This is a moderated forum. Please refrain from personal attacks, troll baiting and
off-color language.
Posts for wanted "warez" or "cracks" will be deleted within 48 hours. Please look elsewhere.
Unsolicited posts advertising "warez" or "crack" sites and information will be deleted.
Keep your comments to a technical gendre. Be gentle .. we were all "newbies" once.
These suggestions reflect the wishes of the majority of this forum's users. FAQ / SEARCH
Does anyone have experience with this encoder yet? I've seen it listed for 449 retail. It connects to USB 1.1 or 2.0 and can encode at 15mb per sec MPEG2, and it also supports MPEG1.
I like the idea of USB2 encoding. I'd like to switch my operations over to a notebook. I hate sitting in front of a desk unit. Also Canopus has a good rep, and I'd like something very good indeed to take the place of my Dazzle DVCII.
Well since nobody has leaped in to respond, I will msyelf. I was researching and I saw a similar device for sale by ADS. The difference was that its half the price of the Canopus model: 199 instead of 499.
The specs are as identical as they can be. The only thing that looks different is the style of the breakout box.
Here is what I suspect: I think they're the same damn product, produced by some engineering firm and offered to ADS and Canopus separately as an OEM.
For those of you not familiar with the term: OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. It allows people who develop and make things to brand them with familiar brand names.
They've also come out at almost exactly the same time. ADS started delivery in May apparently, and Canopus in June.
ADS actually offers more spec information than Canopus does, so we won't know for sure until someone gets hold of one of their units and spills the beans on its chipset etc.
Meanwhile, I bought an ADS version at J&R for 175 bucks including shipping. It will arrive by slow mule train at the end of next week and I'll begin testing.
Apart from allowing me to "go-notebook" down the road, I also hope to get better MPEG1 than I get with Dazzle DVCII, which makes GREAT SVCD, and DVD, but rather disappointing vcd MPEG1.
I'm on a different computer, so I don't have any link. However you can do a search of ADS products for USB 2.0 encoder.
It is a hardware encoder that connects to your PC via USB 1.1 or 2.0. The encoding limit on 1.1 is about 4mbs, but you can encode MPEG2 at up to 15mbs on 2.0!
It has a Cirrous chipset...or something like that. I found it at J&R for 175 with shipping. It hasn't arrived yet.
I'm hoping...I think...that it is probably the same basic unit as Canopus', which is 500 bucks. The specs are identical, although Canopus doesn't identify the hardware inside. ADS gives pretty thorough specs.
I may call Canopus and ask them.
I'll also post feedback here on how the ADS performs, but I don't expect to get it until at least friday.
The ADS product uses the SAA-7115 from Philips Semiconductorfor video decoding and it uses the Cirrus Logic CS4955 which is a 10 bit DAC 2X over sampled for crisp clear video display on NTSC or PAL monitors.
I called Canopus and they didn't give me many details, such as what chip does what. They did say that they use a Panasonic chipset that is custom made for them.
The PDF document I downloaded from ADS says that they support USB 1.1 up to 5mbs, whereas Canopus says 6mbs.
In addition Canopus has an odd MPEG1 range of 1mbps to 1.8. I thought that a rather narrow range, but the sales guy...take that for what its worth...says thats it.
ADS specs say they'll encode mpeg1 all the way up to 15mbps!!! I've never seen that before.
I'd love to hear from anyone with insights into the above chips, or what panasonic/canopus does.
My ADS unit hasn't shipped yet, although I expect it to today and hopefully get by friday.
mark
As someone with a Little experience with USB Capture devices I would have to say that the 2 Devices that I tried Were total Crap, I tried a "Hauppague WinTV USB" and "Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe USB" and Both were Total Crap, I guess the Hauppague" Produced the Worst Quality but it was compatible with Most programs, were the Pinnacle as a Hardware mpeg encoder was Pretty Bad But better Quality than the Hauppague cuz it captures at a Much Higher Resolution but is Compatible with Nothing as far as software goes..I don"t think they have Quite Perfected the Transfer of Video through USB yet Cuz all I got with the Pinnacle unit was Sync Problems and Bad Blockyness in High Motion and that is even at Max Bitrate, I was going to get the ADS Instant DVD USB Unit Cuz it was cheaper than the Pinnacle Unit But the sales Guy said that the Pinnacle unit was Better so Hopefully he Doesn"t know what he is talking about as the Pinnacle unit was Total Crap..So when you get it I would be Interested in What results you get with it....Cheers
I'm taking a gamble on the ADS for sure, but its a new generation product, so it could be an improvement...we'll see. Certainly I'd expect the Canopus product...albeit at twice the price to produce quality.
Luisifer, I'd be interested to know if the USB units you have are hardware based or use the cpu like ATI?
The Pinnacle one I used was a Hardware Mpeg1/2 encoder useing USB 1.1 and 2.0, the Hauppague was Just a Plain USB Capture Device with no Hardware compression...The Quality I get with My ATI AIW 8500DV and WinDVR is twice as good as the Quality as I got with the Pinnacle Device..So Far I have allways Gotten Better Quality From Software encoders that I have with Hardware encoders, I have only owned 2 Hardware encoders But they were Fairly New Models,The Hardware encoders I have tried were the "Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe USB" and the "Hauppague Win TV PVR " But it was a PCI Device, They Both had Simular Quality with the Hauppague being a Little better but Both Less that I can do with My Present setup....Well Good Luck....Cheers
Hey Tim, I hadn't noticed that. If this baby gives quality similar to DVC2 its as much as I could ask for. Especially since it can encode up to 15mbps.
I'm expecting some killer re encodes off of that data rate.
I sure hope the ADS instant DVD 2 is better than their first ADS USB instant DVD, because this was utter crap. Nothing but syncproblems and lousy picturequality.
Nice find Neutron!
It looks identical to the SAA7114 chip, with a few nice enhancements. Hopefully the " audio clock generation " will default to "on" in the registry, unlike the DVCII which defaults to "off". If not, I guess you'll have to write your own "Reg3A" fix for this unit Mark.Makes we wonder if all those who've experienced synch problems with ADS's other units might not be able to fix them by looking for that particular registry entry........
I can tell you that the ADS and the Canopus USB products are not the same, not even close.
The ADS uses the Cirrus CS92288 encoder chip (pretty sure it does) and the Canopus uses a Panasonic encoder (they usually do). The CS92210 was a disaster! From what I've heard the new Canopus is basically like the MVR-1000 but with a newer noise reduction unit. Don't know what else they've added or removed since the MVR-1000 is more expensive. There's a user opinion about it on dvdrhelp.com, just an early preview last I checked...
You shouldn't even compare these two products, especially given ADS previous record I'd say that the Canopus will run circles around the ADS...
The SAA7114/7115 is just the digitizer/decoder and while important to some degree it has nothing to do with the mpeg encoding...
Okay, I'm convinced. They're not the same. So I got cold feet and cancelled my ADS. Now I'm going to buy the Canopus unit...today if they're in stock.
if the cirrous chip is so bad though, does DVCII use something different with its SAA? Cuz it makes AWESOME MPEG2. Its as good as the DVR product without all the hassle and synch issue.
I've got so many damn encoding units, and I simply can't afford to buy all of them!
I did not see much in the way of feedback on the USB 2.0 unit at the ADS site. Someone over at the DVDhelper site said that the earlier unit was good, and it was the 2.0 unit that was crap. Still another said all Dazzle products are crap and I know thats not true.
So I'm going to pay the piper and try Canopus. If it doesn't measure up by God, they'll have a return on their hands. I can't shell out 500 bucks for a clunker. OTOH, if it performs like Dazzle and encodes at a higher rate, then it IS worth the dough.
Just bought it. It doesn't ship until wednesday, and I'm supposed to receive Friday, so I'll do some quick testing and post here when I know something.
Since the unit costs 500 bucks, I asked about their return policy, which is 10 days. I've no intention of returning it if it works well, but at that price I can't afford to keep junk.
Fortunately I've a good feeling about Canopus at this point. The feedback from their products has been far above most others, and I've been very satisfied with Procoder...a product that cost me even more than this unit!
ADS seems to be a remarketing outfit, and although that doesn't necessarily make their products bad, it means they aren't concerned specifically about their cache' in the video arena.
I'm pretty excited about this unit. I fully expect it to make all of my digital video dreams come true...heh heh.
Hey Mark......The DVCII uses the C-Cube chip for encoding I believe.DVExplore I think. I had forgotten about that....heh,heh
Good like with the Canopus.
It only has two encode frame sizes for NTSC, 720,x480, and 352x240 for VCD. That's my understanding. No SVCD template. Of course it has the respective Pal sizes.
MPEG1 starts at 1mbps up to 1.8mbps. I found that a rather Narrow range for MPEG1, but if it produces clean product I'm cool with that.
MPEG2 encoding starts at 4mbps up to 15mbps. I found that an oddly high starting point, but I love it going up to 15...woohoo!
For me, I've largely abandonded SVCD in favor of low res DVD or VCD. The reason is that at low bit rate I can fit two movies on a cheap DVD-R, and for TV I can encode at high bitrate (with my DVC2) and reencode to VCD for cheap cheap storage. Also VCD is slightly more compatible, and is apparently so easy to implement that I foresee it having a longer life than SVCD...I could be wrong there.
At this rate it costs me about 75 cents a movie, and 20 cents to store a tv program. I can store a LOT of stuff with very little space, and for cheap.
If anyone is Into Software Mpeg capture Programs ,the New WinDVR 3.0 has a Mpeg capture Rate of 20,000kb per Second and it Produces awesome Quality, and it Now Captures Directly to AC3 audio, I have been getting as Good or better of Image Quality as I get Captureing to Uncompressed AVI which is wierd But it is Probably because WinDVR has new High Quality Noise Filters and De-interlaceing algorythyms...If anyone wants to Try it Just e-mail me and I"ll hook you up....Cheers and good Luck with the Canopus Unit as I think you should be Happy with it as Canopus has a Very good Reputation....
Going on a week with my new MPEGPRO EMR USB 2.0 unit from Canopus.
So far I am absolutely thrilled. This is what encoding should be like; you throw in the damn tape, hit the encode button and it just works.
The picture quality is great, but I already had that with DVCII, what really helps here is how audio synch on everything is perfect. I've tried my oldest and crappiest tapes, and it just synchs it.
The noise filter features while not very configurable do a great job too. The fact that its an external unit makes it so bloody handy, and of course makes my notebook a practical solution.
The MediaCruise software is BAREBONES to the max. I've been spoiled by tateu's work with Bugsy on the DVCII that allows timed captures, and even a VCR function. The best MediaCruise can do is set the duration of encodes.
Because the product is so easy to use I am finally finally nearing the end of my project to take all important VHS content and move to DVD or VCD.
Oh, thats another thing, because the synch is perfect I can encode at 15Mbps MPEG2, use Procoder to translate to MPEG1 VCD and WOW. I'll stack it up to anybody's SVCD. I'm also testing 2pass SVCD reencodes that'll let me put 90 minutes or more onto a CD. It looks promising if time consuming.
The little anti macrovision unit that I got takes care of the issue perfectly, so that's out of the way. I wish I'd had this baby two years ago, but then I wouldn't have appreciated it going thru all the other capture issues.
Mark,
I'd considering this unit but I have several 6 hr VHS grabs to make. What has been the longest continuous grab you've made? And are there any problems with, say, a 6 hr grab?
