Canopus first made its name providing top-notch 3Dfx cards. Realising the deadly competitiveness and pace of that market, however, Canopus has moved on and repositioned itself as a company specialising in video editing. After the critical success of the higher-end DVRex, Canopus has now produced a card aimed at the more budget-conscious end of the market the DVRaptor. And it's a corker.

The DVRaptor is an IEEE1394-only capture card or iLink as it's now being marketed (or FireWire for Mac users). That means you can only acquire video from a digital camcorder or deck equipped with iLink. Most camcorders are only able to output over iLink and can't lay back to tape, but this is becoming less of a problem. For instance, Sony's portable decks provide one solution, and more camcorders are arriving with DV (digital video) input.

The DVRaptor doesn't have any hardware-video compression; it simply transfers DV data that has already been compressed from the camcorder or deck to your hard disk. Unlike the majority of iLink cards on the market that use an Adaptec chipset, the Canopus uses a mixture of an Altera DSP and Philips multimedia bridge. Despite the esoteric silicon, the DVRaptor installed first time without mishap in an AMD K6-III/400-based system. Adaptec-based cards didn't perform anywhere near as well with this system so the Raptor scores its first point for compatibility with budget hardware.

For video editing, a full version of Adobe's excellent Premiere 5.1 is provided with a full copy of Boris Effects 3.5 for added panache. Installing the Raptor's own software also copies across plug-ins for Premiere, so having Premiere installed in advance ensures these go in the correct directory. These plug-ins include a special video-capture module, device control, and timeline playback. There are two special applications one for batch capture and multifile playback, called Raptor Video, and one for logging a tape to create a batch for capture, called Raptor Navi.

Editing with the DVRaptor is simple. If all you're after is cuts-only editing, you don't even need Premiere. First, hook up your DV camcorder to the digital and composite or S-Video inputs on the card, and optionally run another analog cable to a TV monitor. Then load Raptor Navi and mark the beginning and end points of each portion of the DV tape you want. As you send a clip to the batch, a thumbnail is added to the list and, when that task is completed, save the batch and open it in Raptor Video. The latter will then shuttle around the tape and capture all of the clips to disk, where they can then be trimmed and added to a playlist called DVBin. This list can then be transferred back to tape, with Raptor Video stitching the clips together seamlessly without skipping any frames.

During this process Raptor Video and Raptor Navi are doing some pretty clever things. For a start, the analog input on the card is being used to supply a smooth and bright video overlay via Direct Draw Overlay Surface. During playback the video is being routed out via iLink and back in via analog, using the camcorder's hardware DV codec to decode the video. Raptor Video is also able to capture AVIs of up to 4Gb in size, regardless of Video for Windows' 2Gb file size limit, thanks to a driver feature. You can also enable Ref AVI. This creates an AVI that's just a pointer to external files, allowing capture of as much video as your hard disk can take. Alternatively, you can work entirely inside Premiere. There's full device control, plus batch capture, so you can use the regular Premiere tools to mark in and out points for the clips on a reel, and then leave the software to capture all the files in one go automatically. After arranging the clips on the timeline and adding effects, the third-party plug-ins only render the areas of videos that have been changed by editing. It then plays back all the bits of video, both raw and those with effects applied, exporting back to tape straight from the Premiere timeline, to save the disk space taken by creating a separate output file. As before, the Ref AVI feature is available to create and use files larger than 2Gb.

DVRaptor is a little more expensive than most iLink cards on the market, but you get what you pay for that's hardware that works on most platforms and solves every conceivable problem facing PC video editing. There's great on-screen overlay, timeline playback, a solution to the 2Gb AVI file limit, plus the full device control and batch capture you'd expect from iLink. Considering that you get a full copy of Premiere 5.1 and Boris Effects 3.5, which on their own could cost more than the card, this is a great deal. If you own a DV camcorder or intend to get one, the DVRaptor is the best PC-editing solution currently available.