Customer Reviews

Canopus 77010150100 ADVC110 Converter

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Being a very energenic home movie maker, I have a lot of VCR tapes that I want to transfer to my editing computer. I was looking for a analog to digital converter, and eventually bought the Canopus 110, judging by the excellent user reviews.

The canopus 110 is very simple to use. If you have a firewire port in your computer, then you have all the equipment you need to use Canopus (Well, an editing system helps too!). The canopus has ports on the front and the back, where you plug in the cables from the VCR (or DVD), and then put the firewire cable into the canopus and your computer.

When I got the canopus, it took me about fifteen minutes to get it up and running. I connected the VCR cables in the front, connected the firewire in the back, and presto! Instant power. Canopus was ready to go. I went into my editing system (I use Avid DV express by the way), clicked "auto-configure" for the capture settings, and I was all set to go. That was all I had to do!

From the projects that i've copied onto my system, There is no degeneration or quality loss from the origional product. Canopus transferrs the tape material exactly as it is. If the quality is great, then it will be great on the system. If the quality of the tape is bad, then it will be bad on the system.

So far, all's good and wonderful right? Well, Canopus has a dark little secret that the manufacturer doesn't tell you. Canopus 110 has a small chip built in that detects when you're trying to transfer copyrighted material (such as a tape of a movie). If it detects it, a small red light comes on, and the footage you copy is black (As one review site said (in a very annoying way), "That'll teach you!"). If you have old movies that you want to copy to a DVD for personal use, this is bad news.

However, there is a way past this security feature, and it's built into the system. When you first turn Canopus on, simply press the select button down for roughly twenty seconds. Now the system will ignore copyright concerns, and you can copy all the movies you want, until you turn Canopus off. However, I don't recommend using this feature for illegal means.

All in all, Canopus is a very usefull gadget. I highly recomend it.

I've been using the Canopus ADVC110 with an Intel iMac using iMovie to edit a wedding video from a rather poor VHS recording. The 110 did a great, hassle free job of cleaning up the video. I hooked it up right out of the box using the supplied cables with no external drivers or software and in 10 minuets or less I was converting the video to a digital recording. When I opened iMovie it immediately recognized the Canopus with no problems. I ordered the power supply with mine, but if you use the supplied 6 pin Firewire cable you shouldn't need the power supply. I'm using component connection between the Canopus and the VCR and you do have another choice of using S-video connectivity. My only complaint about this product is that it doesn't have a power on/off switch so the unit is always on unless you pull the plug. I highly recommend this product especially if you use an Apple computer.

I found the Canopus ADVC110 to be unusable on older (c. 10 years) Hi8 tapes. Symptomatically, there would be times where the frames would jump around, or black out entirely for parts of a second in the ADVC110 digital output stream. What seems to be happening is that the sync signal on the edge of older Hi8 tapes may be degraded, and the codec of the ADVC110 is not robust against such degradation; it loses sync on the frame, or gives up entirely and blacks out the output. Changing the fixed sync dip switch on the ADVC110 did not help it. (The same problem also occurred digitizing an old VHS tape). I put the same Hi8 tapes through the pass-through digitizer on a Sony DCR-HC32, and it had no problems whatsoever. The ADVC110 codec also produces more contrasty images than the Sony DCR-HC32; details in shadow are lost; frames are grainier; noise in the tape signals are amplified into subtle rainbow waves on the ADVC110, not so noticeable on the Sony, which seems to have a more linear codec. So, for a little more money you can buy a camcorder with more robust A to D conversion and better image than the ADVC110.

I was using the PLEXTOR PX-M402U to transfer home movies to DVD but had nothing but problems! Once the home movies were transferred the video and audio were always out of sync. I got rid of it and bought the CANOPUS ADVC110 and I've had NO problems...everything looks great and is in sync! It costs more but it's worth it!

I had tried several USB devices to capture old VHS and 8mm tape on a well equipped Windows box but would either have things work poorly or not at all. That was a big driving force to my switch from Windows to MAC. I initially tried one of my cheap USB devices on the MAC and it did not work. Bought the Canopus and it works flawlessly! There are lots of cheaper converters out there, but as always, you get what you pay for.

After seeing so many devices around the web and so many different opinions about them, I ran into this little device that had nothing but good reviews here at amazon. I decided to give it a try. I must say I didn't think I could pull it off, but luckily I did. This little box really works. I bought the firewire card (highly recommended), hooked it up and captured my very first movie from one of many old 8mm tapes I have laying around the house. 71 mins of perfect, uninterrupted, flawless, 720 x 480 px video and no audio synch problems. I'm very happy with this purchase.

My hardware (nothing fancy):

1.25 Mhz AMD Athlon Processor
512 MB RAM
2 hard drives: 1x30 GB + 1x80 GB
Windows XP Pro + Service Pack 2
Adaptec AFW-4300 Host Adapter (firewire)
I used Windows Movie Maker to capture the footage and Cyberlink's PowerProducer 2 Gold that came with my LG External DVD writer to burn the disk.

I totally recommend it...

I purchased this on a recommendation from a video professional - they were using this with a Mac over firewire for VHS capture. I bought mine for the same reason, to transfer VHS tapes to DVDs - and I could not be more happy. In typical fashion I took the device out of the box, hooked the cables up, put it in the firewire and done! There is no power required (using the thick 6-pin firewire cable provides power from the laptop) and there are no drivers required - the device is instantly detected as a camera.
I did all my movie collecting from iMovie and had to do absolutely nothing. I tried this box with different VCRs and it never failed - even when the tape was extremely degraded or the tracking was not very good, I got _no_ dropped frames, audio de-synchronization or other problems which seem to plague similar devices.
Physically the device is very solid, never gets warm or otherwise feel as if it will fall apart. The plugs are not as solid as I would have liked (if you have a thick monster cable it will feel awkward pushing it in) and the connectors themselves are sunken in which puts a limit to how wide the plug can be. I tried it with various cables I had in the house and never had problems.
An excellent (and undocumented) feature of this device is that by holding the "select" button for ~20 seconds after start-up (no need to do it before you plug it in, you'll see when the event happens) you enable the "de-Macrovision" filter; regardless of what VCR you have, you'll never have to buy a special box or have to deal with complicated setups. The device itself is _not_ a timebase corrector however,

I bought this because of the reviews I read at Amazon compared with similar products, and this one was the best quality for the price. No dropping of frames was the clincher. It has been a magnificent product. I have been converting some of my video tapes to DVD, and the quality is great. I just open iMovie, and it's all set. Although you do need an AC adapter (not included) to use this as a VHS to FireWire for importing your video which is another $35 or so. If you search the web you'll find all you need to know, but I can say that this is a flawless solution, and the reviews I read here at amazon of it's unparalleled quality at this price are correct.

Bought this to convert PAL Hi-8 (Canon) purchased years ago in Singapore for Mac (PowerBook G4, Tiger OS-X) nonlinear editing. Worked perfectly the first time, only needed to set a single switch to select PAL. No need for software drivers etc. Happily plugged and played with the Mac and the camcorder.

Acceptable price for the features and ease of use.

I was so disappointed with the other capture devices that I had purchased. I figured this was one of those times I would have to wait a few more years until something reliable would be available...but this sweet little unit turned out to do exactly what the manufacturer and all the reviews said it would do. A great little workhorse that has yet to let me down. I have no idea what the product support is like because I never need it. That's the way I like it.