ADS Pyro A/V Link working perfectly

farss wrote on 11/10/2003, 3:38 AM

Thanks in part to a superhuman effort by SPOT I have this thing working.
That man deserves a standing ovation where ever he goes. Concerned about my troubles he went out and bought the latest model just to prove it works as well as the one he'd reviewed which it did. I should add he did this during a stop over while heading oveerseas.

So how come it works now. Well I had imported my unit from the US as it worked out at half the price of buying one locally due to the huge discount on offer in the US. As our local power is 240 V I had to use my own power supply and the unit needs a 5V plug pack which are not that common. As luck had it (or not) I had a quite beefy one lying around still brand new so I hooked it up to the Pyro.

For some reason that was causing the problem, probably the Pyro doesn't draw enough current to get the big supply to regulate properly. I switched back to the supplied unit run from a 240 - 110V transformer and it hasn't hiccuped once. Video looks excellent.

I did have a few dramas getting it going, the DIP switches on the back may need a little tweaking, particularly 2 and 3. You need to power the unit off and on to get it to read the switches by the way.

So I hope i haven't led anyone to believe these units are no good or that SPOTs reviews are not to be trusted. If I have my most humble apologies to all concerned.

I will add one word of caution. ADS do claim that this unit can be used for 'Hassle free capture from VHS'. This is a bit of a stretch of the truth. It'll work as well as any of the units out there regardless of price but if you have very poor or damaged tapes that cause sync loss then this kind of unit is going to make things worse once the video is digitized. The only way to get a good capture is to use a Time Base Corrector or a VCR that has one. Digital 8 cameras that do passthrough have one as they need it to play Hi8 tapes. Why no one makes an A to D converter with one I cannot determine, maybe they're running scared of the Macrovision people.

Comments

farss wrote on 11/10/2003, 4:00 AM

Bump,
just wanted to get this above my previous post.

Grazie wrote on 11/10/2003, 4:12 AM

Excellent news! Clean power supplies eh?

Nice one farss,

G

farss wrote on 11/10/2003, 4:23 AM

I'm feeling more and more like a complete dunce, thirty years working with computers (I mean the BIG kind) and serious power supplies and all the symptoms pointed to exaclty that now that I look back.

All I can say in my defense is at least I didn't break out in CAPS all over the place.

vitalforces wrote on 11/10/2003, 12:02 PM

Nevertheless--I have owned a Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge, then when it died (an ugly death) a few months ago I briefly had an ADS Pyro like farss', then traded it in for a Canopus ADVC-100. I truly did notice a distinction between the performance of the Pyro and the ADVC-100. The latter unit seems to have a more stable and 'intelligent' chip which never fails to send a good signal, even when receiving VHS and Hi-8 signals with various breaks, noise and glitches. There's no equivalent of holding the TV rabbit ears in a certain position to get the best performance, which was my experience with the other two units. I also agree that the picture seemed brighter and sharper with the ADVC-100, which is consistent with the snapshots SPOT posted on his web review.

Having already spent hard-earned money on one unit rather than another, a person shouldn't be second-guessed by a web poster like me. I'm sure that the final product these units contribute to creating, will be perfectly acceptable either way. It's just that I don't have to 'hold my breath' when using the ADVC-100.

These comments are not really for farss, then, who has made his choice and is satisfied with it. I just wanted to offer another view for the visitors.

farss wrote on 11/10/2003, 2:18 PM

We still have a Dazzle, the one thing I can say is it doesn't dazzle!
Although I've had it turn good audio into some of the wierdest sounds I've ever heard, that was pretty dazzling.

farss wrote on 11/10/2003, 2:54 PM

I should add that this unit has been through several revisions, it used to be a model 500, then it went to 550 Rev A, the one I have is 550 Rev B so they may well have made some further improvements.

As an output device it seems to outperform my D8 camera, using that to drive the preview monitor (a really chaep TV) jumping from place to place on the T/L the monitor would loose sync. With the Pyro it's rock soild, I suspect the Pyro is clamping the levels as the PTT headers also don't cause the monitor to thow a wobbly either. Purists may say this isn't a good thing, for me it's a godsend.

kevgl wrote on 11/12/2003, 7:20 PM

Sounds like this might be the go
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC300/pt_advc300.asp

TBC and everything ....

Cheers

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/12/2003, 8:59 PM

glad to hear you finally got it happening, Farss! Took me a day or so to see the post, as I'm now in humid and hot Singapore, ready to take on the VASST masses.

farss wrote on 11/13/2003, 1:39 AM

Yeah,
the local rep rang me today, something about how responsive Canopus are to customers suggestions.

Local price sounds good too.

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/13/2003, 1:41 AM

Mark and the boys there in Sydney are really excellent people! I wish I'd been able to bring this VASST to Australia again, to see the folks from New Magic. They are honest, and quite cool to deal with.

farss wrote on 11/13/2003, 1:58 AM

I'e just read as much as there is about the ADVC-300. This looks like a mighty interesting box!

You can tweak the analogue video by a Canopus app as its being digitised.
How will this sit with VV?
A whole world of possibilties are opened up me thinks or maybe a whole can of worms!

I maybe deluding myself here but wouldn't it be better making adjustments before conversion?

Capture video, store setting into keyframes on the T/L and then recapture with those settings sent to capture device to tweak the analogue signal.

OK to make this a real goer you'd need scopes on capture, machine control, RS422 etc.

Or is this a plain stupid idea on my part, seems like the ADVC-300 has so much processing in it that maybe it'll produce excellent results without much tweaking anyway. Hope all the internal tricks can be disabled in case you don't like what they are doing to your signal.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

farss wrote on 11/13/2003, 2:09 AM

I met Mark at the last SMPTE in Sydney, wish they had a bigger budget although he got a lot of interest by not being intimidating. Seems to me a lot of the bigger, flashier stands put some people off, you know as soon as you enter the 'kill' zone you're going to be swooped on, which mught be OK if it was by people who actually knew anything.

It would be good to get some more happening is Sydney, there's a hell of a lot of production going on here but it's in a very different sphere. The lower end of the business is suffering badly as it is pretty much everywhere. The corporate dollars just aren't there anymore and that's what kept a lot of production houses going and people employed.

kevgl wrote on 11/13/2003, 5:56 PM

Yeah - I've been dealing with Mark for at least 10 years now. Knows his stuff and isn't in your face. Back since the days of my Amigas and a DPS Personal Animation Recorder :-)

Cheers