I am thinking of getting VideOh! DVD and want to know if any of you folks
have used it.

Your comments?

Thanks,
Phil

"Phil" <p.potter@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:P4rJb.4831$zH2.1011@newssvr27.news.prodigy.co m...
I have no experience with that model and its
chipset but have had a AVC-2000 for some time
now. It is working great at analog captures direct
to DVD compliant MPEG.

The thing you need to look out for is the capture
software. You want something that gives you the
most control over the capture settings. For the
AVC-2000 it is/was the Movie Mill ver260; for
the AVC-2010 it looks like the SageRecord is
it.

If this newer converter works as good as my older
one, you should have enjoyable in-sync video ready
to burn within minutes after capture.

There are other capture methods that can result in
a "better" compression (smaller files) and/or improved
video "quality"; but they are more costly in time, effort
and/or $$$.

Luck;
Ken

P.S. Check out its listing at www.dvdrhelp.com

I have used one owned by another member of the family to "mpeg" a finished
Digital project (saved back to camcorder) and can not see a difference in
quality over an overnight encoding via software when burnt to DVD.

This despite the fact that the output from the digital camcorder was via the
analogue socket and not digital (1394) (I would expect some degradation on
this route).



VHS movies taken straight from Tape via the unit and put on DVD with TmpgEnc
Author are to me indistinguishable from the original on a reasonable quality
TV.



I was very sceptical at first, having struggled to get quality software
encoding by the multiple process hours route.



Can only assume they are using the DVD (storage) Camera chips.



Definitely on my wanted list as a more than acceptable means of speeding up
the mpeg2 encoding.



Just trying to find an equivalent unit that takes (more importantly uses
directly) DV input as well as analogue.

Requests for clarification on whether the units (ADS for one) that have 1394
input (more expensive) use this natively or down convert to analogue first
(I suspect this) have not born fruit.





"Phil" <p.potter@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:P4rJb.4831$zH2.1011@newssvr27.news.prodigy.co m...

I have used one owned by another member of the family to "mpeg" a finished
Digital project (saved back to camcorder) and can not see a difference in
quality over an overnight encoding via software when burnt to DVD.

This despite the fact that the output from the digital camcorder was via the
analogue socket and not digital (1394) (I would expect some degradation on
this route).



VHS movies taken straight from Tape via the unit and put on DVD with TmpgEnc
Author are to me indistinguishable from the original on a reasonable quality
TV.



I was very sceptical at first, having struggled to get quality software
encoding by the multiple process hours route.



Can only assume they are using the DVD (storage) Camera chips.



Definitely on my wanted list as a more than acceptable means of speeding up
the mpeg2 encoding.



Just trying to find an equivalent unit that takes (more importantly uses
directly) DV input as well as analogue.

Requests for clarification on whether the units (ADS for one) that have 1394
input (more expensive) use this natively or down convert to analogue first
(I suspect this) have not born fruit.





"Phil" <p.potter@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:P4rJb.4831$zH2.1011@newssvr27.news.prodigy.co m...

On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 03:57:35 GMT, "Phil" <p.potter@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

I strongly recommend against this product.

I just picked this up last week and have been struggling with it ever
since. Keep in mind I'm new to this kind of thing, but I am seriously
considering taking it back. Here are some tidbits....

Probably the one and only positive point is that the captured video
looks pretty good. Now the negative points...

1. The software is called Sonic MyDVD and it quite frankly sucks.
Very sluggish, occasional crashing on close, hanging, cryptic error
messages, etc. Also have experienced it wiping out/not
saving/corrupting files which is quite frustrating after doing a 1
hour (or more capture). You have very little control over how the
video is formatted coming in.

2. The interface/driver is totally proprietary. You will be able to
capture video only through the abysmal software they provide with the
card. You should be able to capture video using various other
applications like Windows Movie Maker, VirtualDub or the countless
freeware/open source capturing software. I can do that with my $20
netcam but not with this device.

3. I'm getting audio out of synch problems after about 30 minutes of
capture. Even at the lower DVD quality. My system is no slouch -
Athlon XP 2500+ 512 MB RAM, 80 GB SATA HD USB 2.0. No reason this
should be happening AFAIK. The throughput required for this should
not be a problem for USB 2.0. I can find no flexibility in the
software to allow for audio to be run directly into the sound card.

4. Tech support is non-existant. I've tried to contact both Adaptec
and Sonic about my issues and it has been a week with no response.
I've not tried the phone but I don't think I'll bother wasting my
time. I read a comment on www.dvdrhelp.com where they were not
getting good tech support either. I found another post in a newsgroup
where someone was having similar issues with the drivers and software
and that was about a year ago so there's little hope that they'll
improve upon it.



---------------------------------------
What could possibly go wrong?

"Kevin Davis³" <zkevindavisz@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
newsfuhvvgvoj9dq32obd959d6g4d3umi7fj5@4ax.com...
If you have the one with the Conexant Chip, I have
heard that "SageRecord" (www.sage.tv) works great on
those. The MyDVD software is useless, and always has
been but I've found the old AVC-2000 PCI card to work
well with MovieMill. The postings on dvdrhelp are mostly
negative from those who only used the supplied software,
and/or never found a viable substitute. Those who did
find good software all seem to like it.

Luck;
Ken

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 01:00:33 -0600, "Ken Maltby"
<kmaltby@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

I picked up on the comments about MovieMill and that application did
not work with the USB unit. It sounds the software was designed to
work with the PCI version. I've not tried "SageRecord" but I would be
amazed if it worked. I have since returned the unit as it failed in
most expectations I had for it. As with most things, I did not give
up on this unit easily. I probably spent 8 hours/day for an entire
week trying to get the results I wanted. I researched websites,
downloaded tools, spent hours with TMPGEnc, etc, trying to get the
results I was looking for. I even demuxed the video and audio,
converted the audio to AC3 in attempts to get 2 hours or more on a
DVD. This would take a couple more hours of tedious processing after
capturing the 2 hours of video (in ½ hour increments to reduce the
audio synch problem) to get to that point and when it was done, I
could indeed fit more than 2 hours of decent looking video on the DVD
but the audio synch was worse than when I started. After wasting 4 or
5 DVDs I got smart and created ISO images of the DVDs and used
deamonTools to preview it before burning. This probably saved me 5 or
6 DVDs. I guess one could also use a DVD-RW and accomplish the same
thing. I think what one needs is capturing software which has audio
synch features or an audio lock feature.

That being said, I have seen several people rate it highly. I am a
little confused as to why. It does install very easily. I'll give it
that. The video can look pretty good. I'll give it that. But it
ends there. It may do ok for those who have different expectations.
The high ratings could be partially explained by it being reviewed by
people like this. For instance I was showing one of the DVDs I
created that had obvious audio synch problems to my wife and was
trying to explain the issue and she thought it was great and could see
no problem with it. I have purchased enough hardware to know better
than to expect much more than bare functionality from the bundled
software. Sonic's MyDVD has to be one of the worst I've seen.

I am now seriously considering buying an Avermedia DVD EzMaker USB (or
PCI). Because from what I read it will probably do better for my
expectations and is cheaper.

I don't feel my expectations are that huge and are as follows:

1. Get 2 hours of decent (not fantastic, just better than SVCD/VCD)
video on a 4.7 GB DVD without having to spend hours recompressing the
video (thus needlessly degrading it).

2. Minimal audio synch problems. I think part of the problem with
this is not so much the USB 2.0 interface but the "realtime" MPEG2
encoding being done during capture. Being able to change the format
(point 3) could solve this issue. This would most likely create the
need for additional post-processing of the captured video. However it
would still be much better than Videoh where I had to limit my capture
time to 30 minutes, then hope that MyDVD would actually save the files
properly, then have to combine them and then compress them again and
hope that it came out looking OK.

3. A fair degree of flexibility (either in provided software or
through free/cheap 3rd party tools) in setting capture parameters
(resolution, bitrate, codecs/format). This is similar to point 1. If
Adaptec provided such an interface to the capturing driver, I could
directly capture video in a format that would fit 2 hours of decent
quality video on a DVD. The Adaptec unit/software will only allow
video capture for MPEG2 in the following formats:

720x480 6K bitrate
720x480 5K bitrate
720x480 4K bitrate

and VCD MPEG1 at

352x240 1.1K bitrate

I need more configurability than that. And this doesn't match what
Adaptec's/Sonic's claims the unit will do on their websites.

4. Some resemblance of tech support. If points 1-3 are met, this
point is much less significant or even non-existant.

The stuff I've read about the AverMedia is somewhat mixed but seems
promising. I'm a little tentative (mostly due to the experience I had
with the Adaptec unit) but hopeful. I'm sure glad I didn't send the
rebate in for the Adaptec and get stuck with it because I had just
about come to the conclusion that it would have been a waste of $100
for me since I wouldn't be able to return it.


---------------------------------------
What could possibly go wrong?