Canopus DVStorm2 Capture Card

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Canopus DVStorm2

DV/Firewire
Analog VideoIn
MPEG1 hardware
MPEG2 hardware

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

PCI

$1000

8.8/10
12 votes

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Description (from the manufacturer site)

Unlike any other realtime editing system, DVStorm2 is capable of performing unlimited simultaneous realtime video filters, titles and graphics layers. This power and expandability is made possible by Canopus’s proprietary scalable video architecture. Pioneered by Canopus in 1998, Scalable Video Technology ensures that DVStorm2’s realtime editing capabilities expand as CPU power increases. Scalability ensures a greater return on investment and a long product life.

No Limits Realtime Editing
> 5 simultaneous realtime video tracks.
> Unlimited simultaneous realtime title and
graphic layers.
> 30 realtime video filters.
> 7 realtime audio filters.
> Perspective / 3D picture-in-picture.
> Simultaneous unrestricted combinations for all of
the above.
> 28 realtime 2D and 3D transition groups with hundreds of presets.
> Realtime DV and analog output.
> Full YUV editing and processing

StormEncoder - Hardware MPEG Encoding
(Optionally available for DVStorm2 Lite)
> Direct realtime capture to MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 with MediaCruise
> Output from Storm Edit or Adobe Premiere timelines
> Encodes MPEG-1: Elementary and System streams
> Encodes MPEG-2: Elementary and Program streams
> Supports MP@ML (I, P, B frames) DVD-compatible encoding
> Adjustable bitrate control (CBR/VBR, 1-15Mbps)
> PCM WAV or MPEG Layer II audio support

Video Inputs
> IEEE 1394 (4-pin)
> Composite video (CVBS), RCA jack
> S-Video (Y/C), mini-DIN
> NTSC and PAL

Visit manufacturer's site

Comments

13 comments, Showing 1 to 13 comments

I have had the canopus dvstorm2 for 3 years now and it has always worked great. high quality video with zero frame loss. I have rendered a movie while playing my favorite first person shooter online and still kept an excellent quality picture. It had always worked flawlessly with adobe premere pro, I tried my best to purposely cause this card to fail with any success.
i have a P4 2.4 HT, 40 gig HD for windows, 250 gig HD for editing, 20 gig HD for general storage. 512M dual channel DDR RAM, P865 chipset on an intel board, and a ton of clients :)

Comments posted by Wil from United States, April 06, 2005:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Wonderful to finally find a capture card that doesn't cause my resultant AVI losing audio/video synch like I did with the extremely problematic ATI AIW 8500DV. After over a year of relentless pursuit of a fix for my ATI card, I chucked it in favor of this Canopus masterpiece! Works well, and thats all that matters to me!

Comments posted by Darren from United States, December 24, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

We have an old dvstorm and recently bought another dvstorm2. And I must say I am very disappointed in canopus. The new Dvstorm2 is a lot more buggier than the old one. It doesn't work properly with Premiere Pro: audio problems, buggy and a lot of the new basic features aren't working. They simply refuse to deliver a new plugin for Premiere Pro. Probably because they now have their own edit product: Edius. The card didn't work at all on a asus motherboard with NVIDIA chipset and AMD processor. Apparently it is better to put the card in an intel system!

Comments posted by Marjan from Netherlands, December 08, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 5 of 10.

I just recently purchased a DVStorm for use with my TV capturing/editing. The MPEG-2 hardware encoder is of excellent quality... absolutely, positively much better than the Hauppauge PVR 250. I also sold my Hauppauge WinTV.

The DVStorm captures raw video, DV, or MPEG-1/2 if you have the MPEG daughterboard installed.

The DVStorm comes with a Video for Windows driver you can use to capture the highest quality video you will ever see in your favorite apps. I use VirtualDub. If you don't want to capture and transcode in software, like say by using PicVideo MJPEG or DivX, use the StormVideo app to capture to DV in hardware. You'll have a nice stream you can transcode to your favorite format, but without taking up gobs of CPU and disk space.

Only one caveat so far, the DVStorm DOES NOT LIKE KT266A-BASED MOTHERBOARDS. Let me see if I can make this more clear: DO NOT USE THE DVSTORM WITH KT266A MOTHERBOARDS. My wife and I both have MSI KT2 Combos with VIA KT266A northbridges, and the card absolutely, positive does not work.

I have a KT400-based board on order, after using the card successfully in a friend's box.

Comments posted by Phil Jensen from United States, May 09, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

I have three things to say about the Storm:
It works, It works, and it works.

It might be because I give it enough elbow room (P4 2.5Ghz CPU, 1Gb RAM, 320Gb HD space), but off all the capture cards I have had under my hands, it works best for it's price.

What is very interesting is the number of users that replaces their DV500's with the Storm... I am also one, having used Pinnacle (DC30+, DV500+, Studio Delux), Dazzle, and Leadtek I have replaced them all with a Canpous DV Storm.

Comments posted by Jury Nel from South Africa, February 04, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

The DVStorm2 has worked flawlessly. I use the system to cpature from VHS, MiniDV, and TV directly to MPEG2. Realtime, high quality, effortless encoding. Not cheap but worth it.

Comments posted by Tony from United States, January 28, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

Here is info about AMD Opteron/Athlon64/DVStorm2/AMD chipset info:

-------------------------------------
info@canopus.co.jp info@canopus.co.jp

Dear Mr.Steve P

Thank you for your mail.
DVStorm 2 did a test in the environment of AMD8111 +8151 .
That acts normally as a result was confirmed.

Best Regards,
Canopus Co., Ltd.
Support Staff
---------------------------------------------

TSC.Support@caexmtap.amd.com TSC.Support@caexmtap.amd.com

Hello Steve,

Thank you for contacting AMD's Technical Service Center. Actually, no
you should not have any issues. In fact, the Canopus folks really like
the Opteron solution very much. You might even want to contact them to
hear their experience with Opteron based solutions first hand.
However, I can tell you that you will likely be very happy with an
Opteron based video editing box.

The Opteron uses a completely different chipset and chip to chip
interconnect so the limited bandwidth issues have long since been
resolved with the Opteron based solutions.

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, please feel free to
contact me.

Respectfully,
Jay Taylor
Supervisor / Apps Engineer
AMD TSC

We welcome your feedback and suggestions to help us improve our
services to you. To provide this information to us, we ask that you
please click on this link, or copy/paste into your browser, and
complete our short survey. Thanks, in advance, for your comments.

Comments posted by Steve Podgorski from Other, December 19, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I just got my DVStorm2 Pro+, and I must indicate my enjoyment of it so far.

Note that it is not just a capture card, but a hardware based video editing solution. Generally, it is for capturing DV, then providing processing power for editing and effects using video editing software EDIUS or Premiere Pro. It also has a daughterboard installed for MPEG capture and encoding.

After 2 years or more of struggling with various consumer level methods of capturing, encoding, and authoring DVD archives of valued videos, the DVStorm2 is the first one I can take seriously.

I've used products such as Dazzle DVC2, ADS IDVD 1 & 2, Snazzi, ATI, TMPGEnc, MPEGPro EMR, numerous MPEG editors, and ended up wasting a lot of time and money, and I don't know how many DVD-R blanks. MPEG capture quality was always sub-par for one reason or another, editing was frustrating, audio sync a nightmare, and software encoding took forever.

I bit the bullet and spent the semi-serious scratch on the DVStorm2 and it may be the best move I've made. In 2 days I've finished 2 very important projects with results I feel very comfortable with. It may have paid for itself by ulcer prevention alone.

With one package, being able to capture and edit DV files smoothly, then do hardware encoding in realtime with very good resulting quality, is such a relief. And there seems to be some default filtering in the capturing that does some usable improvement of VHS tapes.

I may now actually be able to get the work done that I've wanted to, instead of spending my life troubleshooting.

For me, the best solution is using the DVStorm2 to capture and edit DV files using EDIUS, then output to a final MPEG file using the hardware encoding. That's what MPEG is really for anyway.

You can capture realtime to MPEG using MPEGCapture, and the quality will be great, but editing MPEG will NEVER be perfect. MPEGCraft does a very basic but decent job editing, but GOP rendering causes glitches, and re-encoding reduces quality. So I use realtime MPEG capture for things that won't be edited (e.g. videotape archiving).

The DVStorm2 has AV out that can feed a VCR, so you can output edited DV files using EDIUS, and you can use MPEGCraft to output MPEG files.

There is a lot of confusion regrading Canopus drivers for using the DVStorm with the bundled Premiere Pro. I've held off installing PremPro for now. But EDIUS, MPEGCapture, and MPEGCraft work fine for what I'm doing right now.

Be aware, there have recently been major changes in the software package, and Canopus is a bit disorganized about instructions on setup and use of the DVStorm2. This, and the driver problems with PremPro are why I gave it a "9" instead of a "10".

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

After EZDV it was easy to youse

Comments posted by Madsen from Other, May 23, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

I got this card to replace my Pinnacle DV500 DVD package. This card is much better, but also cost more. I think it was worth the extra money. I buy equipment like this now based on how good the feed back on thier own forum is and Canopus was way better then Pinnacle.

The features I really like about this card over the DV500:

1) Real time MPEG2 capture
2) Can capture/encode in hardware half D1 res (352x480)
3) Scalability, faster the system, the more realtime effects.
4) No audio sync problems when capturing old analog footage.
5) I can capture three video streams at once.
6) You can have 5 video streams in premiere at once in realtime.
7) Great forum on the Canopus site

I really havn't had any problems with it so far, compared to the dv500 where I really had to use allot of work arounds to get anything done.

Comments posted by Todd Burke from Other, March 07, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

I've new to video editing, I started at church on Trinity system by Global Streams. For $1300 the DV Storm is a very good card. Premiere 6.5 was a great idea. All of the realtime capabilities along with the great performance make this worth every penny. I also own Avid XpressDV 3.0 and it's no where near as stable as the Storm. The learning curve on Premiere verses Avid is much easier too! For BANG for your BUCK I'll put my last on the DV Storm2 by Canopus.

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

forget about full realtime,
though a lot is
win xp P4 2.0 ghz, asus 4ptE, geforce4, 512 rimm

Comments posted by paulk from Other, December 07, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 7 of 10.

This card is basically the DV Storm Card with the MPEG Encoder Card built onto it. It also comes with a very good break out box. You can also get this with Premiere 6.5.

I got mine with all the above and it also comes with a host of Canopus own software.

Canopus NAVI - Good tape cataloging program
Canopus Video - Basic but powerful Capture software
Canopus Audio - Not really played with this, but again looks good.
Canopus StormEdit - Canopus version of Adobe Premiere. Fairly basic when compared with Premiere but very intuitive.

It also comes with a host of Premiere Real-Time effects and transitions and they fit in very well with Premiere.

The quality of the Hardware Encoder is very good and very fast, however, doing some basic tests their software version is even better.

Lots of other software bits and pieces are available but have not had a chance to look at this.

The card for capturing is very good. Captured from Video, DVD and TV souces, audio quality is excellent along with very good video and so far no dropped frames.

At the moment no issues with this card, although I do recommend that you get the recently updated patch from the canopus web site. http://www.canopus.com

Hope this helps others decide on a excellent and powerful card.

Comments posted by darkufo from Other, October 29, 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
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