Canopus 77010150100 ADVC110 Converter

Being a very energenic home movie maker, I have a lot of VCR tapes that I want to transfer to my editing computer. I was looking for a analog to digital converter, and eventually bought the Canopus 110, judging by the excellent user reviews.

The canopus 110 is very simple to use. If you have a firewire port in your computer, then you have all the equipment you need to use Canopus (Well, an editing system helps too!). The canopus has ports on the front and the back, where you plug in the cables from the VCR (or DVD), and then put the firewire cable into the canopus and your computer.

When I got the canopus, it took me about fifteen minutes to get it up and running. I connected the VCR cables in the front, connected the firewire in the back, and presto! Instant power. Canopus was ready to go. I went into my editing system (I use Avid DV express by the way), clicked "auto-configure" for the capture settings, and I was all set to go. That was all I had to do!

From the projects that i've copied onto my system, There is no degeneration or quality loss from the origional product. Canopus transferrs the tape material exactly as it is. If the quality is great, then it will be great on the system. If the quality of the tape is bad, then it will be bad on the system.

So far, all's good and wonderful right? Well, Canopus has a dark little secret that the manufacturer doesn't tell you. Canopus 110 has a small chip built in that detects when you're trying to transfer copyrighted material (such as a tape of a movie). If it detects it, a small red light comes on, and the footage you copy is black (As one review site said (in a very annoying way), "That'll teach you!"). If you have old movies that you want to copy to a DVD for personal use, this is bad news.

However, there is a way past this security feature, and it's built into the system. When you first turn Canopus on, simply press the select button down for roughly twenty seconds. Now the system will ignore copyright concerns, and you can copy all the movies you want, until you turn Canopus off. However, I don't recommend using this feature for illegal means.

All in all, Canopus is a very usefull gadget. I highly recomend it.

I've been using the Canopus ADVC110 with an Intel iMac using iMovie to edit a wedding video from a rather poor VHS recording. The 110 did a great, hassle free job of cleaning up the video. I hooked it up right out of the box using the supplied cables with no external drivers or software and in 10 minuets or less I was converting the video to a digital recording. When I opened iMovie it immediately recognized the Canopus with no problems. I ordered the power supply with mine, but if you use the supplied 6 pin Firewire cable you shouldn't need the power supply. I'm using component connection between the Canopus and the VCR and you do have another choice of using S-video connectivity. My only complaint about this product is that it doesn't have a power on/off switch so the unit is always on unless you pull the plug. I highly recommend this product especially if you use an Apple computer.

Buy Canopus 77010150100 ADVC110 Converter Now

I found the Canopus ADVC110 to be unusable on older (c. 10 years) Hi8 tapes. Symptomatically, there would be times where the frames would jump around, or black out entirely for parts of a second in the ADVC110 digital output stream. What seems to be happening is that the sync signal on the edge of older Hi8 tapes may be degraded, and the codec of the ADVC110 is not robust against such degradation; it loses sync on the frame, or gives up entirely and blacks out the output. Changing the fixed sync dip switch on the ADVC110 did not help it. (The same problem also occurred digitizing an old VHS tape). I put the same Hi8 tapes through the pass-through digitizer on a Sony DCR-HC32, and it had no problems whatsoever. The ADVC110 codec also produces more contrasty images than the Sony DCR-HC32; details in shadow are lost; frames are grainier; noise in the tape signals are amplified into subtle rainbow waves on the ADVC110, not so noticeable on the Sony, which seems to have a more linear codec. So, for a little more money you can buy a camcorder with more robust A to D conversion and better image than the ADVC110.

Read Best Reviews of Canopus 77010150100 ADVC110 Converter Here

I was using the PLEXTOR PX-M402U to transfer home movies to DVD but had nothing but problems! Once the home movies were transferred the video and audio were always out of sync. I got rid of it and bought the CANOPUS ADVC110 and I've had NO problems...everything looks great and is in sync! It costs more but it's worth it!

Want Canopus 77010150100 ADVC110 Converter Discount?

I had tried several USB devices to capture old VHS and 8mm tape on a well equipped Windows box but would either have things work poorly or not at all. That was a big driving force to my switch from Windows to MAC. I initially tried one of my cheap USB devices on the MAC and it did not work. Bought the Canopus and it works flawlessly! There are lots of cheaper converters out there, but as always, you get what you pay for.