Can't capture home videos

[patchouly]

I'm using a Sabrent USB capture device to capture some old home video from my camcorder, through a bridged SVideo cable.

The first tape (a tape of my Daughter as a baby), plays along fine until 10 minutes in, when it suddenly stops capturing and gives me the error "unable to capture video because it is copyright protected". So, I tried starting it again from the spot where it drops out and, sure enough, it stops right away. It's just a scene with my wife, holding my Daughter. Nothing is going on in the background (no movies or music playing etc.).

Testing a few spots though the tape, I can see that it does this several times. I will be unable to capture the entire tape, unless I can sort this out.

If it helps, it is an old Hi8 Hitachi Camcorder.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Welcome to the forum

You don’t say what version of Video Studio you are using.
You could try capturing via composite cables rather than S-Video to see if it makes any difference.

But I would advise to use the software provided with the capture device to capture your video.

Once you have the files on the pc insert to video studio to edit.

[patchouly]

The device came bundled with Corel Video Studio 12.0. It's the only software on there. I've switched it over to Composite (what it probably should have been on anyway), and still get the same error.

It captures fine most of the time, it just stops when it hits certain parts of the video. And it's the same spots, every time.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

You don’t say what format you are capturing to, try DVD, although I doubt if it will make any difference, you never know.

As VS 12 was bundled with your capture device it will probably be the SE version, although this should work it may not have all the functionality of the full version.


At the top of this forum is a link to Patches and Updates, you could try installing the patch Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 Service Pack 1 first, followed by the second patch which seems to be associated with Windows 7

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... 7273776985

I assume the patches will support X2 SE

[patchouly]

The "About says":
Corel Video Studio Pro X2 12.0.98.1 Pro

Hmmmm...Ok, both patches installed fine, but I'm still getting the same error. What would make it think it was copyrighted material, when it is simply a home movie?

[patchouly]

Further researching on the internet, shows that others have had this problem. It seems to be caused when there is a slight flicker, between scenes, on the camcorder. This causes the software to think it's copyrighted material.

Is there a way to make it continue recording? Is there a way to shut off the auto-shutoff?

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

What would make it think it was copyrighted material,

To be honest I don’t know, I can only assume that it’s a glitch, (for want of a better word) on the tape.
If it was the only instance it wouldn’t be so bad, but you seem to indicate it occurs in other places.

Have you tried other tapes to see if the problem re-occurs, I would assume not, but if it does then I would look at the hardware.

Use the Sabrent to capture from a VHS tape recorder. If this produces the same copyright protected warning then it would point to the capture device.
If not then look at the camera, Have you tried cleaning the heads of the Hi8 camcorder.

Trying different capture options should identify which area is causing the problem.

I am on vacation/holiday over the next few weeks, hopefully someone else will have further suggestions.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi
Sorry didn’t see your last post……..
When you connect a capture device, Video Studio recognises the device and selects the appropriate capture formats. So I don’t know exactly what you are seeing when using the Sabrent device.

There is a capture option to Split by Scene, if this is available then it may be worth a try, some old Hi8 cameras were the first to record to DV-Avi, (I Think) its this format that supports Split by Scene.
If your able to select DV as the capture format.

If the problem is with the tape and the space between recordings then I think you may have to re-record the tape from Hi8 to another camcorder. This would fill the spaces with a timecode and capture ok, although you may end up with a few blank frames.

[patchouly]

I've found a few other programs that work, but they are older and the compression is terrible. I either get a normal sized file that is terrible quality or I get a good quality file that is averaging 1 GB a minute.

I'd prefer not to rerecord the 16 hours worth of footage that I have, onto another camcorder, before saving it to the PC.

Is there not some way to "circumnavigate" the feature that is stopping the capture between scenes? Can that "feature" be turned off or disabled somehow?

[Trevor Andrew]

I've found a few other programs that work, but they are older and the compression is terrible. I either get a normal sized file that is terrible quality or I get a good quality file that is averaging 1 GB a minute. 1 Gb / minute looks like uncompressed AVI, look for Microsoft Video DV compression(13 Gb per hour)--for Pal-- 720 x 576 4:3, otherwise if you have the option capture to Mpeg2 at 6000kbps

I'd prefer not to rerecord the 16 hours worth of footage that I have, onto another camcorder, before saving it to the PC.

Is there not some way to "circumnavigate" the feature that is stopping the capture between scenes? Can that "feature" be turned off or disabled somehow?

There is no method of turning off the copywrite protection within video studio.

[Ron P.]

This might be the analog capture bug. It first surfaced with VS 11, when they changed the capture plug-in to their proprietary IVI. VS is suppose to be able to capture analog video, however does not. I have several analog Hi-8 tapes, and the only way to capture them or tapes from a VCR was to use my Digital-8 camcorder, connected to my PC with a firewire, and using WinDV, a free DV only capture utility. With VS11, or newer versions, they throw an error generally around 8 secs into the capture. The only difference is the error does not say anything about copyright.

You might try capturing with whatever Win7 comes with that is the replacement for Windows Movie Maker. If you can get the video onto your PC with that, then you can use your VS12 to edit it, create your DVDs.

[patchouly]

Poking around, I found that my copy of Nero Vision captures videos. While the quality doesn't seem to be as good as what I was getting with Corel, it's better than nothing.

Thanks for the help guys.