice job, although I haven't tried it myself yet. Click on johnmeyer's name and look back through his posts.

I can tell you that as a rule I would avoid Pinnacle products like the plague. I had one of their lanc controlled editors a few years ago which was awful and I can tell you that their tech support is virtually useless. Check their forum and read the myriad of complaints about their products. Then check Google Groups and read the same complaints about their products. However, when you get back from the workshop at Pinnacle do let us know how their coffee is.

John

Certain software solutions with TV cards will LOCK the audio to the video stream very well. You will need low latency drivers for your audio capture and this will tie up your line-in. In some cases only the later software supports this as typically this requires a WDM version of the video and audio capture software.

www.showshifter.com can create an uncompressed AVI (using a null codec or an RTV codec from NewTek) and the audio is locked. If you drop a frame the situation can be different. However this is more likely to be through having too many background tasks going on in addition to what M$ install with the OS. A PentiumII 400 with SDR-66 memory will capture uncompressed to a modern 160GB hard disc without the need for RAID. That would be enough for about 2hrs of footage. I use a PIV 2.0GHz which allows me a couple of tools in the toolbar without upsetting things.

The TV cards, with good cables, can serve well ONLY if you match them up with the right capture software. Unfortunately the analogue modes of VidCap4 from Sony are not able to cope with the vagaries of these cards (the preview-pin offered has to go into quarter-screen when the capture-pin is at full D1). Yet this is an ideal way to get 720x576/480 4:2:2 video straight off the camera or from a better than DV tape format.

This is a practical use of commodity electronics but doesn't satisfy everyones needs. Fortunately the next step up (be it converter, dedicated acq camera or deck based) is within a couple of hundred $ of each other as you jump up the range of options. In the plastic end of the spectrum anyway!

The pinnacle training will enlighten you! ;-))

I tried to install a studio deluxe card and studio 8 without success. Had to completely reinstall system to get it up and running again. Needless to say I am not a big studio fan.

I have the Canopus ADVC-50, it gives wonderful quality results, never a dropped frame OR synchronization problems, even in hour+ captures. You can find them for $135 w/ educational discount at academicsuperstore.com, or $150 otherwise. Doesn't do analog output like the ADVC-100, but if all you need is analog input, it is THE cheapest high-quality solution.

Canopus ACEDVio Card. Excellent! It comes with 2 banks of phonos: 3- AV -ins and 3 AV-outs ; 2 firewire: 4-pin and 6-pin . .easy .

Grazie

Does anyone know if Vegas can capture directly from the TV tuner on a Sony Vaio?

Thanks for all replies!

As John asked; ....."when you get back from the workshop at Pinnacle do let us know how their coffee is."
Let me say something first: it's not the real Pinnacle, but a representant in my city. Now, let's see the answer:

Unfortunately, due to health problems I couldn't be there last tuesday morning (when they would discuss video capturing), but monday morning (workshop on DVD authoring), the coffe was COLD. They didn't say a word about Vegas. In fact, they said they've never heard about it before ;)
When I asked about Canopus converter, they seemed to got angry and simply changed the subject since the workshop on Video Capturing woud be on tuesday morning ;)
As a matter of fact, their software (Studio 8, as a DVD burning suite) seems to be more, let's say, flexible than DVD Architect (easier possibilities for making menus: editing music loops, for instance). Let's wait until I get better (maybe 2 weeks from now). Then, I'll be there for the workshop on Video Capturing.

Thanks for all replies!

As John asked; ....."when you get back from the workshop at Pinnacle do let us know how their coffee is."
Let me say something first: it's not the real Pinnacle, but a representant in my city. Now, let's see the answer:

Unfortunately, due to health problems I couldn't be there last tuesday morning (when they would discuss video capturing), but monday morning (workshop on DVD authoring), the coffe was COLD. They didn't say a word about Vegas. In fact, they said they've never heard about it before ;)
When I asked about Canopus converter, they seemed to got angry and simply changed the subject since the workshop on Video Capturing woud be on tuesday morning ;)
As a matter of fact, their software (Studio 8, as a DVD burning suite) seems to be more, let's say, flexible than DVD Architect (easier possibilities for making menus: editing music loops, for instance). Let's wait until I get better (maybe 2 weeks from now). Then, I'll be there for the workshop on Video Capturing.

Yep!!! Canopus ACEDVio comes bundled with Vegas 4