[MacDV] Re: vhs conversion

[sb]

The DataVideo tec works on Macs, as do virtually all the converter boxes.
They just take an analog signal and convert it to dv via firewire which Macs
have had as a standard for about 7 years.

Many PC's still don't come with built in firewire.

I have used 4 different manufacturers converter boxes quite a bit. (Sony,
ADS, DataVideoTek, Canopus). All work well. I have heard the Miglia also
works well.

I have used some other boxes that I didn't like, Formac Studio being the
worst, in my experience, YMMV.

The audio doesn't go out of sync on any of them. (captures of an hour or
more) 

Unless the camera was set to 32khz/12 bit audio, or you are capturing across
a lot of timecode breaks.

Locked Audio is a feature of the DVCam spec. It locks the audio to each
frame. The normal dv spec allows the audio to drift within 1 sec (30 frames)
before relocking, but in really it only drifts a frame or two.
If it drifted a whole second, then the audio would just stop and restart at
the beginning of the next second. Which I've never heard happen.

Loss of audio sync on long captures is virtually always either 32khz audio
or many tc breaks, neither of which is addressed by Canopus' Locked Audio
"feature".

 regards,

 sb


On 5/26/05 12:44 PM, "Nick Scalise" <nickscalise at mac.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, May 26, 2005, at 11:52AM, Patty Winter <patty1 at sonic.net> wrote:
> 
>> Jamie already answered the question about disk space, so I'll just
>> put in another recommendation for the Canopus A/D converter. I have
>> an ADVC-100 as well, and it works great.
> 
> One more vote for the ADVC-100 from me.
> 
> Also, the ADVC-100 will defeat Macrovision'ed tapes too. I do not know if this
> functionality has survived through to the ADVC-110. Helped me transfer some
> movies to DVD that would not play on the living room vcr, happy kids now...
> 
> Thirdly, Canopus advertises Audio Sync Lock, said to keep audio in sync over
> longer captures. 
> 
> Q: Has anyone that is *not* using a Canopus unit ever experienced their audio
> going out of sync on longer analog captures? Just curious if Canopus actually
> has an advantage or not.
>