Canopus ADVC-1000 review

Canopus' reputation for making first-rate hardware has been unshaken since its early days with graphics cards.

However, it was the move into video editing that really established the company's name, with a range of innovative, powerful and stable editing boards, the latest of which is the ADVC-1000.

The Advanced Digital Video Converters (ADVC) are expansion boards and standalone boxes designed to convert audio and video signals from one format to another. Most support Mac as well as PC systems, and the vast majority are geared towards converting between DV and analogue signals. Entry-level and prosumer devices provide S-Video and composite feeds to and from DV, while more advanced options throw in component channels and balanced audio too.

The ADVC-1000 is an altogether different beast, though, as it converts between two digital signals - DV and SDI. It won't have any appeal to the mass market, as SDI is the stuff of expensive broadcast equipment such as DigiBeta decks, but the appeal for high-end users is obvious - it will enable them to work DV and DVCAM footage into their edits without having to mix formats, as well as make quick DV copies for viewing and rough decision-making in a far less costly environment.

The ADVC-1000 is one of three similar products on the market - the others being the Como DV-1394 and DataVideo's DAC30. All sell for around the same price, but while the others also provide S-Video, composite and component inputs and outputs, Canopus' offering will only convert between DV and SDI (but it does have composite, Y/C and stereo audio outputs for connection to a monitor).

Far from being a poor relation, though, the ADVC shines in its own way, with embedded audio support over SDI, which means it can feed sound and picture down a single cable, rather than having to string separate leads for each channel, as you would with the others. Canopus is also keen to promote its 'PerfectSync' system for prevention of corrupted or duplicated frames during conversion, but it's a difficult feature to assess.

Because of the high-end nature of the kit required, this test was conducted in the offices of Hove's editing system builder, DVC, with SDI source material fed from a J30 SDI DigiBeta deck provided by Canopus via PEC. The incoming signal was fed through the ADVC-1000, monitored on a broadcast video monitor and fed into a DV camcorder's FireWire port.

Set up is simple, with minimal cabling and no software to install or troubleshoot. The device has two FireWire sockets (a four-pin and a six-pin, but as there's no need to hang hard drives or webcams from it, both are unpowered). There are also SDI ports, an AES/EBU socket for digital audio input and output, sockets for timecode input and output as well as sync signals.

An RS422 port also enables device control for high-end editing decks such as the DigiBeta machine used here. Beneath that is a small selection of switches, the most useful of which switch the box between PAL and NTSC video standards, and choose NTSC back levels of 0 IRE or 7.5IRE for correct conversion for Japan or the US. A large button on the front decides which way signals are to be fed, and there's a comprehensive menu system for changing the video's aspect ratio or audio formats and enabling or disabling a jitter attenuator.

The box provides users with a wealth of options, but we found it easier and quicker to simply browse through it than to cross-reference the user manual (good as it is). Audio fed via FireWire can be 32kHz, 44.1kHz or 48kHz, in accordance with DV specification. However, options via SDI or AES/EBU allow 20- and 24-bit audio input, but only 20-bit output (all with a maximum sampling rate of 48kHz).