ADS USB Instant DVD ($350.00 CAD)
Written: May 18 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: External USB device, front and rear inputs, rear outputs
Cons: No Power switch, circuit board inside in not securly mounted to the case
The Bottom Line: Hardware seems good, but software SUCKS! Can't use Adobe Premier to capture, and audio sink was not there. Very complicated user interface
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| diosnoche's Full Review: A D S Instant DVD (USBAV-700) Video Capture |
The system I used to evaluate this product was a P3 500 on TYAN S1854 (Trinity 400) Motherboard, 512MB SDRAM, 40 GB EIDE ATA66 Hard drive, ATI Xpert 98 AGP 2X w/ 8MB RAM, Creative Labs 16 PCI sound card, with a clean install of Win98 SE.
The hardware component looks good, comes with cables and connection box. The bundled software is not too great. Instructions that come with unit are not complete, i.e., wherever the instructions refer you to look at a certain page, they forgot to print the page number, instead there is just a dash, as if it were a fill in the blank for the editors.
The unit connects ANALOG composite or S-Video signal and digitalizes it in its external connection box, before sending the data to the computer via USB 1.0 interface. There is no Digital video connection (IEEE-1394). The idea with this product is to convert the video signal in real-time into MPEG2 so that the file sizes are smaller on when sent to the computer. Good idea, since movie files are rather large, especially when working with DVD quality files. Since the stream is already in MPEG2 format, if that is the final format you want, saving the file does not take long at all, less than 5 minutes. However, if you want to save the stream in another format, (the software allows you to select MPEG2, MPEG1, AVI, Real Media, and MOV) then the software has to re-render the stream to the new format, which takes quite some time.
I followed all the instructions completely, but when my computer was re-rendering into another file format (AVI, MOV) at the end of every try it said ERROR can not save file, and aborts. I only had luck when switching to MPEG1, but then there was no audio, even though you hear the audio during the record/capture. Also audio is off sink with the video.
I checked the website for updates, and there are numerous files and updates for this product, but you have to order the CD, if you want the current version of Video Studio 6.5. The unit comes shipped with Video Studio 5, and you can't download the files.
This product left me very frustrated, considering this is targeted at the home/novice user. I purchased this item from Future Shop for $350.00 Canadian, lucky I can return it for a full refund.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
diosnoche
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Reviews written: 2
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