Canopus Mpeg Pro EMR or Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U - MP4 ???

What to do?

I'm about to embark on building a new computer. One of my main missions in the next few months will be to captuure about 25 Hi8 video tapes and burn them to DVD (recently got a new DV camera so want to preserve my tapes!).

A while back Minion recommended the Canopus Mpeg Pro EMR and that is still the device I intend to buy. Recently though I became aware of the Plextor ConvertX which has MP4 encoding onboard and is about one third of the price!

So, my questions now are these.

Why is MP4 going to be relevant to me?

Is the Plextor ConvertX going to produce comparable results to the Canopus device in MP2?

Thanks!

 

Unless you need the compression mpeg 4 offers you for various reasons then you may never need it. Only you can answer that. For now, mpeg 2 is king.

As for the Convertx, I've wondered the same thing vs. the Canopus.
I do know that the convertx encodes with a blending conversion and is progressive not interlaced. The engineers seem to have settled on the best compromise for what the WIS chip is capable of, however, I've been told of a driver revision (soon) to allow user changes to the encoding method. As of now, you cannot change the default blending method.

Those are the biggest drawbacks I see- cannot change encode method or select a progressive/interlced cap. The results are actually as good as the vhs sources, so for my present use it has done quite well.

If I had to guess, Because of cost and name, the Canopus should have a more flexible and adjustable control over mpeg output. It would be nice to compare captures before buying heh? But if after spending the money and the end result isn't any better than the lower priced cards..........that's the million dollar question isn't it?

 

Yeah, I read that somewhere on this forum. In fact, I read that blending is the default for MP4 and the "firmware" will only give the flexibility for MP2 encoding. The blending is "preferred" for stills and low speed video. Not necesarily good as a default for MP4 it would seem unless your source met the constraints.

 

Well the "Canopus Mpeg Pro EMR/MVR" (The MVR Version is an Internal PCI card) is in a Totally different Class than the ConvertX...

The ConvertX is aimed at the Consumer Market were the MpegPro is aimed at the High End Professinal Market so it will produce quality and Have features that far surpasses the ConvertX......