PowerDirector 14 thinks that my homemade VHS is a copyright violation. Huh? Please help.

Dombex

Newbie Location: 06790 - Northwest Connecticut Joined: Nov 16, 2016 18:33 Messages: 1 Offline

Solved by

Nov 23, 2016 17:23

Hello,

I'm new to this forum, and I didn't see my subject line anywhere so I'm going to ask it . If it's already been asked before and I'm duplicating it I apologize.

I recently purchased power director 14 ultimate. And, I also purchased a diamond multimedia one touch video capture VC 500 to capture from my VHS to power director.

During the VHS capture PowerDirector stopped recording the tape and I got a warning that said, " the movie is copyright protected. Recording is prohibited."

Now I made this movie myself so I know it's not copyright protected. However, I tried several times to capture the video and it stopped at exactly the same point when this following situation happens.

I'm capturing my VHS video of my small dog, Benji, a close-up shot of him, and my Benji looks like the 1970's movie dog Benji. That's where I get the warning message. This happened twice at the same spot.

Now, while I was recording the video of my dog I was saying his name out loud, Benji, Benji. I'm saying it out loud as I'm recording, not yesterday as I was capturing the video, I just want to make it clear. On the recording I'm clearly and loudly saying the name Benji, Benji, Benji.

Is it possible that either power director or the multimedia capture device assumes that I am copying a movie of, "Benji"? Are these programs and hardware that sophisticated?

That's the only spot on the video that gets the warning. When I speak (on the recording) my dogs name, Benji, and I'm doing a close-up video of the dog that looks just like Benji. Now, this is my first recording using both power director and the capture device, but it happens at the same spot each time.

So I don't know if it's a power director issue or a multimedia VC 500 issue, but if someone can help me I would appreciate it.I really like power director 14, and I really like this new video capture device, diamond multimedia VC 500.

I still have about two weeks to return power director if I am unhappy with it, but I really don't want to return it unless I get this glitch a lot.

Thanks so much for any help you can give.

Dombex

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 23. 2016 17:26

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Nov 23, 2016 18:35

This is a known problem with PD as being too sensitive to old vhs drop outs to trigger the warning and stop the recording as you have found. Use the supplied ez-grabber or arcsoft software to do the capture and then import the captured and saved video into PD14 for editing.

I have used PD14 to do the capture but there is no advantage to capture with it as the mpeg-2 captures are not svrt compliant and don’t work well with some old tapes. ez-grabber is the answer. It works with the majority of poor tapes.

Let us know if this help with your issue.

mooredynasty

Newbie Joined: Jul 17, 2019 08:49 Messages: 2 Offline

Jul 17, 2019 08:53

EZGrabber is lame and produces very low-quality files; e.g., it is unable to keep up with 30 FPS on a simple VHS tape. PowerDirector is much more capable, except for the fact that it has this ridiculous bug. My suggestion is that the so-called feature of preventing copyrighted material be removed for analog sources. This no content worthy of being protected these days.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Jul 17, 2019 13:33

Quote EZGrabber is lame and produces very low-quality files; e.g., it is unable to keep up with 30 FPS on a simple VHS tape. PowerDirector is much more capable, except for the fact that it has this ridiculous bug. My suggestion is that the so-called feature of preventing copyrighted material be removed for analog sources. This no content worthy of being protected these days.

That's a perfectly reasonable suggestion, but PD14 is 4 years old and is no longer actively supported (meaning no more patches or updates will ever be made).

If you don't want to use the other options that tomasc thoughtfully suggested, you might try downloading the trial version of PD17 and see if the problem is still present.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Jul 17, 2019 14:01

Your vhs tape is probably old and putting out a noisy signal that the vcr is mistaking for Macrovision.
Somewhere in your workflow the bogus noise triggers the warning. Might be the VCR, might be the software but that is the core problem. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Jul 20, 2019 09:42

Some software MIGHT ignore the phony Macrovision, but the BEST most fool-proof way to get around it is to use a Time Base Corrector, very few of which are available anymore without giving up your IRA-401K account.
Perhaps VirtualDub (version 1.9xx) will ignore the warning, but it takes a little setup time, but it's worth the effort because you can capture lossless AVI and Vdub has all sorts of fabulous filters to clean up artifacts. After the fixing in Vdub, you can bring that lossless AVI file into PD to complete the process. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT