impression on canopus ADVC-50

[berserk]

hi all!
can you tell me about canopus ADVC-50 quality ?

I want to capture analog and digital video, (tried with marvel g450tv but with poor performance) and under suggest of Mr Mordrid i've found this product but before the buy (299€) i want to listen your impressions.
Thanks

[fberger]

The quality is very good. The two caveats I have had so far since I bought it in June 2002 are:

1. Capturing old PAL 8mm video, saturation is a little too low. A software filter is necessary to boost it back to normal. It seems to be happening only with PAL captures though.

2. Incompatibility with Windows XP SP1. You can only capture once, then if you stop and intend to restart you'll get a black screen. Canopus has been aware of the problem for months but so far has no official fix. They are testing a potential fix right now, and I've requested it but they've been slow responding. So do not use XP SP1 for now, or be ready to reboot between captures. For more information visit the canopus forums, there's a little activity nowadays.

Fred

[moreau]

can't offer you direct experience with this product. However, I can tell you that when this product was released, there were a lot of threads reviewing it, and most were quite positive.

I had pretty much convinced myself to purchase this or one of it's sister products. But, then they dropped the RT.X10 in price by 100 dollars, and I opted for that.

as a prebuy analysis, it really does look like a good, if limited, product.

CEM

[Brian Ellis]

I can't speak for the ADVC-50, but I've been using the ADVC-100 for many months. The quality is excellent. At least as good as my old Marvel for 99% of shots. The only caveat I make is that DV artifacting may be slightly poorer for extremely rapidly moving images.

If you plan on using MSP7, I'd go for the 100, rather than the 50, because it will give you output to TV during editing/preview, an extra screen with real TV looks and not what a graphics card gives. OK, costs a bit more but really worth it, IMHO. Wouldn't be without this feature, now!

[fberger]

I just got the fix I mentionned earlier from Canopus Tech support. I installed it and it seems good so far. I used it on my XP SP1 partition and I was able to start/stop repeatedly without any problems.

I don't know what it did, it's a small executable with no GUI, but it worked.

I agree with Brian, if you don't have a dual head graphics card, or want to use 2 monitors, then the 100 gives you a TV-Out for an additional $100.

I personally wanted a solution integrated into my PC, was tired of the Marvel BOB and had no room on my desk for another box, so the 50 worked fine for me. I have a G400 dual head for TV output.

[berserk]

i found adv50 for 249€, i'm interested on the final result of the movie. Anyone has tried to put vhs or composite tv on dvd ?

[Brian Ellis]

I've done a load of commercial and home brew VHS>DVD transfers. No problem with ADVC-100. Quality is, of course, no better that the original, but some corrections can be made (colour balance, noise etc.). 150 minutes OK but 180 minutes starts to look slightly poorer.