Canopus ADVC100 Converter

So, as part of a family project to convert unreplacable VHS tapes onto DVD, I went digging looking for “Firewire DV Bridge” black boxes that take video in, and spew firewire out.

The ADVC100, well, basically, does not suck. Not only is it doing a kick ass job at bidirectional video conversion between firewire and analog video/audio, it also has a nice hidden de-macrovision toggle. No, I’m not pirating and selling the latest DVD warez, but just simply trying to preserve some old tapes that we don’t expect to be released to DVD by the original vendors. (obNoteForLawyers: Look up “fair use”…)

Also, as a side benefit, the same box can work without a computer, to go between a firewire camera and standard A/V. Some video cameras can do this natively, but for those that can’t, this is not bad box to have around!