ADSTech Instant DVD Capture Card

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ADSTech Instant DVD

Analog VideoIn
MPEG1 hardware
MPEG2 hardware

Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP
Vista? NT4? ~~MAC~~ Linux?
*based on user reports.

USB1

$90

6.6/10
42 votes

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Description (from the manufacturer site)

USB Instant DVD is a revolutionary, easy-to-use product that lets you edit your home movies then burn them to CD or DVD* so you can share them with friends and create long-lasting archives.

Edit and archive your home movies on CD’s
Convert Videotapes to DVD, MPEG2, MPEG1, VCD or SVCD
Capture video from any Analog or S-VHS source
Edit video and send back to VCR or burn DVD's or CD-R's*
(* Additional hardware required.)

Designed to bring audio and video into a PC for video editing or DVD authoring, Instant DVD is an external video capture/editing device that connects to Windows-based PC's through a USB connection. This external device includes video encoder and decoder chips and hardware as well as MPEG2 codec to compress and decompress MPEG2 video.

Archive home movies and videotapes then burn to DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW or CD-RW disks*
Edit video adding transitions, video filters, video overlay effects, picture in picture, music, titles, etc. for professional looking home movies or video productions
Author complete DVD movies with menus, graphical buttons, custom layouts that can be played on most all home DVD players.
Create streaming video for Internet broadcasts
Publish streaming video to the Internet
Record edited video back to tape
Record video at full screen MPEG2 (704 x 480 @ 30fps) D-1 broadcast resolution or other resolutions.
Record in MPEG1 format to produce VCD or SVCD disks
Capture audio and video to your computer hard drive.
Record video from any video source .

Model Number: USBAV-700

Visit manufacturer's site

Comments

52 comments, Showing 1 to 25 comments

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This capture unit works ok. Software used for capturing isn't that good. The editing software is pretty good though (Ulead VideoStudio). Drivers are wonky. Sometimes you have to reinstall them if the system crashes. Unit seems to crash once in a while. On older videos, the contrast is out of wack. Only good thing about this unit is that it uses hardware encoding thus works great on slower CPU's.

Comments posted by Kevin from Canada, May 24, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 6 of 10.

I had trouble setting this thing up... not alot of software suggestion as far as OS is concerned. It would tend to drop out, lockup, or just have an attitude. It was not the unit itself but the software. I use WinXP and found I had to go into the the memory management area and really bump this thing up. One member sugested 2mb in and 2 mb out. I don't know what his application was but that just about shut everything down. Now that I have re-optimized my OS for the unit I'm doing great with it. 2 1/2 hours to 3 hours is not uncommon. I would suggest downloading the capwiz 2.02 update because it fixs the audio problems. Ulead moviefactory 2se comes with it.... that's the trick. Produces great dvd's from an mpeg2 format. Bottom line is if you don't have patience to work with this forget it but it's well worth the money.

Comments posted by Bob ....MI,USA from United States, February 29, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

This capture device has a non-Windows XP supported driver(unsigned driver). (Windows XP will complain when you install it)

If you have this item and Windows XP and the following problem.

Durring capture machine halts screen goes blank then reboots. Or a crash after several minutes of capture.

Do the following to fix:

Right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties"

Find the "Advanced" tab, select "Settings" under "Startup and Recovery"

Under the "System failure" section uncheck "Automatically restart"

Click "OK"

You may also select "Settings" under the "Perfomance" section then click the "Advanced" tab and Change Virtual Memory. Reduced the memory to 2mb min and max.
this will slow down your system for other apps but fix the video capture problems.

When capturing video and viewing the video at the same time Heap memory errors occure, most software can capture this error and continue. If the software is running as SYSTEM, then XP will reboot (defaulted) when the error is incountered.

Comments posted by n9zle from Other, November 21, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 6 of 10.

I regret a lot about those three weeks I spent trying to get this thing work. Now I'm ready to recommend NOT TO BUY THIS PIECE OF CRAP at any circumstances. You'll be glad you did.
It will force your XP PC to hang up over and oved again. The MPEG files created by this thing look much worse than the original VHS tape shown on big screen TV. Etc., etc., etc.
Don't waste your time and money. Go for something more decent.

Comments posted by Mike from Other, October 16, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

DON'T BUY!

EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!

What a piece of junk. From the first day, I've had problems! Now I can't Instant DVD to work at all! installation documentation and pictures did not match the software included. First I had problems with their OEM software "CAPWIZ" I don't think that software ever did work. Other software programs do not see the device "even if it is seen as installed by windows". I've removed, installed, removed installed....etc. Their software is junk, driver is junk, documentation is junk, support is junk! I'll never buy another product from ADS! from this company until they can write software and drivers. The couple times I did have this junk working... I had audio sync problems. I feel ripped off with this product. DONT BUY !

EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!

Comments posted by Mike from Other, September 22, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 1 of 10.

This device does an exceptible job when converting VHS tapes to Mpeg format.
When working that is.
It has a problem with heat that can be repaired by a fix in this same forum.
If you have this unit and your computer locks up, capture software crash, or a reboot happens. This hardware did it.

Manufacture support( none they don't answer emails).

Product reliability Poor, after fix we will see.

I have applied the fix, but the heat sinks by them selves don't work you will need the fan and the existing power supply is less than five volts, looks like you will need another wal-wart stuck in the wall. I have about five of them now. (BTW my ham gear is disconected)

It does a good job converting video to mpeg except for the high 5mbs p/s format. I guess my 3.06Ghz hiper thread Intel CPU is not fast enough. (sound starts to lag behind the video.)

It does not work with Windows movie maker.

It beats converting AVIs to MPEG with software. you will have to capture the video first so add the time to capture to the conversion time.
Using MPEG capture add about 2 seconds, thats it.

If your looking to buy this unit, DONT. If you already have it, then dig in the junk box for a couple of heat sinks and a fan, get your dremil tool out because the heat sinks will need to be modified to fit in the thing. I did not drill a large hole in the top, but it would run cooler if I did. I used a CPU heat/sink fan combo from an older 486 machine no longer used.

Don't drag your capture dialog from one monitor to the second, the pause will take the audio video out of sink regardless of format.

I converted Starwars 133 minutes to Mpeg for DVD, it worked with out a problem with the fan running.
I want to get rid of all my old VHS tapes, hope this unit will last long enough to do it.

Comments posted by N9ZLE from Other, August 02, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 2 of 10.

Bought it from TigerDirect for $89. It installs and works fine but the capture video from VCR (have not tried any other source yet) has lines at the bottom of the screen. MS Movie Maker does not recognize the device and MS Media Encoder only captures few secnonds of video. I don't know why I have lines in the capture video (not talking about MPGE2 interlaced lines). Otherwise the product is okay. Does any one had problems with MS Movie Maker (OS XP) and Instant DVD?

Comments posted by ozzy from Other, July 14, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

Drivers for Win XP don't work. I tried everything including reformatting and reinstalling Win XP. I have several Pinnacle products and they work perfectly out of the box. Not so with this turkey. Avoid!! Its a total piece of crap. I tried emailing support as well and never heard back.

Comments posted by Shiv from Other, July 07, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 1 of 10.

My equipment: P3, 1 Gz,256 Mb RAM . Hp with Windows Me

Prev Experience: Dazzle ( the cheap one): Lousy Video I returned it
Next: Adaptec Video CD: OK for VCD only. Made a few and was ready for the next step.
Now: ADS Instant DVD

Installation of ADS Instant DVD was a pain. For some reason, the unit would not install correctly (exclamation mark on Hardware Profile). It would crash Windows (Windows-Blue Screen) when trying to reboot after installing the drivers, and was getting error on the Cap Wiz preview. After reading the FAQ’s and many hours reinstalling and deleting software , I was about to return it, but went for the last action: Reinstall Windows ME, since I had played before with 2 Capture Devices maybe they were somewhere in the computer creating this… IT WORKED… And at the same time I got rid of many pieces of software that I never use.

Now I have made my first DVD with CapWiz and My DVD:
Good capture at 5m, No drop frames and good Audio synch. Some pixelation. I was expecting a fast process in My DVD since already is captured in MPEG2, but it took a long time. Also I wanted to add more chapters but it is not possible in MyDVD if using a single file

I am working now with Ulead VS6. (Get the 6.02 update and the patch to capture using Instant DVD). Zero dropped frames at 5m, good edit features, and you can add chapters using ULead DVD Wizard.

So based on the current results I give it a 8

Comments posted by Antonio from Other, June 09, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

Works as designed for the most part. I have used it on 2 seperated systems:
P4 1800 512Meg WinMe
Celeron 1000 512 Meg XP and WinME

Note: The Celeron would not do 5mbs until I changed the hard drive from a 5400 RPM to a Maxtor 7200 RPM. After that it works just fine.

I have compared it to my All-In-Wonder 128Pro and a AIW 7500 and it gives a much better picture so I am using the IDVD to capture all my analog videos with no lose of sync or video artifacts.

I am still testing to see what the best rate VS size combo to make a DVD. I can't really see much if any loss using the 3mbs setting converting my tapes. What is everyone else using to convert home VHS to DVDs.

It really outputs a great video.

BTW, no heat problems noticed yet.

Comments posted by CreedW from Other, May 06, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

I recently tried out the Dazzle DCS 200, which was horrible. I wanted a cheap and easy way to convert friends/family VHS tapes to DVD. In the past I used my Pinnacle DV 500 card, which was great but it was a long process as the DV 500 converts to DV format, then I had to use a software encoder for MPEG2 and then an authoring program to make the final DVD. Frankly, I didn’t want to spend my weekends in the basement saving other folks memories (for free). I was a little leery about Instant DVD, after all it was only USB 1 but I was enticed by the price. I bought it and I was glad that I did! First off, it really comes with everything, cables, decent software, etc. My homemade XP computer recognized the device and everything loaded nicely. The software includes Sonic’s MyDVD, Ulead’s Video Studio 6.0 LE and their own capture utility called CapWiz. I usually capture with CapWiz and then export the video with one button to Video Studio. Although this is the LE version, Video Studio gives you a lot of program. You have a lot of nice transitions and you can do special things with titles (like fly ins). Video Studio also lets you add music and voice-overs. When you are all done Video Studio lets you burn directly to CD or DVD…very convenient! MyDVD is another nice consumer level DVD authoring program. I haven’t had a need to use it, as Video Studio seems to have enough functionality for these simple projects. I guess the proof is in the pudding and I have been shocked how well the video looks. Nice, smooth (no artifacts) just what I wanted. I’m using the top setting of 5 mb/sec. I heard that IDVD can overheat but my projects are typically under an hour so this has not been a problem. I would definitely recommend this product if you want a simple way to convert your memories to DVD. The included software gives you enough pizzazz to add professional looking titles, background music, etc. If you were doing heavy-duty transfers you might consider a different product because of overheating…but for the price it is a giveaway item. Think about it: for a little over a hundred bucks you get a hardware encoder, capture software, editing software and authoring software…and it all works!

Comments posted by Mike Kuna from Other, April 19, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Here is a link for a how to modify your Instant DVD and make it much better in regards to artifacts in the video capture.

http://www.geocities.com/zambonigod2000/IDVD.htm

Comments posted by zamgod from Other, April 05, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

First unit received was defective (couldn't capture, locked up computer), returned to MeritLine and replacement works perfect. Capturing VHS movies to DVD; simple with no problems. 2 hr 6 min at 3 Mb/s capture, 1 hr 42 min at 5 Mb/s on 4.7 GB DVDs (MyDVD); reduce audio with ULead Video Studio to get more video on disk. Can capture to hard drive limit. Software included is basic video editing, MyDVD works fine (simple to use) for commercial-free videos, ULead Video Studio for editing out commercials. Appears to have no dropped frames, no artifacts, video/audio sync'd correctly. HP 1.6 GHz computer, 256 MB RAM, 64 MB video/graphic card, Sony DU500A DVD+/-RW drive. Given an 8 because I have to power down ADS Instant DVD unit and re-boot computer after every capture.

Comments posted by J. Murray from Other, March 30, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

Ok here is what I did....

I read all about how the IDVD has heat problems all over the web. So I got an idea when I saw some spare heatsinks I had from an old Pentium I processor.

So I cut the heatsinks down to fit the size of the main video processing chip, the onboard memory, and the USB processing chip. I generously applied heatsink compound to all three chips and then just stuck the heatsinks down on top of the chips. The compound itself is enough to hold the heatsinks in place. I put all covers back on and fired it up.

The Results..... Amazing!!! Not one single speck or artifact in general in a solid hour of video capture.

I have taken pictures of the project and would be happy to share them. Eventually I will post them on a web page with a how to or something like it, but for now I can e-mail them to you.

Send requests to zambonigod2000@yahoo.com

I also want to mention that the hidden utility on the cd works great if you want to capture video at a quality greater than 5Mbps

Comments posted by zamgod from Other, March 29, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

I bought this product about a year ago and I have on and off success. I am just starting to read more and more posts saying that the IDVD has some heat problems. So I have devised a plan to put two heatsinks in the unit from an old P1- 100MHz. I am going to put one on the main chip and one on the apparent memory chips. I hope this does the trick. I am also going to try powering it off when it's not in use, for two reasons. One is to keep it cooler and the other is to reset the box since it does not get reset when restarting your computer.

My main problems with the IDVD is artifacts in the captured video or pixelated areas. I'll let you know how it turns out...

Comments posted by zamgod from Other, March 27, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

Having all kind off problems with this ADS INSTANT DVD.

Comments posted by SALIM from Other, March 23, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I've been using this device for over a year and have burned out dozens of vcd's, svcd's and a few DVD's. Once you get your computer configured correctly (IRQ sharing, disabling all unneeded components, etc), the device perform perfectly. CapWiz is an obscenely simple interface to use. There is even a simple interface to adjust the audio lag/sync. The rest of the included software is crap.

One point that hasn't been mentioned:
Encoding low quality video. I orginally purchased this item to encode low-quality VHS tapes (to hopefully alleviate the degrading that comes from copying to another VHS tape). It seems the Instant DVD works best with high-quality signal. When video quality dips down, the device will drop frames. The audio may even cut out for a moment. The different formats (DVD, SVCD, VCD) seem to react slightly different to quality drops (different type of artifacts on screen, etc). One bonus though, the video that is encoded actually seems to be slightly higher quality then the signal displayed on your TV screen. I've had tapes with rolling (vert. flipping) that vanished on the encoded version (though maybe missing a frame here and there).

I'd deffenetly recommend this product to convert high quality video or broadcast - it looks great. As far as encoding your old, degraded home movies, you may not be happy.

-------

Just to clarify, high quality DVD sampling is at 5 mbps. NOT 5 Mbps. Not 5MB / sec. I'd think most systems can keep up if configured correctly.

Comments posted by Adam from Other, February 08, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

OK update on my post from below.

Turns out I had a bad connnection and had to send the unit back. Since then, I am able to capture at up to 5mps. There are some sync issues, however capwiz tends to be the best at handling them.

Now I have run into some issues in actually creating dvds. I have been using Ulead DVD movie factory, the mpegs that I dont alter, come in fine, work perfectly. However, I have been trying to bring in an mpeg with a commentary track. I recorded a wav file, used TMPEng to put the mpeg and commentary together, but Ulead wont accept it, says the mpeg engine wont accpet this file. I can only assume that ulead dvd movie factory wont accept file encoded in TMPEng.

So I am now using Dazzle Dvd Complete, now the problem here is, it wont import Mpegs with mpeg audio. So I have now ripped out the audio, then reencoded with TMPEng, however of course now my synch is out.

So, yes this card does capture, and yes you can get it working, but be warned, its not easy, and it takes alot of trouble shooting to get exactly what you want. Oh and the tech support for this company is horrible. So is ulead's for that matter.

Maybe I'm expecting too much out of a consumer device, with commentary tracks, extra footage, first play videos, but thats just what the product promises.

Comments posted by Downs from Other, January 31, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 6 of 10.

OK, I've upgraded my PC and have been making some DVDs using the ADS for the last few weeks with some interesting discoveries.

My PC: XP, P4, 2.53GHz, 512 MB RAM, 60GB 7200rpm second drive for vid files, NTFS, Midiman audio card (can do 48kHz recording).

The PC upgrade allowed me to start doing captures at 5mbps with no problem. However, if I want 2 hours on a DVD I have to use 4mbps anyway. But since I'm mainly archiving VHS tapes, that's a non-issue. The quality is equivalent. The upgrade also cleared up lock ups during capture.

Long story short, the unit has a major problem with heat, whcih probably causes most of the problems users experience. If I only did captures for an hour at a time, then powered it down and let it cool before doing another capture, then things worked fine, including elimination of real obnoxious pixellation, such as "Downs" described below.

I have since removed the top of the case to keep it cool, and am getting much better performance for long captures. But before a capture, I power it down then up to reset it anyway.

The resulting files I am able to edit with MyFlix then author with DVD Workshop with almost no audio sync problems. And when I do have a problem, re-doing the edit seems to fix it.

Comments posted by rphunt from Other, January 31, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I've been playing with my Instant DVD for a few days now and I think I have enough experience with it for my comments to be useful for prospective buyers. I bought this mainly to archive a boatload of VHS tapes, and to mess around with while I decide what to put in the system I'm building to edit my DV footage.

This product basically works, but your success with it is wholly dependent on your PC's ability to capture (upto) a 5Mbps stream over USB, and sample and compress 48kHz (or 44.1kHz) stereo sound in real-time, w/o losing synchronization between the two sources. Also, since the capture program gives you a live preview, your CPU also has to do MPEG-2 decompression of the compressed video stream at the same time.

These seem like a fairly modest tasks for any reasonably modern PC, but for whatever reason, a lot of people have problems getting it to work. Personally, I cannot get my PC (Celeron 1GHz + Abit VH6-II, 512MB RAM) to capture at 5Mbps w/o dropping frames under Windows XP, but I can do it under Windows 98 (but only after disabling the virus scanner, Zone Alarm, and everything else in the system tray). I can capture at 4Mbps w/o frame drops under Windows XP. The frames are dropped even while previewing, so the problem has nothing to do with my hard drives. Anecdotal evidence is that systems with VIA chipsets seem to have the most trouble capturing at the highest speed. 5Mbps is needed to do good captures of decent quality prerecorded VHS, but you can get away with 4Mbps or less for anything recorded OTA.

I've only burned SVCDs so far (DVD burner to be ordered this week), and they play fine in my standalone Panasonic DVD player after applying the VCD header trick. I haven't had any problems with audio sync - I am using the CapWiz 2.0.2 posted on the ADS web site.

So overall I give it an 8, but again, your success will be totally dependent on your PC's ability to capture data in real-time while under the load of decompressing the MPEG-2 stream from the ADS box (turning off the video preview should be an option). Supposedly a new model is coming out in a few months with USB2.0 and a Cirrus Logic MPEG-2 codec which handles both audio and video. I imagine people will have a lot more success with this product, since audio sync should no longer be a problem, and I'd expect there to be much more headroom when capturing over USB 2.0 (if it's the high speed variant, not full-speed).

Comments posted by Jonathan from Other, January 20, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? ~~MAC~~ Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

I just got this card and am having a pretty big problem. I'm running a PIII 800mhz with 256 meg ram, XP Pro. I had some sync problems initially but fixed thosse with the patch on ads's site.

However I big problem is the quality is sh!t, I mean no matter what my bit rate is set to I get tons of pixelation. I mean whole green lines across the screen. I've changed my video card twice to see if that was causing conflicts or something but nothing.

I've left messages for support but nothing yet. This is really starting to piss me off. If I could just get a decent quality capture it would be nice.

Comments posted by Downs from Other, January 12, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

This is a very exciting product!
I have a 'Celery' 600 running at 900 with 196meg ram, Windoze ME, geforce Ti 4200, ABIT mobo, 5400 20 gig h/d, and an old 16 bit isa (non-PCI) SB sound card.
The box does all the processing, so I can burn cd's while capturing at the same time. The latest version of CAPWIZ works great, I capture from my Hi8mm analog sony cam. and from my el cheapo DVD drive (APEX 1500).
I am capturing at SVCD, as this gives great quality video, that I can burn on my cd writer (no DVD writer necessary!). Just copied SW episode II onto 5 cds, and the only problem is 'hissy' sound (sync is perfect). This might be because of the old sound card - about time I upgraded I suppose.
I haven't had too much success with VideoStudio or MyDVD, so I can't say too much about them.
I don't think that you can go wrong with this product, but check here and there for incompatibilities with different hardware (I hate VIA mobo's!). If you want decent quality captures, IN REAL TIME, of your tapes, so that you can play them in SOME dvd players, without the need for a DVD writer, then this is what you need! The software method, with inferior hardware, will work, but the rendering times are horrendous!

Comments posted by Peter from Other, January 11, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

Since I got the ADS Instant DVD I've been trying to get a decent DVD made of an hour long show, and it took a lot of experiments to get good results.

I found that using the original capture files worked fine in DVD Workshop. But after cutting and joining them (to clean out commercials) in MyFlix, the audio was either out of sync in the mpg file, or in the final VOBs. I tried Honest Tech MPEG Editor, but that screwed up the audio even more.

My final solution became this process:

>>Capture the video as 4 mbps mpeg2, layer 2 audio. >>Use MyFlix to clip out each segment of the show to include in final file.
>>Use TMPGEnc to join the clips.
>>Author with Ulead DVD Workshop 1.3.

I then seem to get usable results.

The only probems I'm having now are periodic lockups of CapWiz during capture, probably no cue for that; and little glitches in the audio, which I expect will be cured with a more powerful PC.

Now to try a movie.

Comments posted by rphunt from Other, December 03, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

Just got the ADS USB Instant DVD kit. Until now I've been using Dazzle DVC2 and liking it less and less.

My PC: XP, P3, 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 60GB 7200rpm second drive for vid files, NTFS, Midiman audio card (can do 48kHz recording).

I only installed the drivers and Capture Wizard (CapWiz) apps, no VideoStudio or MyDVD. I also downloaded and installed the latest drivers from www.adstech.com. Install went smoothly, got it up and running pretty quickly.

I found that for DVD, only three formats are available. 5mbps, 4 mbps, 3 mbps, all CBR. For my PC, 5 mbsp caused lockups, out of sync audio, and video stutturing. Changing to 4 mbps improved it but not totally. Setting the "audio delay" to maximum allowed me to capture smoothly. And since my source is mainly VHS, the quality is acceptable.

Audio can be spec'd from several rates, I left it at the default of 244, mpeg1 layer2, 48kHz. The resulting quality is very acceptable.

Some things I noticed right away:
>>CapWiz is a little clunky regarding specifying capture file destination. Hopefully future upgrades will fix.
>>CapWiz has a much larger display than DVC's MovieStar.
>>I don't see the AGC instability that I saw with the DVC, IOW, it doesn't suddenly get dark and fade back up, macrovision-like.
>>DVC needed to have audio loooped through it's interface box, adding a lot of noise. I have my audio conected directly from my studio mixer into the audio card, making the sound a lot cleaner. Also, this allows me to reliably monitor audio input levels with SoundForge.
>>What is seen and heard during caturing are the results going into the files. With DVC, no previewing during capture could happen, or else audio may be lost.

I edited the raw files with MyFlix XE, cleaning out commercials, etc. This went a lot faster and more smoothly than it was with DVC files.

I then authored a DVD using Ulead DVD Workshop, and again things went much more smoothly than with DVC files. The final DVD had no audio synch problems either.

The tests done so far gave me a final DVD with 6 half hour shows on one disc, all done in one evening.

Over the last year or so I've wasted a lot of time with AVI files being encoded with TMPGEnc and LSX, or the DVC2, and struggling to produce usable DVDs.

I'll be trying some hour shows and longer movies next, and we'll see how that goes.

At some point I'll upgrade my PC and see if I get better performance for 5 mbps.

Comments posted by rphunt from Other, November 26, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

Works fine. After reading manual on how to use my audigy card (through the mic) audio is fine. VCR transfer works great. Tried recording using only S-video from my DirecTV receiver and get no audio.

Comments posted by rick from Other, November 22, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

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Feature
What kind of main capture features it supports
Analog VideoIn = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input
Video Card = If it is a Video Card/Graphic Card
Tv Tuner = Built-In TV-Tuner
Digital TV = Built-In Digital TV-Tuner
DV/Firewire = DV/Firewire/i.Link input
DV Converter = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input and converts to DV video
MPEG1 hardware = Capture directly MPEG1(VCD) video using hardware*
MPEG2 hardware = Capture directly MPEG2(SVCD and DVD) video using hardware*
MJPEG hardware = Capture directly to MJPEG using hardware*
MPEG4 hardware = Capture directly to MPEG4(DivX,Xvid) video using hardware*
* = Most capture cards can capture to this format using software but it usually requires a very fast computer, if it supports realtime capturing it uses the capture cards hardware and it doesn't require a very fast computer and you may get better quality but less options/settings than software capturing.

Compatibility
What Operating System our users have reported that it works on, Win95=Works ~~Win95~~=Does not work Win95?=Not tested This is user based.

Cnx = Connection
What type of connection the capture device has to the computer, PCI, AGP, USB1/1.1/2, DV or PCMCIA.

Price
The price in US dollar.

Rating
The first rating is based on a weighted rank (the true Bayesian), it requires at least 5 votes to get a weighted rating.
The second rating between the ( ) is a normal average rating.

Comment
User comments, click on view to view them or add to post a own comment.

We can not gurantee that this list is 100% correct. Don't forget to read the User Comments for more Info about each Capture card. If you find any features that are not correct contact us instead of posting a comment about it.