Looking for "Macrovision free" analog capture card

M

Markbot

1
I need to buy an analog capture card to transfer VHS, SVHS and regular 8mm video to my hard drive so I can edit and convert to DVD. 99% of this stuff would be home movies, but there are some special commercial VHS tapes I have which have never been released on DVD that I would like to backup to DVD as they are getting quite old.

For non Macrovision encoded material, I can pass the analog signal through my Sony Digital 8 camcorder and it converts it to digital on the fly and passes the signal on to my PC via Firewire. It does not require recording the signal on tape. It acts like a capture card and I can capture the Firewire signal in DV AVI format if I so wish.

This set up does not work if the analog signal coming into the camcorder has Macrovision encoding. The same is true if I pass the signal through a Macrovision "black box" copy device. The camcorder sees the Macrovision and reports that it can’t be copied (not even passed through). I can record the signal on an 8mm VCR then play that tape in the Digital 8 and capture via Firewire, but that adds a generation to the image quality.

So what I need is a high quality capture card that will capture analog signals that have Macrovision encoding (VHS encoding not DVD). I will also be able to stop tying up my camcorder as a capture card.

Any suggestions?
 
RASTABT

RASTABT

1
Hardware wise Pinnacle has a range of hardware which I've seen in action which can handle your need's. They only thing is I have no idea of the product but I can find out within the week for you. Other then that their MovieBox DV and software is worth looking into.Pinnacle.com
There once was a unit I came across Dazzler, Dazzla, Pazzle something to that effect I'll get back to you..sorry.
 
G

GrofLuigi

1
I have heard that Canopus ADVC-100 (an excellent device for capturing, BTW) can bypass macrovision with few undocumented clicks.

I have also heard that SOME cheap bt-878 based tuner cards can do that too (depends on the driver). The quality of capture is lower, but still good enough for S-VHS.

This is for testing and educational purposes, of course... :)

And Google is your friend. ;)

GL
 
M

Markbot

1
Thanks gang. I was leaning towards getting one of the Pinnacle products. I've been using Studio 9 and it works quite well after the latest patch. OK I'm off searching for drivers.
 
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