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-   -   Canopus Capture Card (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/grass-valley-canopus-nle/763-canopus-capture-card.html)

Joe Redifer January 23rd, 2002 10:02 AM

Canopus Capture Card
 
I am vacationing at a friend's house and he has a Canopus DV Raptor capture card which came with Adobe Premiere 6 and some box (I think it is Canopus, will have to check again) that converts analog signals into firewire.

We tried hooking my XL1 directly to the Canopus card via firewire and could not control it via Premiere or the included Canopus capture software. Even when the unit was playing we could not see any video over the firewire. We then hooked the box back up which has a firewire input. Again, nothing was transferred over the firewire to either application even though "digital input" was selected on the external box. The issue is not the XL1 because I know the firewire works fine and dandy on that. We ended up having to import all of the video via the analog cables, and that method worked fine.

Does anyone know what is wrong here? Does Canopus suck, or is it a Windows thing? Does anyone know how to remedy this?

I wish everything could be as effortless as using a Mac.

Bill Ravens January 23rd, 2002 12:21 PM

the problem it can depend on a lot of things, but, most likely if the computer system has the capability to also capture analog, it's likely that it was using the analog capture drivers instead of the windows vfw drivers necessary to "see" the firewire. trouble with Premier is that it's not intuitively obvious which capture drivers it's accessing. The default driver is the analog drivers. Anyway, to simplify the answer, a capture utility like SCLIVE will give you the option, right up front in a drop down window, the capture driver selection possibilities. Without picking the vfw drivers, you get no preview, no capture, no device control.

Hope I've helped and not confused.

Joe Redifer January 23rd, 2002 12:45 PM

Well I'm not sure yet whether I should be confused or not. Maybe I should clarify the situation a bit. The external box I was speaking of hooks right into the 4 pin firewire port of the Canopus card. It can read signals through the firewire port when that box is hooked up. But I can't connect my XL1 straight to that same firewire port because it doesn't work/won't be recognized. The box also has a DV input but that doesn't seem to make any difference. So we had to connect the XL1's analog output to the box which then in turn converted it to a firewire signal.

Basically the external box is the only thing that can be hooked up to the Canopus firewire card. Nothing else will work.

Weird eh?

Bill Ravens January 23rd, 2002 01:11 PM

yep...now I think I'm confused...LOL
I don't know what OS you're using, but, in windows 2000 you can open the device manager. it should show all the devices the computer recognizes. one of them will be an ohci compliant firewire port, without this, it won't see the xl1s. when the dv cam is plugged in, another device will show up, something like "MS DV camera". The device manager is accessible by right clicking the "my computer" icon on the desktop and selecting "device manager" from the drop down window.

Joe Redifer January 23rd, 2002 02:30 PM

Tried that. Device Manager only recognizes "DV-Raptor" card. Nothing about OHCI compliant devices anywhere. Pluging in the XL1 or Sony DVMC-DA1 to the firewire port, turning them on and then refreshing the device manager turns up no new items.

I think the bottom line is this: Canopus sucks. So does their software/drivers. Avoid like the plague. It is not TRUE firewire.

Bill Ravens January 23rd, 2002 02:39 PM

maybe that's why one can find raptor cards at great discount prices. I've been looking at either the canopus DV Storm or Pinnacle's Pro-One for RT renders. Pinnacle has pretty lame customer support and I've read good things about the DVStorm. Maybe I'll just stay with my OHCI compliant firewire board. It works great, except that transitions with Hollywood FX are not real time. Oh well. A transition like a page curl is rendered in about 15 seconds on my system. Close enough to real time for now.

Stephen Gibson January 23rd, 2002 10:14 PM

Xp?
 
THIS MAY BE THE PROBLEM!!!
.....I don't know what OS you're using,

I have come across the same issue with several people trying to hook firewire caremas to WIndows XP and have been having tons of problems. It shows up as a AV/C issue with missing subunit. I am currently chasing down the same problem I came across a discuss on a forum .....where they could not get other cameras hooked up at all.

If you hear anything please email me at sgibson@pmgvideo.com

ajpate611 January 24th, 2002 02:25 AM

I'm not an expert by a long shot, but, I do have a Canopus Rapter card and have for about two years. I have yet to have any problems plugging in any firewire and it not working.

There is one thing, I found the camera has to be plugged in and turned on to VCR mode and left that way the entire time you are editing or doing anything with the editing software.

Are you using Raptor Video to control the camera from the computer? If so, make sure that in the Raptor Video software you you go to settings>DVRaptor Properties>Input tab and make sure that "raptor bay" is checked unuse when connecting firewire straight to the raptor card.

Finally, (this is coming from a foggy memory) but, when you connected your xl-1 straight to the raptor card, did you also connect anolog or s-video cable to the other inputs of the raptor card? I believe that the raptor card actually captures from the firewire port but uses the analog or s-video ports incoming signal to display the video on the computer screen. I know this sounds crazy, but, make sure that in addition to having the firewire connected, have either the RCA jacks or the S-Video cable connected to the card. Also make sure you have the appropriate input selected on the Settings>DVRaptor properties>input tab>Analog input

I hope this helps!

Rob Lohman January 24th, 2002 04:32 AM

I think there are also 2 other possibilities for this problem...
The problem can also be with Premiere. I know Premiere
by defaults uses the Microsoft DV codec and drivers. These
things *only* work with OHCI compliant cards. If your card
isn't, it has installed another set of drivers. This can go
wrong with Premiere! Especially with their 6.01 update.
It needs to be applied in a special way. First install all
of premiere (including the 6.01 update). Only *THEN*
install your card with it's drivers. It will update the premiere
DV block to connect to their card instead of Microsoft's
DV codec.

I've read on numerous places that this could be a problem.

Good luck!

Chris Hurd January 25th, 2002 03:47 AM

Try posting this on the Canopus message boards at www.justedit.com . DVRaptor is an excellent card by the way, so much so that Avid used to build their systems around it. Good luck with your compatibility issues.

Alexis Vazquez February 12th, 2004 06:05 PM

I use Canopus Storm 2 Card and also have a Canon XL1s, I capture via Firewire without any problem and it controls the Cam very well. Be sure to select Canopus DV Capture on your settings, this may be the problem.

Another thing tha sometimes happens is that you need to have first your Cam plugged and On, then Start Premiere.

In case this help:
On Storm2 there are more options to select. This is a little tricky, You have two inputs Front and back (1) is direct from the card -the PCI card, (2) from the Storm Bay, that goes on the front, these two controls the analog inputs, then there is the DV wich also has an internal swich on the PCI Board were you can select if you're be using the front or back inputs.

Alexis

Matthew de Jongh February 13th, 2004 09:07 AM

i used to have one of those, try connecting to the back of the card, the external box is just an input extender and it connects to all the same things on the card just on the board not the backplane.

plug into the firewire port on the back and it is a true firewire card, it just doesn't do realtime and it doesn't work with newer versions of premiere.

matthew

Mike Rehmus February 13th, 2004 07:15 PM

It is certainly a firewire card but it and never will be OHCI compliant. The Raptor was designed about 7 years ago and predates the OHCI spec by quite a bit. OHCI is a recent phenomenon.

The Raptor is pure gold for those who understand what it is and how to install it.

Matthew de Jongh February 13th, 2004 09:16 PM

i don't know how you could call it pure gold, when it works the raptor cards are pretty good.

i'm giving a matrox rtx-100 card a try next week and i'm also going to play with a copy of vegas

matthew


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