HELP!!!! Need assistance with ADVC-100 : It wants a driver

[VideoMann]

HELP! - ADVC-100 & WindowsXP


Hello:

I bought the ADVC-100 and I'm using WindowsXP. The problem is that the computer won't do anything with it until a driver is installed. The ADVC does not come with any particular drivers but my WindowsXP doesn't know what to assign to it. None of my capturing programs recognize the ADVC signal because it has not been activated by the WindowsOS.

I called Canopus and they said to boot the computer, turn on the ADVC until it cycles to the Analog Input Light then hook the firewire. By waiting for the ADVC to power up it recognizes the analog-digital settings, and it is ready to tell the computer what device it is. They don't recommend to plug in the firewire cable until the ADVC is powered. Anyhow I've done that and the computer still wants a driver assigned.

[b]Can somebody please help. What driver does your computer running WindowsXP assigns to the ADVC?

This is what I get in the Device Manager when I hook the ADVC:

1. 61883 Device Class
2. AVC Device Class
3. AV/C Tape recorder (with a big yellow question mark looking for a driver)[b/]


It's the third item that prevents all the programs from seeing the ADVC.
Premiere doesn't see a signal on Video Capture, Cyberlink Power VCR II does not see the deviced hooked either, and Microsoft MovieMaker does not see it either, so I know it is not a software problem but strictly a driver problem.

Can somebody please connect and disconnect the ADVC firewire to the computer and see what items change in the Device Manager ? ...and also please tell me where in the Windows Folder those drivers or components come from ? They say they are generic drivers from the WindowsXP but that does not help me since I don't know what the names are, and the OS cannot automatically find them.

If you wonder how I set it up here is what I did:

1. Tried hooking VCR to the ADVC (set it to Analog Input) and connected the S-Video and Audio RCA plugs on the front, then firewire from ADVC to computer. (did try toggle on and off TV/VCR switch)

2. Tried same setup with Cable Box

3. Tried same setup with Analog Sony Camcorder

None of the setups worked.

ADVC Toggle Switches configured:
(Note settings OFF and ON are position designations not to mean you are turning something On or OFF):

Switch # ......Position................Description for this Position
01................OFF......................NTSC choice
02................ON.......................7.5IRE (chooses U.S. flavor of NTSC)
03................OFF......................chooses Locked Audio(preserves A/V sync)
04................OFF.......................48KHz / 16 bit audio
05................OFF.......................Defaul t setting to Analog Input on Power-up
06.................ON.......................select s Auto AMS (detects automatically input type)


Please help me.

Thanks in advance


HAPPY 4th of July !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous65]

The ADVC-100 doesn't need a driver, but the firewire card does. So, make sure the firewire card or connection works. Simply pluggin in the ADVC to the firewire connector should make it visible to the capture application. It will use the Miscrosoft DV codec for encoding, unless you install another DV codec. Also, in case you didn't know, the ADVC ouputs 24 bit uncompressed video, not DV compressed video.

[VideoMann]

The firewire cards have been installed 6-10 months ago and they work just fine. I used them to connect external firewire drives to transfer files between a Mac and my PC. The cards are OHCI compliant and the WindowsOS has no problem with them. The OS does not know what to do with the ADVC. It sees it since it recognizes it as some video storage device but it does not know what else to do with it.

I know that the ADVC does not require any special drivers but it does require something that is part of the WindowsOS already and I need to know what that is, so I can tell my computer where to look for it and assign it the generic driver.

[wumbus]

skittelsen,

Are you sure about the ADVC sending uncompressed video? This doesn't sound right to me... the bandwidth and CPU requirements to handle that data stream would swamp a min. spec PC. Do you have a pointer to a reference on this?

[VideoMann]

Whew!
Solved the problem!!!....I think.

It seems that the driver for the Canopus ADVC-100 is not a certified driver (I
thought all Generic Drivers were certified MS-drivers...I don't get it). The "AV/C
Tape recorder" driver is not one WindowsXP wants to install. Eventhough I
inserted all the driver components into the proper Windows Folders it still did not
want to accept them. I tried so many ways to shove this driver down WindowsXP
that I lost the exact procedure that work.
I believe that I instructed the WindowsXP to install the driver from the Driver.cab
file (C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\) if it wasn't this it was directing to the cab
file in the WindowsXP installer disc. The System looks at a drvinfo.inf (somthing to
that name) that gives a list of all the drivers that are present in the "driver.cab file",
when it finds something it can use it will install it. You cannot tell WindowsXP
directly to go to the drvinfo.inf file and search for a driver. I believe I told it to go to
the folder of the driver.cab file.

Anyway, it found the driver for the "AV/C Tape recorder" but it gave a stern
warning that this driver may make the whole system unstable and should not be
installed (it said that more or less). I told it to install it anyway and it worked from
that point on. I believe it took one component of the 13 I mentioned before in my
post. Apparently one of the components perhaps gets a registry entry that starts a
cascade of component recognitions that all in all constitutes the drivers. When I
looked at the Driver Manager properties for the "AV/C Tape recorder" all 13
components were now loaded. That is my interpretation, I'm not a computer
programmer or tech support for MS WindowsXP.

Since my experience is not common from what I heard of others with the ADVC
device, I have no ill feelings about the ADVC-100 only with Canopus and
Microsoft. Perhaps it is the overzealous nature of WindowsXP to preserve the
system stable, who knows. I'm sure I'm not the only one that had this problem. I
think Canopus should have documented this and posted a solution.

Another "bug" that I noticed is that if you set the dip switch #6 to automatic detect
inputs (IMS), when you feed a live TV signal it may switch automatically from
Analog Input to Digital Input during the capture. Perhaps it has to do with noise it
picks up (although it is a cable TV signal). One should consider setting the dip
switch to Manual (OFF-position) to prevent this.

I hope this is useful to others.

------------------------

Now I have a different problem with Premiere capture. I'm sure this has nothing to
do with Canopus but since most Canopus users do video capture maybe
somebody can "clue me in". I'm a newbie at computer video. When I capture from
the ADVC-100 to Premiere 6, after 5-8seconds the audio gets distorted (chatter
noise/chipmunk/cricket/digital noise don't know how else to describe it). The final
captured file plays the audio fine but it is very annoying on the preview as you
capture,since it would be nice to hear the audio. Is this a problem in too much data
for the processor? I got a P4- 2Ghz, 512MB RAMBUS plus a devoted AV 60Gb
hardrive. Is this beacuse of too many tasks running in the background ? or IS this a
bug in WindowsXP and my audio SB Audigy Card ?

Has anybody had this problem ?
What is the proper procedure to capture with Premiere 6 at 720x480 resolution or
640x480 and not have these problems ?

Thanks