dotty captures with Canopus ADVC-100

[danniballoon]

I've just got a Canopus ADVC-100, but every video I capture has loads of dots all over the screen. Sometimes it's worse than others.

I've tried several capture programs & am running a fast macxhine with lots of disk space. I've tried capturing directly from TV tuner as well as a good quality VCR. Nothing gets rid of them.

Has anyone got any ideas ?

[Betamax]

Be sure there aren't any problems with the IEEE1394 interface (no IRQ conflicts, card and canopus must be compliant with each other).

Try captureing in Premiere, while the ADVC-100 delivers high-quality DV material.

[chaseru]

What are you trying to capture? Could these "dots" be video noise? If you are capturing from analog video tapes or off-the-air there could be a lot of noise in the source video that isn't going to get better after conversion to dv. Actually, I have found that video noise is more apparent upon conversion to digital.

You may have to deal with the video noise with 2d and temporal cleaners after the dv conversion.

[danniballoon]

I'm capturing directly from the TV tuner on a video recorder, so I can't see that causing major problems.

The IEEE interface is in the Soundblaster Audigy card, which I understand should work OK.

The IEEE shares interrupts with the motherboards USB interface. Also, M/B is a VIA one. I understand there is certain problems with these, though don't know if they are likely to cause problems with the ADVC-100.

[LanceSteel]

The IEEE shares interrupts with the motherboards USB interface.

I had the exact same problem that you are describing. My Firewire card was sharing an IRQ with my motherboard's USB interface. My ADVC-100 worked very good until I got a pocket pc and installed the drivers for its cradle. After that all I got were dots in the video and pops/cracks in the audio. I found out that the drivers for the pocket pc cradle were always polling the USB port to see if the cradle was there and if the pocket pc was docked. After I uninstalled the USB drivers, everything went back to normal (ie good captures w/ the ADVC-100.)

My advice, disable any USB device drivers or temporarily disable the USB interface in your Mobo's BIOS and see if this fixes the problem. I bet this will fix any problems that you are seeing.

[danniballoon]

Tried it on several Mobos & still same problem.

Anyway, sent it back to Canopus UK & it did the same thing with them.

I'm a bit dissapointed over the quality control, for something so expensive, but to give credit where it's due they are sending me out a replacement same day.

Thanks for your help, everyone

[danniballoon]

...and the replacement works perfectly