VidCap / Canopus ADVC 100 problems

jayb wrote on 7/14/2002, 2:24 PM
VV 3.0 works perfect, just got a Canopus ADVC 100 and
problems capturing VHS tape through Canopus ADVC 100 using VidCap 2.0h, VV3.0, no camera or anything else attached. "Capture Tape" is greyed out, and nothing in preview screen with VHS tape playing. When "Capture Video" is pressed, nothing happens. Press stop, and Capture Video and all controls become greyed out. I press Alt-Cntl: "No video was captured".
Can't close VidCap. I press Alt-Cntrl again: "Do you want to save changes to Default.sfvidcap?". "No" closes Vid Cap.

VV3: Options, Prefs, Video Device: OCHI Compliant
VidCap:
Options, Pref, General "Enable DV device control" is turned off.
Video: MS DVCamera and VCR

The above scenario is with Canpopus DIP Switch 6 (auto detect) on.
With the switch "off", I choose Analog on the converter, and can view the VHS in the preview box. Still, only Capture Video is available, Capture tape is still greyed out.

System:
Win 98SE, 512 MB Ram, ASUS CUSL2 Board, Intel P3 800/133,30Gb drive (Progs),
60Gb drive (files), 1394 Bus Controller, TI OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host controller

Compatability / conflict issues? Canopus problem? VidCap problem? Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Jay

Comments

HeeHee wrote on 7/14/2002, 5:15 PM
Jay,

The way I understand it, the Canopus ADVC-100, or any Analog to Digital converter, is not going to work the same as a Digital Camcorder. You will not be able to control the VCR thru VidCap as you can a Digital device. I would suggest just leaving Switch 6 off and switch from analog to digital manually when needed. I don't think you will be able to "Capture Tape" since this is a Digital Camera option. In essence you are capturing video that the ADVC has converted and is sending thru the firewire card. It's pretty much the same as if you had the VCR connected to an analog capture card, but without the digital conversion and locked audio/video sync.

Hope this helps.
jayb wrote on 7/14/2002, 6:27 PM
Thank you, one step forward . . .
Switch 6 turned off on the Canopus, and manually selected Analog. VidCap preview works, and I pressed "Capture Video", then "Stop" button. Capture Complete dialog does NOT appear until I hit Alt-Ctrl (although "show after every video capture session" is checked).
File was saved as an .avi file, but when attempted to play on the VV3 timeline: "An error occurred while starting playback. An unsupported media type was requested."
Details: "The playback device 1-2 of analog on 2408 does not support the current output format".
The MOTU 2408II works perfect on other project in VV3. In VidCap, all choices under the Audio menu are greyed out. I even tried capture without audio connected, with the same results.
Also, can't close VidCap with the upper right corner X, only Alt-Cntr-Del will close it.
? ? ?
thanks,
Jay
westside wrote on 7/14/2002, 6:49 PM
I am not sure what your problem is.....I have one too and it works great! I just have to switch between analog and digital when recording and playing back.....I have to have "analog" switched to import from the VCR and "digital" to play back to the VCR.....

best of luck
jeffk wrote on 7/15/2002, 4:04 AM
I use VV and the ADVC-100 every day with no issues at all. I'd probably look the drivers for your firewire card. At the end of the day, it's the drivers that do the talking to the ADVC-100.

Cheers
jeff K
Blackout wrote on 7/15/2002, 8:41 AM
Hi,

i have the same setup, with VV3c and the ADVC-100. I dont have problems capturing avis, however im confused about what codec is actually being used and whether i can change things.

Canopus say the ADVC-100 uses its own "award-winning" canopus codec, so im assuming this is doing the analog-digital conversion to DV which flows thru the firewire.

Then a software codec is also acting on the video flow as it is "captured" and goes to the hard drive in avi form.

How do i change the capture avi codec? whatever VV3c currently is using, its doing damage as the avis on my hard drive seem to "sparkle" and look "spidery"...i want to change it to something like the huffy codec which is lossless, it looks like the codec currently is the crappy windows video codec...

The only place i can see where i can select a codec type in VV3 is under the "render as" ...this is too late as the avi is already on the hard drive in a file.

Any help would be appreciated...

Regards,
Blackout

Chienworks wrote on 7/15/2002, 9:25 AM
Blackout, the Canopus unit is using a hardware encoder, and there's nothing you can do about it except to use a different capture device. Once it's done with it's encoding, it's just sending a DV bitstream through firewire into your computer and this bit stream isn't altered until you render.

If you want to use a different codec, you'll have to get some sort of analog capture card in your PC that allows software encoding.
Blackout wrote on 7/15/2002, 9:41 AM
Hi chien,

i dont want to change the hardware codec, i think you mis-understand my question.

In virtualDub for instance, when you capture via firewire or WHATEVER, you choose the avi codec you will use to make the avi file on your hard drive. You choose them from a list, including Huffy.

Where is this capture codec list for VV3?

with thanks,
Blackout.
HeeHee wrote on 7/15/2002, 9:50 AM
Blackout,

What Chienworks is saying is that there is no need for a software codec. The Canopus has a built in Hardware codec that converts the analog signal to lossless compressed video. The digital info is then sent to your system thru the firewire card when capturing with VidCap or any other capture utility. VidCap saves as a lossless compressed DV AVI file. No need to use another codec, this would be inefficient since the info is already compressed coming thru the firewire card. If you are having problems with quality, then maybe there is something wrong with your converter. My setup works just fine with the defaults.
Blackout wrote on 7/15/2002, 1:36 PM
Hi,

thanks for your responses, ok i think i get it now. Theres no extra compression going on then.

Ive studied my avi firewire captures a lot more closely and i think the problem im actually having (that i was orignally blaming on the avi codec) is that the original avi source signal has some very-VERY fine noise dots in it that you do not normally see when it is playing (you kinda see them start up moving only when you hit "pause"). However these apparently are large enough to trigger the VV3 mpeg2 convertor to "spider" all over the place and make the picture look pretty lo-fi, even tho its all Hi res and Hi DVD- bitrates and the source pic underneath is very sharp.

Im talking about a capture of The Simpsons here, actually. Where green trees look smooth in the avi, in the DVD mpeg2 they look quite spidery.

In short, when SF needs to do is put a NOISE FILTER in Vegas 3, like other quality editors eg Premiere.. OR ALTERNATIVLY put a NOISE FILTER in the Mainconcept mpeg2 coder, like other quality mpeg2 codec convertors such as CCE or TMPGEnc.

I recoded the avi in TMPG with only a slight amount of the noise filter, and the resulting mpeg2 was remarkably better than Mainconcept. So ill be using TMPGEnc now for my conversions, a pity as i think the Mainconcept mpeg2 is probably better and more vibrant.

Pls take note Sonic Foundry....

btw if you are interested in the sample avi i am talking about SoFo i can up it for you to one of your sites somewhere...



jayb wrote on 7/15/2002, 2:37 PM
About the original problems I was having at the beginning of this thread:
I was accessing VidCap from within VV3.0 (was this wrong?), thinking I was accessing VidCap 2.0h, which I had installed. When I loaded VidCap2.0h outside of VV3.0, it had a slightly differently interface (from the VidCap within VV3, and I was able to successfully capture some VHS video, bring it into VV3.0, and play it.
I still need to press "Alt" to get some of the message screens to appear, but at least it worked.
Maybe I need to download VV3.0c, which I'll try shortly.
Thanks for all the good comments.
HeeHee wrote on 7/15/2002, 4:09 PM
I go into VidCap right from within VV3c and do not have any problems using the ADVC-100.