MPEGPRO EMR is a high performance hardware based real-time MPEG encoder with advanced noise reduction and pre-filtering capabilities including 3D Y/C separation. MPEGPRO EMR is perfect for creating DVDs, VideoCDs and web-based MPEG content.Convert camcorder videos or the VHS library into professional quality DVD-Video. MPEGPRO creates DVD-compliant MP@ML MPEG-2 streams in real-time. Once encoded the files are ready for immediate DVD authoring. The included software Ulead DVD Workshop SE is capable of creating sophisticated DVDs, VCDs and SVCDs with features such as motion menus, special text effects and advanced interactivity. Once the authoring is complete, DVD Workshop SE can write directly to DVD-R/-RW/+R/+RW or CD-R/-RW drives for quick delivery to a client or video archive storage.MPEGPRO encodes analog video into high-quality digital MPEG-2 in real-time. MPEG video compression provides high image quality and reduced file sizes making it perfect for DVD, VCD and web video creation. MPEGPRO products features Variable Bit Rate (VBR) compression, which further reduces file sizes of encoded video while maintaining pristine quality.MPEGPRO products employ a pre-filtering technique that reduces the amount of noise in the video image so that only important picture and color information is processed at the MPEG encoding stage. This helps to improve the final MPEG video image quality and enhances the compression performance by removing the irregular video data that causes unwanted overhead during compression.

REVIEWS:
1) Spectacular Hardware, Unusable Software: I whole-heartedly agree with the other reviewer. The Canopus encoder board is fantastic. I bought it primarily for editing and archiving a large number of home movie tapes currently stored on VHS tapes spanning the last 20 years. The Time Base Correction (TBC) feature was the main selling point (to ensure audio sync with older tapes), and the 3D noise reduction a big bonus. The encoding is efficient at reasonable bitrates. I can tell you, the board does everything it claims. Audio is dead-solid synched and the picture was never so clear. For the price, the board is unmatched.

Unfortunately, the board comes with MediaCruise as the encoding software. The interface is decent if not a bit disorganized (you can specify a duration-based recording of say, 2 hours, 5 minutes on one menu, but the filename to save it to is on another menu) but fairly intuitive. It"s rough around the edges, needing to be re-started between each recording lest it hang up and need to be terminated via the Task Manager. Again, irritating, but not a deal-breaker. The REAL problem is the copyguard "feature".

Now if you want to tell me that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) forbids selling devices which may be used to bypass copy controls on protected products, fine. I"m not here to fight that battle. The problem is that copyguard is the most aggressive, inconsistent and poorly designed software "feature" I"ve ever encountered. If copyguard decides you are recording a "protected" stream, it immediately terminates the recording and DELETES the already-saved file. It notifies you of this with a "Copyguard is enabled. This stream cannot be saved." message. What it DOESN"T DO is:

1) Tell you at what time index the problem occured, so you can investigate why the recording failed (a real issue if you tried to record a 2 or 6 hour tape only to find that at some point MediaCruise decided not to let you). Am I expected to babysit a 6-hour recording to see if at 5 hours, 20 minutes it suddenly bails on a momentary video glitch? Especially if I checked it at 5 hours and it was still recording fine?

2) It doesn"t at least leave the already-recorded segment. If you want to terminate the recording, that"s one thing. BUT WHY DELETE VIDEO THAT WAS ALREADY DETERMINED TO BE UNPROTECTED? My understanding of Macrovison encoding is that it protects the entire duration of the video, not just a portion of it. That means the encoding should be "detected" over the entire duration of the protected product. If the board recorded it already, then the video already on the drive must be "unprotected" by definition. Why delete the entire file? This is especially relevant when you find a tape you can repeat the error with. One single gitch and the file is gone. Whatever criteria is used to determine "protection" is applied over a VERY SMALL duration of video. I"ve consistently had recording transitions that were no longer than an scene cut trip this feature. VERY POOR design.

So you put your tape in the VCR and HOPE that none of the following non-Macrovision-related events occur during your recording:

- End of recording transition from video to unused tape
- End of VCR tape when the VCR stops the tape and rewinds it
- The transition between where one recording on a video camera stops and the next time you used it starts
- Drop-out due to age/tape degradation, static, or other age-related issues
- Tracking issues
- The edit point where two VCRs were used to trim footage from a source tape
- Other mysterious problems I can"t even identify but which cause termination in an otherwise normal-appearing video stream.

Tech support has no answer to the software issues, only to state that signal drop-out causes the mistaken identity, and that running the source VCR through ANOTHER VCR and then into the board should "solve the problem" (it does NOT). They cannot explain why the error message is unhelpful or why they delete the already-recorded video. Whether they plan on releasing an improved version of this tool or not is unknown as they no longer respond to my emails.

The spectacular quality of the actual board is the ONLY thing that has prevented me from returning the product. I have tried digitizing more than 50 tapes to date and the results are hit-or-miss. I"ve had 20-year-old tapes record perfectly, and 2-day old tapes spit back at me. IF you can get your tape recorded, the results are fantastic. If the shoddy software decides it doesn"t like your tape, good luck. As a software programmer with 15 years of real-world experience, I would be EMBARRASSED to be associated with the software shipped with this board. I can only hope that Canopus finds a way to bring the software up to the quality of the hardware.

I cannot in good faith recommend this product to anyone who needs to move large volumes of tapes (like a small VHS->DVD conversion shop or mass-converting all your old home movies or similar) because you simply CANNOT trust that a recording will complete without being arbitrarily deleted and the extra time wasted babysitting a re-recording tapes is unpredictable.
2) I wish I had never bought this thing.: The product really does have potential, and being external it"s perfect if you need to take it with you or use it on different machines. But it"s tied to, and will only function with, Canopus"s MediaCruise software, which is unfortunately, a steaming heap of crap. I could possibly live with the Mediacruise software I suppose, except for one major and obvious problem, it thinks half the video it sees is protected by CopyGuard, and refuses to record it. If the video has any static, it thinks thats copy protection, halts and refuses to record. It"s effectively useless for half of the items I need to copy, none of which has any copy protection whatsoever. Let me repeat that, nothing I"m working with is copy protected AT ALL! It"s a shame that I spent $500 dollars for a decent product, which is tied to crappy software which destroys the hardware"s intended purpose and usefullness. Software which couldn"t have possibly passed the most simple and rudimentary quality control checks, and apparently after checking the Canopus website now for months (which incidentally requires a home phone number and DNA sample to register with) is never updated. I feel nothing but regret for buying this thing.

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