However, with the new system, this box appears to my video editing software (Ulead VideoStudio 7) as a DV camera, so it's simple to edit.

The bad news is that all of my video cpature software ASSUMES this is a DV camera, so you get all sorts of spurious information onscreen -- like DV controls, or DV timecodes, etc.

If you are aware of the fact that those controls won't work, or that the timecode is meaningless, this unit works like a charm to capture your analog video, package it as DV and deliver it to your PC with little or no dropped frames and generally rock solid video/audio synch (BTW -- if the audio gets unsynched, the only guaranteed solution I've had is to restart the capture from a clean spot on the videotape -- no snow, no tracking errors).

Not as troublesome as some seem to think (Rating: 5.00)
Review : Following my order of the ADVC-100 I found many disturbing things on the internet. Most users had difficulties capturing analog to MPEG2 for burning onto DVD. Don't let yourself be scared off. Fear mongers stating that the converter captures DV files which then have to be converted to MPEG2 aren't using the right interface software. The ADVC-100 is a stand alone external unit without a software suite of its own and relies on whatever captures software you choose. I could just be lucky but both My WinProducer and my Nero Burning software detect the device instantly and allow choices of AVI, DV or MPEG2 format for file capture.

Granted, having an external device may not be as convenient as a VIVO internal card, but compared to other external capture boxes the ADVC-100 is tiny and unobtrusive. Better yet, it's IEEE Firewire compliant as opposed to the 1.0 and 2.0 USB connections that for the most part fall short with frame droppings and miss-synced audio during capture.

If you're looking for a straight forward plug and play unit this is it. Just make sure that you have a capture card with Firewire input capabilities such as the Sound Blaster Audigy series before purchasing this product.

Foolproof, worked perfectly on first try (Rating: 5.00)
Review : Why I needed this:

I wanted to convert a bunch of my old tapes into DVDs, but when I read the reviews of those products, I was scared off by reports of myriad problems and glitches. The good reviews for the Canopus encouraged me to try it and I was not disappointed!

How it works:

The Canopus plugs into your PC's 1394 (Firewire) port (if your PC doesn't have one, you can get an add-on card for about $30).

The Canopus has no software. You just plug in a few cables and turn it on. When I did that, Windows XP saw it, offered to start Windows Movie maker to do the capture, and within about 2 minutes I had captured my first movie (with perfectly synched audio).

The only oddity I noticed was that I didn't hear audio during the capture preview, even though the audio was perfectly captured when I played back.

How it compares:

The Canopus is closer to a video capture card than a full blown 'Make your videos into DVDs' product like Dazzle or DVD Express, because the Canopus doesn't include any software.

But because the Canopus is a 1394/Firewire device, it's compatible with lots of video software. For example, on my Windows XP system, I already had 3 software packages I could use with the Canopus:
- Windows Movie Maker (came with XP)
- DV Plus 2.0 (came with my 1394 card)
- Nero (came with my DVD burner)

By the way, even though the Canopus is similar to a video capture card, it's better -- compared to my ATI TV-wonder, the Canopus has these advantages: it digitizes audio as well as video (so you don't have to hook up extra audio cables and worry about synch), it doesn't care what resolution my screen is set to, it's higher quality, and there's no fiddly driver software.

Bottom line:

If you don't mind doing a little mixing and matching of components and software, the Canopus will let you put together a reliable and flexible video editing system that will probably work better than any of the 'all-in-one' products out there so far.

Plug And Play, Serious!! (Rating: 5.00)
Review : I must say this product is exactly as it says. I simply took it out of the package(Which I recieved in less than 24 hours with free shipping from Amazon.com) and plugged in the cables and went with it. It connected to Movie Maker 2 and I was off.
I definitely recomend this to ayone looking to put old vhs movies onto DVD's for safe storage.

Works with iMovie 4.0 / TiVo (Rating: 5.00)
Review : I purchased this little box, the size of a medium sized book, recently and have had a very smooth experience with it. I wanted to import a TV show (Jeopardy!) on which I appeared, so I researched various hardware solutions (almost bought the Formac offering) and decided that this box was the best regarded. I connected my TiVo to the box using the s-Video and RCA audio connectors, and I connected the Canopus to my Powerbook G4 12" via the Firewire connection. iMovie 4 saw the connection immediately and I was importing video seconds later; making clips for each of the 4 sections of the show.

Then it was a simple matter to edit my clips together, add some still frames and titles and export to iDVD 4.0.1 with which I burnt a very nice DVD. People actually complimented the quality of the video, which of course was limited by it's NTSC original source, but at least it was a accurate replica of the original with no dropped frames or loss of audio sync.