I have a Sony DV Direct and a separate vcr. Some of the VHS tapes will copy with no problem but others won't. From reading through the forums, I understand it is a macros problem. My question is which stabilizer works the best. I have looked through some of what was posted and want to get what works the best. I was kind of leaning toward the Grex because it says it works with almost anything but it does have a 90 dollar price tag. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!
There are (at last count) 5 macrovision copy protection systems.. they all rely in one form or another on the circuitry design within the old crt tv sets to achieve their goals while at the same time baffling video recorders. I haven't seen any one box which will remove all of them, but one trick I found to copy protected tapes back in the day was to tweak the line phase amplitude control found in the vcr's of the era to get the sync locked to the floating hold.. Disney in particular used that method well after the others had moved on to suppressing the chroma phase lock (they just took the chroma phase burst out of the signal after the black and burst at the start letting the vcr guess and replace it) as it works reliably on older vcr and tv combos while stumping copying. yup.. you guessed it.. I was a vhs pirate back when.. and learned it inside out... the other trick was to run it raw vid in/vid out through a genlocked video mixer replacing the field and line sync pulses with locally generated ones in the right form.. actually just like the chroma lock and flywheel sync used in off air tv's used to do. The adjustment is for minimum hanover bars (if you ever saw the non pal decoder used in early 70's mitsubishi tv's you would understand green faces and pink grass with lots of stripes.. little blue tant c581 anybody.. plus those 16 or so co-acting presets after replacing the sod.. all tucked away right under the tripler?) on an off tape signal Try a few of the cheaper boxers.. or even better if it's just one tape take it to somebody who has a selection of macroboxes and get them to do it. Another trick is to play with video capture software that will accept external sync signals and locking to the frame sync and letting the line and chroma signals float... a very old vcr helps there.. a jvc3v32 is ideal.. it has all those signals on test points inside clearly marked. This trickery differs depending if it's ntsc or pal. Some ideas and some memories.. why not just look for the content and download it?
Wow, you really know a lot about this stuff. I am learning as problems crop up. I can do pretty good with it once I get on the right track. I have used the software programs but right now I can't load up my computer. Have a few projects in the works and getting things done while laid off. But I did just purchase this Digital Video Stabilizer -http://www.checkhere22.com/stabilizer/ , and so far is working great. I was putting my MASH collection on DVD from VHS. Out of 75 tapes, 7 were copyright protected. Just got it today and so far is doing what I want it to do. To be honest, I didn't think VHS had copyright. I used to copy tapes all the time and never ran into this. But if I understand what your telling me, the newer VCR's are what kick it out. They pick up the signals that they put into the tape that they didn't have the technology for yet. That I have run into before. I would really like to learn more about this stuff. Anybody have the grex video stabilizer and how well does that work. They claim it will work on anything. But with a $90 price tag I would want a lot more info on it. But I will see how far I can push this one and what it will all do. Thanks.
