The VC-500 is recommended by the experts for USB capture. Also The Hauppage USB Live2, and I use a Hauppage 850. Do not buy a cheap knockoff.
Not sure what you mean by piggyback, you only need 1 converter stick.
What are you unhappy with as far as results?

You CAN get a decent result using low-grade consumer VCR, but if ANYTHING is wrong with the tape you will find a better VCR, and a Time Base Corrector, can make a huuuge difference.

The advantage to capturing as lossless AVI is you then have ALL THE VIDEO information in the file rather than compressed and missing much of the color and movement and each "fix" you apply makes the final result grainier and yuckier and blander losing color-space each time it's rendered.
A good VCR will also have a better playback mechanism, and filters. JVC is the best, followed by Panasonic, and for non-TBC units, Sharp is very good. 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

Quote The VC-500 is recommended by the experts for USB capture. Also The Hauppage USB Live2, and I use a Hauppage 850. Do not buy a cheap knockoff.
Not sure what you mean by piggyback, you only need 1 converter stick.
What are you unhappy with as far as results?

My biggest unresolved issue so far is that fast motion sometimes gets blurry. Someone stressed elsewhere the importance of matching output to input, and I am wondering if I have done that properly.

The VC500 says it produces o/p at 30 fps. When I first imported VC500 EZ Grabber/ShowBiz files into PD, as soon as I moved a file down to the timeline section I would get a warning that the clip was 30 instead of 29.97 fps. I no longer receive that message, and, now when I click on the clip properties it says the clip is 29.97 fps. Has PD or Windows 10 automatically changed the original file from 30 to 29.97 fps? I’m not sure what happened here.

At any rate, now, when I right click on one of these files after dragging it to the timeline I see that it is an MPEG-2 file, 6.5 mbps, 720x480 resolution, 29.97 fps, frame type=progressive; audio is MPEG, stereo. In “Produce,” I have changed from using the default profile to using a custom profile that is MPEG-2, NTSC, 720x480 progressive, 6.5 mbps, and am using SVRT. Finally, when I get ready to burn the disc it’s set at DVD-Video, 4:3 aspect ratio, MPEG-2, HQ 720x480/60i and 8 or 9.5 mbps.

Do you see any potential mismatch in these settings that could cause the fuzziness that I am seeing (or any other problems for that matter)?

note: Probably should mention…. I see the blurry picture on my 50” TV screen, I don’t see the fuzziness when previewing on my computer, so I have some add'l testing to do to narrow this down. Windows 10: PowerDirector 16
Windows 7 & 10. VC500 w EZGrabber & Showbiz. Roxio Creator Premier 10.2

Hi,
I just bought the Diamond VC500 and I'm having the same issue, the camera on my laptop works but it doesn't find my vcr, the blue lights on the vc500, my laptop has windows 10, any help would be great


Thanks for this. I'm using a different grabber (Diamond VC500), but had the same problem. None of my Windows 10 capture software was seeing my VCR. Turns out it was indeed a driver conflict. I used a slightly different process to fix.