Messages posted by vividere

Thanks so much...it wouldn't have been the end of the world to have to do two steps, but I can't explain why the crop function didn't work as it should.

Appreciate all your help!

Hello again... I am a semi-retired network geek and am stronger on the computer side than on the video side.

I looked for a newer driver. It seems TI "owns" the driver and their site says the latest driver has been provided to MS and Apple for their products and they don't offer any more recent drivers. I did delete the driver and the old (2006) one came back. I also ran a program that checks driver status and it reported the driver as current.

When I was on the TI site, they referenced a 3rd party company that is apparently doing whatever is current relative to the standard. They said the 3rd party company, Unibrain has been entrusted with the code and has done their own thing, apparently where TI left off.

Unibrain has a free version of their driver which I installed. It replaced the TI version, however, when I enabled my FW device, it didn't "enable" it, i.e. I didn't get the normal Windows pop-up asking what program to launch. At that point I backed it out and went back to the default driver that Windows once again put back.

As far as the edge "noise", if I look carefully at the bottom of the TV (not a monitor), I can see a part of it, so the "noise" goes beyond the TV Safe area in infringes on the viewable part of the image. Seems if this is an ever present issue, they should have the content stop "above" it such that the content is not impacted by the noise they expect or know will be there.

As far as a firewall issue, if it works "properly" in Adobe and in Windoze Movie Maker, then I am hesitant to suspect the firewall. The firewall shouldn't hamper one program more so than the other as I assume they only make a certain set of calls regarding the port. Perhaps PD is trying to do something the others aren't.

As an aside, do you think all the programs capture the data with equal quality? That the capture portion of the process doesn't benefit in one program over another?

If that is the case, and saving in WMM would be the same as the other programs, then I could use it to capture, and then edit as needed. You still like PD for that step, so I will take your recommendation and try it.

BTW, one of my best friends is heavy in video...done work for the networks, Fortune 100, etc., but he is a Mac guy and doesn't know a bit from a byte and relishes in that fact

Thanks again kind sir!

Larry,

I wish these companies would support their products even half as well as the help you have been providing.

I don't know what software comes with Dazzle, and I frankly don't know if he was trimming during capture or afterwards like you are suggesting for PD9. Since the hardware and software for that solution are under $100 then that might be an alternative for content that doesn't need FW speed as I think it is a USB solution.

Just so you know, this is a VCR that has only been used maybe 5X ever and I opened it and cleaned the heads anyway and they were spotless. Likewise, the tapes I am playing are brand new out of the box. So there are no wear issues here, just how the VCR reads and displays the data.

I thought I had killed my VCR so I researched a replacement. Turns out my model number is in the range of the VCRs that are supposed to be the best, although my model wasn't listed, so maybe it is lower in quality than the others in that series.

I can remove and re-install the driver, but it does work with all the other programs and I should be able to check by the date or size of it that it is the latest, but thanks for the tip. You have a great troubleshooting mind

While writing this note I checked the driver, and although it is old (6/21/06), using Windoze update util it said it was the latest. I did uninstall it, and will let it re-install on next boot.

Regarding Task Manager. I always try to kill the process vs. the application, but it wouldn't allow me to kill it either way, any of the times the program has crashed. It has been years since a program consistently hung my system like PD has. Other than Task Manager (application or process tab) is the only way I know of to kill a stubborn program. In case you might ask, I even tried Alt-F4

My suspicion is that PD is looking for a camcorder or similar device it can control and never finds one and never quits looking and doesn't know to time out or get on with it's life.

As an aside, before using the Canopus I tried with my camcorder, using it as the A/D device. That method produced the same problem on the bottom of the video stream which is why I tried the Canopus to determine if the tear at the bottom was being introduced in the conversion process.

Thanks very much for taking all your time to help!

Lew

So much for that idea... I tried to launch PD twice now, and it crashed both times. What is bad about the crashes, not even Windoze Task Manager can kill PD. That forces me to do a shut down, but shut down never completes....as PD's failure to process the device scan, it won't let task manager kill it, and that won't let the computer shut down gracefully, forcing me to hit the reset button. No software should be that screwed up.

I am running a RAID...every time I have to hit reset to reboot, I am risking having to rebuild the RAID. That is what happened the other day the first time I had this problem. This time I ran PD with nothing else running, like mail, etc. When it crashed before, it blocked itself and all other programs that were in process.

Anyway....still no reply from support, or on the other message string, nor am I able to PM the other guy, or initiate a new message....stuck in limbo software, stuck in limbo support...

Back to Adobe or who ever's software will work.

Thanks so much!

Hello again..

I don't know of any monitors that had overscan? Generally by definition your able to through external controls to move the image and center it so that even on the CRT technology, the image could fill the screen, but not over fill it so to speak.

From my knowledge of the earlier days was CRTs would decay over time and so the TV manufacturers built in about 8% overscan which would allow some shrinkage in image before a blank margin would appear. I think the modern term in analog video adage is "TV Safe".

Without having used this configuration before, I wanted to be sure I didn't have a tracking error or some other problem with the image.

What is unfortunate, is the "tear extends into the "content" part of the image. It seems the "tear" appears in two ways,

One is a "bar" about 1/24 the height of the screen, about 3/16 of the way up from the bottom. In the other cases, it is a true tear, where the bottom is skewed over to the side, about 1/8 of the width over. in either case, you can see that the skew or tear is in an area that is otherwise viewable content. I saw some portraits that had frames around them, in once case, a diagonal frame.

The frame went from the area above the tear, down through the tear, and other things could be seen. Not just replicated data, but otherwise "additional" content.

Being a lazy person typically, I had hoped the capture process would have the crop feature in it and I could directly output my video in a MPG or AVI format in one fell swoop.

A guy I know has gotten some DVDs that were originally VHS tapes. It is my understanding the original person has VHS tapes that is going through one of those combo units where the VHS tape is recorded directly to the DVD. I was told though, that when that is done, it has a black border all the way around. His output is 640, but I am assuming the original like other DVDs is 720. I don't have that much extra border on the sides, probably not enough to have to trim to 640. In fact, if the bottom looked nice like the top, I would probably ignore the black on the sides and would let it go at that.

I don't know what the PIP took is, but will check it out. I have don't nothing further with PD when it wouldn't capture. I did fire up Adobe to find out that it also had the tear, although it looked different. The image quality looked different, but it had a smaller portal for viewing the preview so the quality might have been the size.

I am just looking for the easiest way to make the highest quality output at the highest resolution from these tapes.

Thanks so much!

Hiya...you solved one problem

I tried your method. I launched capture without plugging in the converter. Sure enough, the screen came up with two options enabled, microphone and AVHCD or whatever the far right one was. Then I plugged in the converter and it "enabled" the DV capture option. Since it works in the "plug in after" method, tells me there is something wrong with how they scan the devices on launch. I wouldn't want to have to connect and disconnect my devices to launch PD however, so an interim solution would be that, interim.

First of all, I am still getting "tearing" on the bottom of the video which I am not surprised to get, but what I was hoping the program would offer is a cropping function.

In addition to the "tear" at the bottom of the video, there are black margins on the right and left of the image. This other guy I was talking about using the Dazzle product says the software with his program has trim settings that allow him to trim off the black edges and presumably could also trim the tear off the bottom.

At first I thought the "tear" might be in a non-data area below the screen, but the "tear" is in the content area.

I am using a S-VHS player that hasn't been used much, but that isn't to say the heads could be dirty. I found it has a manual tracking adjustment and I changed that, but it didn't affect the tearing on the bottom.

I only have one older VHS machine...a really old one that ate a tape the last time I tried to play it. I never opened it up to get my tape back.

I don't want to have to buy a new VHS player to copy my tapes...hmmmmm....

Thanks so much!

I also mentioned that in addition to responding to the other string in the PD9 part of the forum, I opened a ticket with support. No response there or here.

Seems they want me to spend my $$$ elsewhere.

Pretty pathetic when companies rely on other users like you to provide support for their products instead of the company itself.

Thanks again Larry....

OK....the other topic in the PD9 directory is called:

I'm having trouble CAPTURING a VHS movie.....

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/16133.page

And what I wrote there is this:

"I am trying to capture some of my old video collection using the very popular Canopus ADVC-55. I am trying to figure out what product to buy, and this one has failed big time. I saw the identical error message on an earlier version. Says it is initializing the digital device, gets to 70% and never proceeds from there. There is nothing for it to initialize, I will be sending a video stream. It has nothing to do but capture.

I am looking for software that can crop the video input to remove the black bars on the side and the "tear" on the bottom. I know a guy with Dazzle and whatever software that works with it, but he doesn't have this issue. I was hoping this software would be even better than his, but it won't even work."

When searching for my own answer I found this string.

I don't know what else to add to what I wrote above. I have the A/D converter between the S-VHS player and the computer connected with FW. As mentioned in this message string, it gets to 70% and stops and never continues further. There seems to be something that happens at 70% that fails for my configuration and failed here too.

PD9 might be the next best thing to string cheese, but if it can't accept a simple DV feed on the FW port something is really wrong.

I have downloaded and installed Adobe while waiting for help here. Haven't tried it yet, but I am hoping it will at least accept my DV stream, unlike PD9. Seems odd that the "free" Windows Movie Maker can accept my video stream, but it kills Cyberlink.

Thanks Larry!

Something is really screwed up here....

I can't create a topic. I realized my note in the PD9 forum was a response to someone else with the same problem. There is someone else there who said they used a non-Cyberlink solution I tried to PM. When I tried to PM him it brought me back to my profile page. When I tried to create a new topic on the PD9 forum, it also brought me back to my profile page, as if it was screwed up. It said the only fields I needed to fill out was my name and email which I have done and I can log in and log out with it, but I can't PM nor can I create a new topic?????

How can I have a signon good enough to respond, good enough to received notifications, but not good enough to create a topic???? Seems I would be logged in or not logged in, but not some limbo state I am in.

Anyway, the person who has the same problem in the PD9 directory hasn't gotten an answer from Cyberlink and my response to his complaint has still been ignored, as has his problem.

A person who did respond to him said they used a non-Cyberlink solution as I am guessing they are still having the same problem.

I am going to go back and capture what I wrote on his topic and add it here. Thanks!

Hello,

I did write a note on the PD9 folder but no response, and I opened a support ticket and am waiting for a response. For now, I only need the product for this one single task which it can't do. I am going to try and find some other free trials today for competitive products as I don't know if and when this particular problem will be solved as it seems to be persistent. Thanks Larry.

I am trying to capture some of my old video collection using the very popular Canopus ADVC-55. I am trying to figure out what product to buy, and this one has failed big time. I saw the identical error message on an earlier version. Says it is initializing the digital device, gets to 70% and never proceeds from there. There is nothing for it to initialize, I will be sending a video stream. It has nothing to do but capture.

I am looking for software that can crop the video input to remove the black bars on the side and the "tear" on the bottom. I know a guy with Dazzle and whatever software that works with it, but he doesn't have this issue. I was hoping this software would be even better than his, but it won't even work.

And guess what, I am trying the version 9 trail and it does the same thing. Hangs at 70%. But unlike your case, it isn't doing a thing. Checking CPU usage and it is 0%. No disk activity, no CPU use, just sitting there all stupid like at 70%. I think it likes that number. Obviously indicates a stage in the process. Gets to 70% in a couple seconds, and never goes further.