ADVC110 and Premiere Pro CS3

[ktxstv]

Has the ADVC110 been tested with PP3? I am using an ADS firewire capture device now that is not working well enough and I need to know if the ADVC110 has been tested yet, or not, so I don't feel like I am wasting my time/money.

Or should I use another model of the ADVC? What's the difference?

Thanks.

[GrassValley_BH]

The ADVCs look like a DV camera/deck. There's no special driver or plug-in required.

The important question is, what problems did you have with your ADS capture device?

[ktxstv]

The ADS box

Let's see here. Any time I have the ADS box powered up and attached to the firewire, PP3 acts very sluggish. Expecially when trying to capture.

Also, the ADS box had to be reset several times while the capture window is open, before PP3 will accept the record command.

Also, when exporting, the video stream will flicker briefly, intermittently throughout the entire clip.

Another prob with just the box:
It will not switch from Analog to Digital Mode without a hard reset.

My Workstation specs are as follows:
HP workstation xw6000:
Dual Intel Xeon 2.4Ghz
2GB RAM
ATI X1950 Pro PCI
Generic OHCI firewire PCI
WinXP Pro SP2

Is my workstation not good enough? I don't know at this point.

[GrassValley_BH]

Your workstation should be fine for DV unless you have a failing drive or the disk is REALLY fragmented.

Let's see here. Any time I have the ADS box powered up and attached to the firewire, PP3 acts very sluggish. Expecially when trying to capture.

Recent versions of PPro have a nasty habit of not liking when there is an incoming DV signal during timeline playback. It conflicts with the output DV signal PPro is trying to generate.

Also, the ADS box had to be reset several times while the capture window is open, before PP3 will accept the record command.

Not sure on this one.

Also, when exporting, the video stream will flicker briefly, intermittently throughout the entire clip.

This indicates a throughput problem either in the FireWire transmission or the real-time DV output processing.
Does this happen if you just load a captured DV AVI onto the timeline and play it back out?

Another prob with just the box:
It will not switch from Analog to Digital Mode without a hard reset.

This could be related to the first issue I noted where PPro is sending stuff to the box and it's just getting overwhelmed, but I'm not sure.

I would venture to say an ADVC would do better, but the DV converter itself may not be the only source of your problems.

[ktxstv]

yes, the flicker seems to be happening more often now. it will happen on any dv avi clip loaded in the timeline.

there are some settings i noticed in the cmos that made me ponder a bit, like:
the AGP aperature size was set at 256MB - have no idea what that means
the hyper-threading technology is disabled - should it be enabled?

I have been able to capture okay if i turn the device control off. The only thing we capture is live feeds streaming in from our a/v router.

[ktxstv]

It seems that this flicker is happening even when pp3 is sitting idle. That is, with video in the timeline, but not playing. My monitor video will flicker from video to a green slate, to color bars, back to the video. The color bars are the same color bars that are generated by the ADS box when first powered on.

Is is possible that the firewire stream from pc to a/d converter is being intermittant? I guess anything is possible, but is it likely?

Thank you for all your help, it is much appreciated.

[GrassValley_BH]

It sounds like there's a signal loop - perhaps PPro is trying to send output to the ADS box, which is trying to send stuff back to PPro.

Does the ADS box let you switch it to D-to-A mode and stay in D-to-A mode? If it has a method to auto-switch, try disabling it.

Beyond that, I'd ditch it and see how PPro runs without it. If PPro is stable without it, then it's the box. If PPro is still funky, then ... it's broken.

[ktxstv]

pp3 is stable without it. We actually just turn off the box while editing so it IS stable. And when we feed directly into firewire with an XDCAM, it works GREAT! But, I need to be able to export out and convert to analog to dub to tape.

I really think my whole problem is the ADS box. And I should order the ADVC110. It sounds like it will work with other people having success with it.

Thank you for your support.

Chris

[GrassValley_BH]

Hi Chris,

Yes, if PPro is otherwise stable without the ADS box, then the problem is most likely the ADS box, so an ADVC should do you better there.

[ktxstv]

follow up

This is just to let everyone know that the ADVC110 works superb with PP3. As soon as I got it in, I just hooked everything up, selected Canopus Device Control in PP3 and voila!, it works great!

Thanks everyone for all your help in resolving this with me.

[GrassValley_BH]

Great - thanks for circling back!