New Canopus ADVC 110 being
Canopus 110 has a small chip built in that detects when you're trying to
transfer copyrighted material (such as a tape of a movie). If it
detects it, a small red light comes on, and the footage you copy is black or distorted. If you have old movies that you want to copy to a DVD for
personal use, this is bad news.
However, there is a way past this security feature, and it's built
into the system. When you first turn Canopus on, simply press the
select button down for roughly twenty seconds. Now the system will
ignore copyright concerns, and you can copy all the movies you want,
until you turn Canopus off.
Make sure the tapes are still good by doing a playback from camcorder or something you can watch.
How are you connecting to the computer? Firewire is the best and ensures transmission is fast enough to keep up. USB is too slow. Also the computer needs lots of memory and defragmented disk space, for the mpeg conversion. The A to D conversion is only part of the whole transfer process, and the majority happens in software on the computer.
I would also suggest taking it to the place you bought it from, and let them try it on one of your tapes. If the unit was defective, they will be able to compare results then easily, and hopefully it will be covered by warranty.
I also read that it does not come with an external power supply, but that it is supposed to be necessary for firewire to work. So it is recommended to buy one. I also read that if you use a 4 or 6 wire firewire connector, that the power supply is not required. But I would bet it is computer dependent, since some do not provide as much power as others, to the Firewire port. Perhaps the lesson here is that cable quality makes a difference. If you have trouble figuring out the external power requirements, they appear to be anything between 5 volts and 12 volts.
Make sure everything is set correctly, such as NTSC, vs PAL.
Also, do not connect more than one Firewire cable at a time, for best results.