Silvercrest Usb Video Grabber

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OnOff

Mad Inventor™
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On a whim in Lidl's the other day I bought a "Silvercrest USB Video Grabber". Don't laugh it works an absolute treat. £15 from memory. Basically a lead with a chunky USB dongle one end. Options of plugging into an old camcorder / VCR etc via Composite phonos or S-Video. There's a micro USB on the end of the phono leads that plugs into the dongle then a full size USB the other end of the dongle.

So, dug out the old 8mm tapes - some about 20 years old. Been meaning to do this for a while, before they degrade and also to digitise for my old Mum to try and spark the old grey cells with some recognition (sadly some serious issues there). Managed to get a pristine Hitachi 8mm camcorder second hand as our own Canon was as dead as.

First couple of tapes transferred to .mpg format no trouble at all and really pleased. But on the 3rd tape the software that came with the grabber, Power Director 11 kept saying on the lines of ".......media is copyrighted" and stopping the recording. From a quick search it's an oddity with a lot of the Power Director packages. Something to do with it seeing "noise" on old tapes similar to the protection put on copyrighted tapes. Pity as PD is dead easy to use.

So...........now using AVS Video Recorder software and tbh every bit as good as PD. One oddity though: The 8mm tape is playing back in colour on the camcorders viewfinder and on the AVS preview screen on the pc. But then for a good while the on screen preview changes to monochrome (it's still colour on the camcorder viewfinder). Then, on screen it eventually changes back to colour. Still recording and at 38 minutes into a 90 minute tape so don't know if the final movie will be all colour.

Any ideas? PC memory issue maybe?

EDIT: Erm...........might have answered my own question! Accidentally knocked the camcorder and the AVS screen went from monochrome to colour! Gave it another tap and back to mono. There's some horizontal lines too on the old tape. Now thinking head cleaner maybe?

Cheers

 
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Maybe some damage to the connectors? I notice this on old telly's with scart leads. maybe worth a head clean or some alcahol on a cotton bud?

not really all that helpful but hey. :C

:)

 
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