USB INSTANT VIDEO CD

Rating:
Summary: Not Bad, So Far...
Review: I bought the ADS USB INSTANT VIDEO CD as a stopgap measure. I wanted to preserve my old videos on a more permanent media than tape, but cannot afford to upgrade to a Pentium 4 machine with a DVD burner.
I have a 3 year-old Compaq Presario with Windows 98SE, an AMD K6-2 500 processor, 256MB ram (8MB shared for video), a 6GB hard drive and an HP 12x CD-RW burner.
I successfully installed the USB drivers for the input device and the Ulead Video Studio 6.0 SE software. Although I was able create a couple of VCDs so far, I would recommend a more powerful computer with a separate video card.
But, if you're in a situation as myself, the USB INSTANT VIDEO CD package does a nice job, so far.
I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the video CDs play in my Magnavox MDV435 DVD player, whose instructions stated that video CDs would not play on it.
Some hints for fellow low-powered users:
Before installing the USB INSTANT VIDEO CD programs and drivers, uninstall as many unnecessary files and programs as possible to free up space on your hard drive. Run scandisk & defrag to optimize your hard drive's performance. Before using Ulead Video Studio, close all running programs except Explorer and Systray to keep the processor's load as light as possible.
In conclusion, the ADS USB Instant VideoCD does exactly what it's supposed to, but the biggest factors towards its successful will be your computer's specs and your patience with learning the Ulead software.

Rating:
Summary: USB just not fast enough?
Review: I purchased this to transfer old analog camcorder movies to my computer and VCD. My system is a 1.4 Athlon, 40G HD, 512M, TDK 52X CDR, 32M Geforce II, far beyond the minimum req's.

The unit installed easily enough and the learning curve on the included software is not too steep. I set everything up and began capturing. After fiddling with any number of capture settings, I could not get the unit to capture enough frames. It was consistently dropping 3 to 5 percent of the frames. This number does not seem large until you try to watch what has been captured. I went to the ADS website and that for the included software. There was a suggestion to turn off the audio preview during capture. I tried this and there was no change in the dropped frame rate.

After a four hour evening of troubleshooting, I emailed ADS for help. I heard nothing the next day and emailed again. One week after the first email, I got a reply. I haven't read the reply because it arrived five days after I returned the product.

Barring other explanations and with limited knowledge on the matter, I concluded that USB 1.0 or 1.1 are simply not fast enough for acceptable video capture. I will next try a USB 2.0, Firewire, or PCI Card capture device and see how that works.