To say the Canopus is a "no dropped frames" solution is completely wrong. In some ways, it's worse than the internal Winfast (which sometimes dropped frames).

If the ADVC55 hits trouble (like a badly tracking VHS tape) it drops frames internally. The computer capturing software just sees a pause in the DV stream and doesn't report it.

So the ADVC55 does drop frames, you just can't tell when it does. That's pure evil. A little light on the side of the box will flash red when frames are being dropped, but there is no log of the activity.

Worse, because the ADVC55 does both audio and video, if you drop a video frame, you drop an audio frame too, so you get skips in the soundtrack.

TBC

After a bit of experimentation, I'll go as far as to say the Canopus ADVC55 is useless without a Time Based Corrector (TBC). The ADVC300 (more than double the cost of the ADVC55) comes with a TBC built in.

With the TBC it works like a dream.