Canopus ADVC-1394 Capture Card

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Capture Card

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Canopus ADVC-1394

DV/Firewire
Analog VideoIn

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

PCI

$249

8.4/10
31 votes

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Description (from the manufacturer site)

Analog video to DV conversion and capture through OHCI in realtime.
> VideoCD, Super Video CD and DVD authoring.*
> Capture to MPEG-1*, MPEG-2*, and DV.
> Powerful editing and content creation applications:
Vegas Video LE 3.0* and WinProducer 3 DVD*.
> Adjustable brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and sharpness controls for analog input.*
> Easy connectivity of high-speed storage devices, scanners, CD-RW drives and more.
> Locked audio support.
> NTSC and PAL video compatible.
> Simple Plug and Play installation with native OS driver support.
> Windows and Mac compatible.

Update: Optional drive bay with Firewire, s-video, and analog inputs available for $89.

Visit manufacturer's site

Comments

37 comments, Showing 1 to 25 comments

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Hi everybody !

Im a new user of the ADVC1394 capture card..so far i think this card work good ! I bought it used,so i didnt get any drivers and manuals with it.. If somebody has the drivers or the manuals for it and if can send it to my email adress : itrupac@yahoo.com i would be really thankful !
Or if you know an adress where i can download them , that would be good too !

Thanks a lot !

Sincerely , Igor

Comments posted by trupac from United States, February 06, 2008:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I purchased this card after viewing the reviews here.
I used it on WinXP x64bit. And this is perfect. Capture quality in analgue is superb and no need to install the device drivers. Windows handles it all. Controller utility by canopus works on this OS too. I have a great stuff of old VHS plus sony handycam to convert it to mostly to DVD and/or VCD. No lip sync issues even on long capture. Only this is that if I have to change the colour system from PAL to NTSC or vice versa I have to change the jumper setting from the capure board itself.
Very stable and very professioanl.
Thums up canopus

Comments posted by joshianant from India, September 04, 2005:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

There are only some video capture cards possible capture VHS/Video8/Hi8/BetaMax tapes without dropped frames, Canopus AVDC 1394 is less expensive of them

Comments posted by jurisviii from Latvia, February 02, 2005:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Hello,

This card shined on my Pentium 3 + Win2k machine. Had lots of trouble with P4 + Intelchipset 875 + WinXP+SP1. Problem consisting in black screen afte a short succesfull start.
Problem was soved by downloading from Canopus' web site a file named 1394Filter.zip. Problems concerning black screens have also been solved by modifying the PCI's latency setting on the motherboard's BIOS. Usually default value is 32/64 changed to 128. Good luck.
Now the card shines again.

Miguel

Comments posted by Miguel from Argentina, February 04, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

This is a great card. I bought it with the "Let's Edit" software package, and everything works perfectly. No problems in Windows XP Pro. The software is easy to use for the beginner (like me!). Picture quality is excellent, I have captured VHS and Hi8 with no loss of sharpness.

Comments posted by Henriksen from Other, January 14, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Sorry that some people don't know much about computers, but I switched mine from Win2K to XP machine without a single problem. I loaded the XP fix first then installed the card. This thing is still capturing flawless and continues to keep everything in sync.

Ath. 2800+, 512M, 2-120Gig. Pioneer A04.

Great card and great performance.
God Bless you all.

Comments posted by oneref from Other, December 28, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

How to rate, I get "data is invalid" during driver install.
I can say Canopus support is a contradiction of terms.
Their fix is not, and the driver update is neither.
I thought this would just fit my needs, to bad it won't work.

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

I have decided to buy Canopus 1394 after a careful study of this forum postings. The only purpose of video capture at this point for me is to transfer my VHS tapes into digital media. I heard that Canopus has better performance when it comes to poor quality video input. I also had been under an erroneous impression that this card performs hardware conversion into MPEG2, thus freeing the processor. Later I found out this is not the case, when I capture in MPEG2, processor is loaded 100% and apparently there are dropped frames, (the software I was using was either not set up to register them or was unable to start with). Audio was severely distorted when capturing in MPEG2. After that I only capture in AVI with Premiere.
Coming back to the installation, the computer recognized the card immediately and I was able to do captures right away (with Premiere 6.0 and Win Producer (also a nice piece of software!). Because of my rather limited computer knowledge, the fact that everything went without a glitch made me happy with my choice.
During the first 2 mos after purchase, I was only able to use the card a few hours each weekend.
When I tried to capture a long video, the computer stopped after 18 min with a message - Max file size of 4 GB reached. I then found out that I had FAT32 on my P4. I then reformatted it to NTFS with Partition Magic, installed 80 GB (primary slave) HDD, 256 MB SDRAM for the total of 512. After that the card stopped working. I spent a couple hours trying to capture anything with various software packages - with no success. I then tried to contact Canopus support, but had no success. After I tried to register, their web site gave me a message - "you are already registered, your name must have been entered into a database when you registered the Canopus product." After repeated and unsuccessful attempts to send a message to tech support through that interactive page, I had to give up. (in addition to the aforementioned msg, I have also got "you are not a registered user, you have to register first".
Makes you wonder if someone tests the Canopus website! They did not even bother to provide a normal e-mail addr as a back-up.
Next day the card started working as if nothing happened, but still, the scare of this kind of "tech support" lingers. Should something happen in the future, I think with trepidation about the prospect of obtaining support from Canopus (I hope I will be proven wrong!)
I rate this card "8", however, I have to emphasize the fact that I have no experience with any other capture card.
I wish they did not bother so much about the software, which came with the package (those are demo versions anyway), but improved the manual and added a composite video output, which would be great as a diagnostic tool.
I plan to make my first SVCD over the holidays and will then decide whether to buy DVD R/W or stick with CD media for the time being.
Overall I would recommend this card, however, you should keep in mind the fact that it is not that cheap for a consumer product.
1.8G P4, ASUS P4B, HDD1 40G, HDD2 80G (both Maxtor), 512 MB SDRAM, NVidia GeF2, CD-RW, CD-ROM.

Comments posted by walter4h from Other, December 25, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

I've been going back and forth between this and a Mediabox DV. The Canopus AVDC 100 produces nice capture BUT it has been really temperamental to connect. When I plug it into 1394 my other 1394 devices - disk drives - vanish. I had to buy a separate 1394 card and keep the AVDC isolated. There is a patch supposedly related, marked for the AVDC 50 but it made no difference.

The second problem is the device is prone to vanishing. I'm usually capturing from SVideo and I found by accident that if the input is inactive (SVideo camera is off) then the AVDC tends to go inactive and vanish from the 1394 so that capture programs see no device. Switching on the analog source, and sometimes power cycling the device, seems to clear that. I'm not sure I've entirely figured out the situation, but mostly I can get it to work.

The box comes without a cent of software. No diagnostics, capture program, nothing. So you plug it in and are left guessing if it does not work. I did reach their tech support on the phone with a few minutes hold time, not bad, and they were polite but in the end could not help. It was not until I bought the extra 1394 adapter and stumbled over having active video running at program startup that I found a way to get it running.

Nice results but really somewhat rough on the user. By comparison, the second Pinnacle Mediabox DV just plugs into anything and works (my first M-DV was one with the firmware that crashed, and I bought the Canopus while waiting for the Pinnacle replacement). I've got some gripes about the Pinnacle too, but they sure demonstrate that it is possible to be a lot more 1394-friendly than the Canopus is.

Comments posted by Tanj from Other, December 13, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 7 of 10.

Got this card yesterday after reading all the reviews in this section - what a result - at last somthing that is as good as it says it is. Plugged in hooked up the bay and away it went.

The software Vegas video is a pile of crap though.

Would like to know what everyone else uses for this card.

Comments posted by martin from Other, December 13, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Having spent my original capture card budget on the disappointing DVD Xpress box from ADS, I was leery about popping another couple hundred to replace it with the ADVC 1394. I was even more nervous after reading threads on the Canopus forum about problems 1394 owners have had under Windows XP SP1.

I had the card out of the box, in my machine and capturing analog video converted to DV with no problem. Then I stopped capturing, then tried another capture and got the ominous black preview screen indicating the card was inert at least until I rebooted.

The bad news is that the problem first arose under SP1, meaning it is an XP software issue. The good news is that Microsoft has cooperated with Canopus to find a fix, a small file that is downloaded from the Canopus web site, installed once and completely resolves the issue. Since then I have never had a problem with capture. The even better news is that the card works great under the several software packages I've tried, solid and dependable over the course of hours of continuous A-DV conversion and capture.

I have come to believe that with the current generation of home-user hardware, if you have the hard drive space for .avi files, direct capture out of the A-D converter followed by off-line format conversion is far superior to attempting both A-D conversion AND mpeg-2 encoding in real-time, and provides greater flexibility in terms of output format and quality. This card will get you there at a reasonable price and without putting yet another box on your desktop.

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

This is a great card. It does exactly what it claims it will do. When I first installed the card, I was running WinMe. My AVI capture files were limited to 20 minutes (~4Gb). I learned that was the largest file a Fat32 file system would allow. I upgraded to WinXP and NTFS file system. The file size limit is now 6 Ektabytes, bigger than any existing Hard Drive. I use the WinDVD program that came with the card and am pleased with the results.

Comments posted by Gottschall from Other, October 03, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

ok after about 6 months thinking in get a tbc to have no problems in sync really old videos i decided to try this card.
i was not sure about the advc-50 or this one but then what for i wanted the advc-50? this one is much more ismple to install and as i didn't had any firewire internal port i decided about this.
i'm very happy with it.the main reason to bought it was the locked audio and it really works. i'm converting my old vhs tapes to dvd and i don't lost 1 single frame capturing concerts with about 2 hours.. and yes the tapes are really old. lot of them are high generation copies.
so what can i say about this? the card is great but to take the best from it you have to study a bit (dvdrhelp.com forums has everything you need) cause the software as a lot of ppl allready said is bad.
i'm using premiere to capture and edit the avi's and cce to encode and it's great. i tried the software that came with the converter but was a waste of time..
my dvd's are just like the vhs tapes. the quality is great. it's just a bit hard in the beggining to understand everything without a good instructions manual..
was a bit hard to figure some stuff probably cause i have used a pinnacle pctv for about 2 years and this is different.
anyway if your point is convert old vhs tapes to dvd this is your card. and if you want to convert direct from the tv just plug your vcr to the card and thats it ;)

if anyone needs more info about this converter send me one mail and i'll help you out.

Comments posted by v1p0n3 from Other, September 15, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Gentlemen,
this card really works fine. I use it together with Pinnacle's Studio 7 to capture Analog video. No more problems as with the original Pinnacle AVDV capture card.( I threw it away....for being the most incompatible hardware I ever ran into...)
You wont regret to use this card, no lost frames.

Comments posted by Miguel from Other, September 09, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I read the glowing comments on this forum - then ordered a ADVC 1394 (same process as ADVC 100)because my system has no firewire connection and I don't need to output analogue. THEN I found the Canopus Forum and read the horror stories posted there. Now I want to send ny card back when it arrives to-morrow. My needs are to capture video from my satellite receiver (S-Video) for viewing purposes and to record some programs for conversion to DivX or XviD to save HDD space. My System:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
Chipset: Via Apollo KT400 Northbridge + VIA 8235 Southbridge (VIA VT6306 IEEE1394 Controller)
CPU: Athlon XP 2400+ (333 MHz FSB)
RAM: 768 of DDR333 (PC2700)
HDD: Maxtor 120 Gig + Maxtor 80 Gig (both 7200)
OS: Win XP SP1
Capture into ShowShifter 2.1 (the best and easiest program I have Found)

Anybody have suggestions or help or experiance?

Comments posted by XBEKKETT from Other, August 17, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

Basically I wanted a capture card that would be :
- pretty cheap
- good/very good capture quality
- simple analog to DV conversion
- didn't want to buy an additional 1394/usb card

Just got it, conversion excellent, no-brainer to install in xp sp1 (go get the patch), good hardware...
So far I haven't tested a lot the software bundle (winproducer / Vegas 3 LE).
I capture in AVI-2 with a little freeware utility called WinDV.

Comments posted by Chris from Other, July 20, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Have used the Canopus ADVC-1394 W/ front bay option since January 03. Worked directly out of the box. The Motherboard issue was with other NLE boards such as the Raptor by Canopus. I have a VIA chipset listed as "unfriendly" by Canopus. I e-mailed their support before buying the card and was promply e-mail back that that ADVC-1394 had no known issues with my particular chip set. So far 25 old VHS tapes captured and rendered to DVD. 0 lost frames on all when captured which is a lot more when compared to the DC10 Plus card I had and no longer use.

Comments posted by Donp from Other, June 02, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

The information on this site saved me countless hours. Thanks to all.

I had a 20 minute video of some fast action (water sprays) on a VCR tape from many years ago. I needed high quality conversion to a streaming-video file. I also needed to edit it down.

I finally decided on this card because my goal was streaming video. I did not want hardware compression to MPEG2.

I installed the card without a problem and yes it didn't work until I installed the "fix" from the Canopus web site. Easy and quick once you know the problem! (Thanks to this site!)

Since this was my first video project, please pardon imprecise terminology.

I caputured the VHS video using the card (to I guess an compressed video file of some sort .avi) and using the suggested (and provided) program, Intervideo's WinProducer. It looked like a fairly basic program so I switched to the other one provided with the card, Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video 3.0 LE to do the editing

Being new to this area, I found that Vegas Video was not a very intuitive program to use. I found, however, that the tutuorial written in the manual was very good and allowed me to get up and editing quickly.

I downloaded the DivX codec and thought I could attach it to Vegas Video, but found that this was not allowed in the "limited" edition. So, I then exported (rendered?) the edited file (uncompressed..I have a big drive) and used Virtualdub to create the DivX file. (Again I leaned to do that from this site. Thanks!)

Bottom line, I got a very high quality 9 minute video in less than 200 meg. I am very pleased. The uncompressed video was about 20 gig so this is about a 100 to one compresssion to a DivX streaming video file.

In general I agree with the other comments....the documentation is a bit lacking. That is the only reason I rate this product a "9". This is great hardware with some decent software.

I recommend it.

Comments posted by R Myers from Other, April 27, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

I bought this card a few weeks ago & so far the quality of capture from my old vhs tapes has been excellent. The card *does* have problems with choppy sound on video-dubbed tapes which is probably a video syncing issue from the vcr(not the capture card). Installation was very easy & Win2k automatically located & loaded drivers. This card also integrates well with Vegas Video's capture software.

Comments posted by sbpstudios from Other, April 24, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

I got this card when they first became available, and paid more than $400 for it...and it has been worth every penny. I also got the front mounted, drive bay option.

At the time, it was the only card with audio synch, and for long captures (2+ hours) it worked, while nothing else I tried, did.

When the SP-1 update was installed on my XP system it stopped working, but Canopus had a patch for it on their web site, soon after.

If you don't already have a firewire port, this is the one to get.

If you already have firewire, then the ADVC-100 will work for you.

Comments posted by Dave from Other, April 23, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

I was looking for a card that would allow me to rip VHS and allow me to capture high quality mpeg 2 to be burned onto dvd.

This is not the card for me at all. I could see maybe buying this card if you need it for firewire and/or have a dv cam. I was unable to capture decent quality mpeg 2 in real time with a 1600+ athlon. In fact, any bitrates over 4000 (seemingly) would overload my processor which resulted in horrible quality captures.

I returned the card despite the 15% restocking fee at newegg.com (my first source for any computer stuff) and purchased a dazzle dvc 2 which has realtime capabilities and gives fantastic quality results and costs maybe $50 more.

I wasn't happy with this card and found it completly lame that you have to _register_ before you can access Canopus's drivers page, whether or not they provide you with what you are looking for. I'm sure canopus is good for something, but this card didn't justify their reputation to me.

Comments posted by Ed Porter from Other, April 09, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 2 of 10.

running partition magic and boot magic with win98 and win xp. refused to load drivers on both partitions.
Did a clean install on my second drive with 98.Drivers loaded but would'nt work.Sat down with a cup of coffee and read the back of the box.Minimum requirements win me.did a clean install with xp and it works fine.Ran xp over the top of the xp partition and it worked fine.excellent capture quality.vegas video sucks.system is msi 815e pro m/b with pent 3 800 384mb ram & gforce2 mx

Comments posted by jim from Other, March 22, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? ~~Win98~~ Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Thanks to all the guys who posted their comments here.... I bought my card and have no regrets for the purpose of converting my VHS tapes to VCD and DVD in the future.... Quality is the best yet I've seen..... Compared to Pinnacle products of the same price range (I bought it here in the Philippines for 12,000 pesos), this one is so easy to use...... Now I am happy and content...... And with all its features (the firewire & DV), I can use this card for a long time......

Comments posted by Ner from Other, March 11, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

This card is great! Using Adobe Premiere 6.5, I was able to capture my VHS-C 90-minute tapes without a single frame being lost or the audio being our of sync. I give it 9 only it doesn't have any output ports. Now all I need now is my DVD burner, and I'll be making my own DVDs!

Comments posted by Tony from Other, January 15, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

This card is *NOT* compatible with Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (SP1) as documented by Canopus in their forums. It has been known since October, but as of January, still not resolved.

http://forum.canopus.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Bo ... mp;fpart=1

If you do not install SP1, the card works very well and capture quality is excellent. Consider the Canopus ADVC-100 or another brand card instead.

Comments posted by jaydee from Other, January 09, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? ~~WinXP~~ Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 5 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.