Canopus ADVC 110

...them on DVD using the Canopus ADVC110.

BACKGROUND INFO
Some of you may ask why you want to do this? The reason I started to do it is because I've got hundreds of video tapes in the attic, from years of taping programmes from the TV and even old home videos (e.g. gig videos of my band performing years ago), and some of these tapes include some very rare stuff which has not or is ever likely to be released officially on DVD. I ...
...and found the name of Canopus cropping up a lot. Looking more closely at their product recomendations, users were raving about professional quality results at a lot less than professional quality prices. Another key factor was the reputed ease of use and very little in the way of set-up requirements needed. Very much a plug-and-play type machine with good results, by all acounts. The basic idea of devices such as the ADVC110 is that the original ... more

This review is aimed to help people who wish to convert their old VHS (or Betamax) tapes into digital form and ultimately to preserve them on DVD using the Canopus ADVC110.

BACKGROUND INFO
Some of you may ask why you want to do this? The reason I started to do it is because I've got hundreds of video tapes in the attic, from years of taping programmes from the TV and even old home videos (e.g. gig videos of my band performing years ago), and some of these tapes include some very rare stuff which has not or is ever likely to be released officially on DVD. I therefore decided to try and start putting the best of the stuff onto DVD, before the original tapes degraded and so as I didn't have to risk getting the precious tapes chewed up in a VCR.

At about this time I was having a new PC built by a colleague at work and I asked him to include a PCI TV card in the machine, with a view to using this as a way of connecting a VCR to the computer. After many hours trying to do this, I found it very time consuming and produced substandard results, mainly sound and vision out of sync, no matter what additional software I used.

I then scoured the video transfer/conversion forums for a while and found the name of Canopus cropping up a lot. Looking more closely at their product recomendations, users were raving about professional quality results at a lot less than professional quality prices. Another key factor was the reputed ease of use and very little in the way of set-up requirements needed. Very much a plug-and-play type machine with good results, by all acounts. The basic idea of devices such as the ADVC110 is that the original analogue signal is converted to DV (digital video) before it hits the computer with no loss of audio/video sync, therefore it is already in a computer compatible format and is easy to manipulate via suitable software. I decided to take the plunge.

THE ACTUAL REVIEW
Ater spending about half an hour shopping around on the net, I luckily came across a digital video online shoip in London who had a sale on, including some products from the Canopus range. I managed to get the Canopus ADVC110 for about £50.00 less than all the other places had it at! A good start.

The Canopus ADVC110 (ADVC stands for Advanced Digital Video Converter incidentally) arrived promptly, 2 days later and I set to work immediately hooking it up to my Philips Stereo VCR and PC.

This unit can work in two main modes i.e. DIGITAL IN mode or ANALOGUE IN mode. This first mode I've never needed to use yet, but the concept is that you can input a DV (Digital Video) signal, say from a camcorder into either the 4-pin Firewire socket on the front panel, or the 6-pin Firewire socket on the back (both sockets are IN/OUT). The DV signal is then converted to Analogue, and is output on the Super Video and Composite Video connectors on the back, so this accomplishes Digital to Analogue conversion. ANALOGUE IN mode accepts Composite Video or Super Video signal inputs, there are also inputs for Left and Right audio in. This is flexible enough to cope with any source of old or new VCR. This analogue input is converted to a DV signal from either the 4-pin or 6-pin Firewire sockets. If using the 4-pin out option (say to connect to camcorder) you also need a power adapter for the Canopus ADVC110. However if you are feeding the DV output to a PC with the 6-pin cable (supplied with the unit), this cable also powers up the Canopus ADVC110 negating the need for a power adapter. Also present are Audio L & R input and output sockets, so sound is also converted and kept in sync with the video.

As previously mentioned there is very little in the way of a setup procedure. The user manual is also slim and uncomplicated reflecting the ease of use. What set up there is consists of six DIP switches mounted on the bottom of the unit. Mostly these can be left at their default factory settings, bar the ones selecting NTSC or PAL configuration which I had to make sure were changed from NTSC to PAL.

All that needed to be done after that was to set up and use a good video capture/conversion programme, in my case I use Ulead DVD Movie Factory 3 (a superb and inexpensive piece of software). This programme receives and captures the DV signal from the Canopus and converts it to MPEG, as well as allowing you to author and burn a DVD.

Using the ADVC110 and my favoured Ulead software, I have never failed to convert any tape to DVD. While all this equipment cannot convert a VHS recording into DVD quality it does preserve the original recording on DVD so the quality will never get any worse (assuming use of good blank DVD-R's of course)

Another very useful feature of the ADVC110 (although it doesn't tell you in the manual) is that the device includes a hidden extra function of "Macrovision Defeat". i.e. If you wish to transfer an old pre-recorded VHS tape, which has Macrovision protection, to DVD the Macrovision protection can be over-ridden by holding the Input Select button down for about 20 seconds! they are probably not allowed to tell you that in the manual. LOL.  

...less