Horrible Support. How do you escalate?

CoolBruno

Newbie Joined: May 08, 2010 08:59 Messages: 12 Offline

Solved by

Feb 09, 2011 08:54

Can someone please help. I am try to capture my home videos from my VCR using an EZgrabber 2 which uses Kworld drivers. I am using the built capture software in Powerdirector 9 64 bit. 24 minutes into the 2 hour video, I get "The Movie is Copyright-protected - Recording is prohibited". Of course it is not copyright protected but your support stated that my tape was old. So I copied into a new tape and used a new VCR and the same problem occurred. I am stuck and cannot capture my videos.

Support keeps on responding with canned responbes that I have old video tapes or update my drivers. They ignore the content of my reply which states my drivers are current and the tapes are new. I have replied 6 times and they keep providing the same answer. The problem also occurs every 24 minutes.

This is the worst support I have ever seen. How can I escalate? They refuse to take responsibility for their software.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Feb 09, 2011 10:02

Hi Bruno,
OK, don't panic this is a slight hiccup of an issue and I'm hopeful you can get around the problem.

The "video noise" right at the beginning is the likely cause of the problem and triggering the copyright message. When I state "noise" I mean the off signal crackling VCR's used to produce when hooked up to the TV before the TV was switched on. Now you might only have a small amount.

The workaround is to FF into the VHS tape and then proceed with capture.

This is not a software issue, merely a problem using old tapes (transferring the effect to new tapes etc) which give off the same message as copyright ones do.

Thanks

Dafydd

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Feb 09. 2011 10:05

CoolBruno

Newbie Joined: May 08, 2010 08:59 Messages: 12 Offline

Feb 09, 2011 14:56

Thanks. I did the work around but this requires me to babysit the capture and realign the videos during the edit process.

This issue is specific to Powerdirector and the Kworld drivers. I did not have this problem with an older capture device. Also while it does happen sometimes because of the noise, other events trigger the problem.

I cannot see why they couldn't fix the problem. All they need to do is suppress the copyright code which clearly is not working correctly. It is clear that their support is limited to having a person search a database for answers and copy paste an answer as a response, even though the response is unrelated to the question.

jerrys

Senior Contributor Location: New Britain, CT, USA (between New York and Boston) Joined: Feb 10, 2010 21:36 Messages: 1038 Offline

Feb 13, 2011 18:37

Quote: Thanks. I did the work around but this requires me to babysit the capture and realign the videos during the edit process.

This issue is specific to Powerdirector and the Kworld drivers. I did not have this problem with an older capture device. Also while it does happen sometimes because of the noise, other events trigger the problem.

This is a PITA, but it is not so specific as you think. I have a different brand of capture device, with different drivers, and I ran into the same problem.

Fortunately for me, the device came with its own capture program. That program is dumb as a box of rocks, but it does get the video onto disk.

Did your capture device come with any software? Surely it must have. Try that. Jerry Schwartz

CoolBruno

Newbie Joined: May 08, 2010 08:59 Messages: 12 Offline

Feb 13, 2011 21:53

The capture software that came with the device has a low resolution.

Dickflyfisherman

Senior Member Joined: May 29, 2008 09:34 Messages: 197 Offline

Feb 13, 2011 21:58

I kind of like to know how stuff works (or does not work) any guesses as to how much software tech/programmer work went into converting PD8 to PD 9?