Canopus wrestles with Adobe Premiere incompatabilities

Canopus is a significant player in the desktop video editing market, and describes itself as "…an industry leader in non-linear video-editing products." By setting, it claims, "new standards in performance, functionality and stability, Canopus has become a favorite of video professionals and enthusiasts."

However, some existing Canopus customers now beg to differ.

There is a furore going on over an acknowledged stability issue with one of Canopus' products, the DVStorm2 Pro - a PCI adapter that, amongst other things, promises Real-Time video effects whilst editing, when combined with the latest version of Adobe's video-editing software Premiere Pro.

This issue is described on Canopus' own discussion forums as "the Premiere disappearing issue..."

A large number of Canopus' customers - both end-users and dealers - are alleging there are flaws in the Canopus software drivers that are meant to allow their DVStorm2 Pro to function correctly with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Canopus does seem to acknowledge that its drivers can cause Premiere Pro to crash.

Reliable sources have indicated that Canopus may have shipped upward of 50,000 Storm products, including the affected DVStorm2 Pro. And, when bundled with Adobe Premier Pro the most current of these can sell for a hefty £1,175.83, including UK VAT (circa US$2,222).

The word in the desktop video-editing channel is that a significant number of existing Canopus customers are holding off upgrading from other Canopus products to the more, potentially, feature-rich Canopus DVStorm2 Pro until such time as Canopus can prove it has fixed its operating stability with Premiere Pro.

Channel sources also tell us that this has left the door wide open for Canopus' prime competitor, Matrox, whose Video Products Group has been capitalising on a market that wants to edit videos using Adobe Premiere Pro, in conjunction with a Real-Time Effects card.

Matrox offers an evolutionary product, clumsily called the Matrox RT.X100 Xtreme Pro, which it claims will deliver "Professional video editing and DVD authoring... "for not much more than the price of the software alone." Our sources say that this is selling "better than ever" largely due to the Canopus "Premiere disappearing issue..."

Our understanding is that Canopus is saying it's doing its best to resolve this issue. However, some customers seem to be getting confused because Canopus seems to have released different builds of drivers which carry the same version number.

Some storms spin up out of nowhere, and pass quickly, but this one seems to have been going on for months and months. As one insider queried: "Can Canopus ever fix this?" µ

L'INQ
Canopus' forum.