Canopus ADVC 100 - Issues

[hdfills]

i have picked up a canopus advc 100 for my vhs captures but after testing im not happy with the quality ... i keep getting freezing frames and the overall quality of my blackmagic intensity 4k capture card is doing alot better job quality wise ... which shocks me after what i have read

ive tryd the canopus through firewire, do you guys think svideo for the canopus through the intensity 4k is worth a try .... all feed back welcome

[RWANDREWS]

I have used the Canopus for 10 years, & I have not had any capture problems, for quite awhile. I use WinDV as the capture program, & a dedicated HD for the capture. No programs running, like Chrome, etc. I used to have to defrag my HD frequently in the old days, but never do it now.

Ill bet some program is running that is attempting to access your HD while capturing, that is causing the issue. It is possible that the Canopus is old & wearing out the hardware. Capacitors dry up after years & may cause issues. Try to capture on a different computer, to see if it is the Canopus that is causing the problem. BTW, I always have used the firewire as the link.

[hdfills]

i use an ssd drive for capture .... going to try the canopus through the intensity pro 4k tomorrow and see how it goes .... to be honest im getting great quality captures at the minute but im just wanting to know what the craze for the canopus devices was for !

[RWANDREWS]

Pls post the results of your testing. The Canopus ADVC 100 was the 1st device that perfectly synced audio & video without problems. Before that MANY methods were lacking in that ability. Still isn't a replacement for it. I would not give up mine for a lot of money.

[dellsam34]

Both devices are not great for analog capture, BM intensity cannot capture VHS alone it needs a TBC or a picture stabilizer, The Canopus is a DV device, it captures to an ancient lossy codec with half chroma is thrown out the window 4:1:1 chroma sub. The best way to capture analog video is using a S-VHS machine built in line TBC to remove line jitter and an external TBC or a DVD recorder in the chain to stabilize the signal and then use the BM intensity with S-Video input to capture lossless AVI 4:2:2 and encode later to H.264.
There is nothing special about the canopus, you had to use it because it acts as a DVD recorder to stabilize the signal that's all.

[Eric-jan]

@hdfills: you could try to set it (ADVC 100) in the Macrovision defeat mode, otherwise your media on which you capture/transfer the data onto, is really too slow, i had no problems in the past with the ADVC 100 on a slow computer with HDD's , i used WinDV if i remember well type2 for audio ? it's been decades that i have used it, it's great for having in and outputs. on both video/audio/firewire

btw. you have the DIP switches correctly set at the bottom of the device ?

[RWANDREWS]

@Eric-Good input. I forgot about the Macrovision defeat mode & the DIP switches ! It's been years since I fooled with those things, so it might be a factor on HD fills situation. You've got a good memory !

[lordsmurf]

The problem with BM isn't that it needs TBC.
The problem is that, even with TBC, it still has problems with dropped frames (both reported, and not).

Canopus compresses color by 50%+ to 4:1:1 for NTSC, losing even more color data than VHS natively does already.