$99.00 - (Free Shipping) - High-Quality Analog/Digital Video Conversion for The Mac (ADVCmini)

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Warcom

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  xuqi on 22/11/2012 - 15:09

  There is a very good reason, this product is no longer produced. It never lived up to claims of 'quality capture'. At least not with the supplied software.

  It may be ok for someone trying to covert some old VHS tapes to DVD, but lack of proper interlace handling in the supplied software, will cause you some headaches.

  Here is the link to the product release notes:
  http://www.grassvalley.com/docs/Release_Notes/professional/a…

  Things may have improved since I last used it, but given that its been a while since they made any money from sales, I wouldn't hold my breath.

  I still have one sitting somewhere at home, amongst other useless devices, I've bought over the years.

  Oh , and, "Editing guru's" would frown at the thought of using such a product.

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    Mixer on 22/11/2012 - 15:24

    Hmm that doesn't sound right to me. The notes you linked mention setting the interlaced to Upper Field First which would be right for PAL video, and its fairly normal for many software application to set that to be sure of a good quality result. Defaults are often BFF which results in jumpy looking video.

    If you're trying to take analog tapes to DVD you generally wouldn't want to deinterlace anyway, as the output will want to be interlaced.

    I did find this:
    http://forum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19237

    It looks like iMovie is pretty broken with regard to interlaced files or indeed only works with Progressive, so people are deinterlacing the file with a third party tool to use in iMovie. Not sure if any of this is relevant to what you did but it sounds similar.

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    Jabba the Hutt on 22/11/2012 - 15:25

    It may be ok for someone trying to covert some old VHS tapes to DVD

    Even for that, you want decent hardware with a time base corrector if a high quality transfer is what you're after.

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      Store Repwarcom @ Warcom on 22/11/2012 - 15:37

      Exactly right!

      For $99.00 it's a good starting point.

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    Store Repwarcom @ Warcom on 22/11/2012 - 15:36

    This product clearly isn't aimed at the type of video professional, who would be spending a hundred grand on this stuff.:)

    It's aimed at the av-video-philes who want to do stuff from their home on a boot strapped budget.

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  GregFiona on 22/11/2012 - 15:13

  +1

  good price though…

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    Store Repwarcom @ Warcom on 22/11/2012 - 15:36

    Thanks for the feedback GregFiona :)

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    xuqi on 22/11/2012 - 17:28

    You may as well buy this:
    http://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Video-Capture-Device-10020840/d…
    http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Video-Capt…

    Delivered to OZ for <$87. Current device, which supports PC & Apple.

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      Mixer on 22/11/2012 - 17:39

      The Elgato is really the same as this:
      http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/26428

      Old bargain but still shows the Elgato is generic, the generic devices often have terrible lip sync issues. Its basically $20 hardware with Mac tax on top.

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        xuqi on 22/11/2012 - 17:52

        The software is what makes the difference in the cheap units. The driver/software package/support is what you end up paying for. You're going to have a much harder time using the $20 device with OEM drivers (probably MS Windows drivers only).

        I would expect that the original RRP price of this unit included the ~50% Apple price premium.

        I use a PC, and have been quite happy using this (hardware encoder); http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-Colossus-Express-Internal-HD…

        My point was if you're going to spend ~$100, on such a device, at least buy a supported product, that you can also use on another platform.

        I tried this Apple product because I wanted to gift it to an Apple user (father-in-law), so that he can go capture all his old home movies, without bothering me. In the end I held on to it. If I could not make it work easily, it would just have meant providing support for it. :)