Canopus ADVC100 Trouble-Shooting

jayhink wrote on 12/29/2003, 1:14 AM
Hi everyone -- This is my first time here. My name is Jason and I am from Oregon.

I just got Canopus ADVC-100 for Christmas. I hooked it up and captured some analog video to start working with in Vegas. It worked really great and everything was going fine. I put on some old news clips from work and it kind of stopped for a minute or two and then started again.

I stopped for the day and then went to load on some more today and now when I go to capture it says "please connect device". We have this running through firewire and it acts as though nothing is coming through.

We have music on an external hard drive that we transfer through firewire and we hooked that up and it worked fine so the firewire is working but Vegas will not detect the Canopus device. We also have Windows Movie Maker (it came with XP) and we get the same message in that program.

My Canopus has only had a couple of hours of video ran through it so what am I doing wrong?

I have disconected and re-hooked ... re-hooked in different orders (i.e. turned off PC, hooked wires; turned on PC, hooked wores); rebooted etc.etc.. I do hope it didn't get surged or anything like that. All the status lights and indicators seem to be working on the unit.

Thanks for the replies,
Jason Hink

Comments

farss wrote on 12/29/2003, 2:53 AM
A few things to check.
1) Enable device control needs to be unchecked in VidCap
2) Connect ADVC-100 to DV VCR or camera and to analogue device, see if it works that way.
3) Try it on a different PC if possible.

If you can not get it to work in any of the situations I'd say its a fair bet it has died. Most likely culprit would be the firewire interface chip in the unit. Its internals will still run so all the status LEDs etc will light but the unit will be unable to talk to the outside world.
tbethel wrote on 12/29/2003, 3:55 AM
I also had problems with a connector on the firewire cable that had gone bad. Replace the cable first with a new one or one that is of known conditiion.

-TOM-
vitalforces wrote on 12/29/2003, 9:31 AM
I've also read that a Texas Instruments chip on a firewire PCI card is not fully compatible with the Oxford chip built into the ADVC100 hardware. Inexpensive alternate cards like OrangeMicro have compatible non-TI chips. (This is anecdotal and not a scientific analysis--it worked on my system.)
InterceptPoint wrote on 12/29/2003, 10:44 AM
Two questions for you:

1. Does XP see the ADVC-100. It should show up under Scanners and Cameras in My Computer in XP?

2. What other Firewire devices do you have and do they show up properly in My Computer when they are turned on?

I have experienced similar problems and they ended up being XP+Firewire related. My solution might do the trick depending on your symptoms. In my case the symptom was occassional failure of XP to detect the presence of Firewire devices including my ADVC-100 and my TRV900. It was much more of a problem with the TRV900 but I did see it with ADVC-100 on occasion.
jayhink wrote on 12/29/2003, 3:29 PM
With winXP home edition it showed up when first installed the device. When plugging in the external maxtor hard drive it connects and shows up properly in 'my computer'. Never had a problem with the hard drive. Works like a charm. We are using a "belkin pci 3-port firewire card" to connect the devices. We don't have a "DV vcr" to play with, we are only capturing analog signals and don't have a second PC to test the firewire card+advc. And for the menu options in vegcap I checked and it was unchecked for dv device.
InterceptPoint wrote on 12/29/2003, 3:46 PM
When you turn the ADVC-100 on and off does it connect and disconnect properly? You should see the applicable icon appear and disappear from My Computer and you should get a popup window coming up when you switch it on asking you what you want to do with it. Does this happen correctly every time?
jayhink wrote on 12/29/2003, 4:00 PM
Nope. There's no dialog boxes opening up notifying me of new attached hardware - like the external HD or plugging a USB device in. I'm wondering if the ADVC-100 just *DIED*? I went ahead and went to windowsupdate and installed all the new service packs and such. And I'm making sure there's an analog video feed going through ADVC, switching between digital/analog. I'm just confused how it worked fine for a couple days and suddenly stopped talking to the computer?
farss wrote on 12/29/2003, 4:15 PM
My money would be on the 1394 interface in the unit dying. Most likely cause would be external power spikes. Had any lightning or power outages around the same time it died.

Also 6 pin firewire ports have power on them. I didn't realise just how much until I tried pluging ina cable and kind of missed, the shroud hit a few of the pins creating a small spark. Nothing died and I'd imagine the engineers who designed the interface provided some form of protection still not a good thing to have heppen.
InterceptPoint wrote on 12/29/2003, 5:06 PM
The farss theory that your Firewire interface in the ADVC-100 is dead is not a bad bet. If it wasn't for the fact that XP has some problems with recognizing Firewire devices I would concede the point.

You might take a look at my previous thread on this subject :

Strange Firewire Problem
http://www.mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=237037

If you have a similar setup and similar symptoms you might try the Microsoft fix. It worked for me with the only downside being that the ADVC-100 takes about 30 seconds to "load" onto the Firewire and my TRV 900 takes nearly a minute.
bigcreek wrote on 12/29/2003, 7:51 PM
I'm sure you checked, but you may want to double check the power connection, and the on/off switch for the device?
farss wrote on 12/30/2003, 1:47 AM
The Status LEDs do lightup!

But something wierd inside XP is a possibiity. I only run Win2K but I've still had the odd problem where the external preview just couldn't find the device. In one extreem case I ahd to restart Vegas with it powered up. Windoz does have a video switch that routes video from one one place to another which would be a different stream to what handles the external HD.

So perhaps that's what's lost the plot big time. Only way to certain I think is try it on another system.
jayhink wrote on 12/30/2003, 3:06 AM
Yes it does light up. Loaded Vegas on a small laptop I have and tried to get canopus to work there. The processor is only 366 and I did not get a picture but it was streaming some colors like it was sending a signal and that it was recognized.

It did not ever tell me that I needed to please connect a devise. It would tell me when the device stopped (which at times it didn't) and it would stream a bunch of garbled colors like it was real bad karaoke cd player mixing things up. It seemed like it was getting a signal though.

But on the machine I want to use it on and the one it did work on for awhile all I get is please connect a device.

The computer has a 3.06 processor with hyperthreading, 512 Ram and 110 Gig hard drive. Like I posted before, I just added the Belkin Firewire and just got the canopus for Christmas and it worked great for awhile and now nothing. Anyone know how I can really check out Canopus to make sure it is not it? I think it did try and send a signal to the small laptop but not much power there so really know picture.

Thanks for all of your help. I am open to all ideas so keep them coming,

Thanks,

Jason Hink
jayhink wrote on 12/30/2003, 3:07 AM
No, it does not show up at all.

Thaks,

Jason Hink
farss wrote on 12/30/2003, 3:18 AM
That it could do anything on another machine kind of says the ADVC is OK, (phew!). Sounds like it might be something in the config of the other machine. You haven't installed anything have you since it was working.
Someone else had a suggestion about XP loosing firewire devices, that might be worth a look into. BTW, deosn't XP come with Movie Maker? See one of the problems with video on PCs is there can be only one stream, first thing to grab it gets to keep it and it can be real hard to get it to let go. If you've got another video app like MMM try using it to talk to the ADVC-100. If can then maybe that's the problem. Even when you exit that app it doesn't release the stream. Normally you have to reboot to release the stream BUT if there's something in the startup routine that's already grabbed it then Vegas will never get to see it.
jayhink wrote on 12/30/2003, 9:28 AM
We tried movie maker and it did not find the device iether. We have an external hard drive with firewire support and we hooked the firewire up and transfered some music through the firewire and it worked fine. Not the same as video I guess but it did work.

Did not go through canapos as it was already digital but just making sure the firewire card was working.

I have an old computer without firewire that I might set up with this firewire card and load vegas and try it on there. It has ME though and would that be a problem??

Thanks,

Jason Hink
jayhink wrote on 12/30/2003, 9:36 AM
One other thing, it does not recognize that there is even a device hooked up. I am talking about the computer not Vegas. It does recognize when other things are hooked up, like the external hard drive. Show's it as drive F.

When it first came on it gave me a couple of options of which one was Vegas and that is the one I chose. I thought I also selected it to be the option to always open with. The last time it worked it didn't even have a window or anything show up but just started playing after a little bit. I had to keep messing with it to get it to go and it finally did. Worked fine once it started but that was the last time it worked.

Thanks,

Jason Hink
InterceptPoint wrote on 12/30/2003, 11:20 AM
Do you have a digital camera that you can try out? I'll bet you dollars to donuts that XP won't see a digital camera either. Borrow one if you have to and try it out. If it fails I would:

1. Try the fix recommended by Microsoft described in http://www.mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=237037

2. If that fails, buy a new firewire card.
jayhink wrote on 12/30/2003, 2:00 PM
We did the patch and nothing changed. Guess it is going to take trying a different firewire to see if that works.

Thanks,

Jason Hink