ADS DVD Express Problems

[Glen]

I borrowed this unit from my neighbour to give it a try. I must say I haven't had the luck that Ken has had with it. When burning Disc to Disc it froze at about the 5 min. mark. I did what Ken suggested and placed a fan on the unit to keep it cool and store the video on my hard drive. It froze again at the exact same place but it still looked as though it was recording so I kept going. The tape plays well in my camera so it is not freezing there. The resulting file was 3.3 gig and wouldn't you know, it freezes at exactly the same place. I have given up on it as this has taken hours and hours to do. I think I will buy the Panasonic unit from Future Shop to do this and not go through my PC. By the way it is an AMD2500+ with 768Ram and 64meg 9500np video card.

[Glen]

Ok, I watched the video through my camcorder again and though it plays just fine, at the point it freezes through ADS is where there is some static for a bit (where the camera has been turned off and back on at a later date). I don't know why the preview freezes due to that and not show that and keep playing.

[Ken_ver_1_5]

you found the problem.
what happened is the dvd express takes the horizontal and vertical sync
from the tape. when they drop out the dvd express thinks the show is over
so to say....
now I have came across this on some old tapes and yes it can happen on new ones
too. one way around this is to get a time base stabilizer ( I wont one but don't have)
these are not cheep but they will allow any capture device to record even
if the video is messed up, Allowing you to edit later.
sorry you had a bad experience with the ads dvd express I have found it to work great
and it has given me little problems...

[Glen]

Thanks for the update Ken. Could you tell me if I would have the same problem with a capture card? I probably have tons of those areas on my tapes as you get them when you turn the unit off and on. I can't bypass them as the preview pane freezes as soon as it hits one. I have approx. a dozen 2 hour tapes that I am wanting to convert. Thanks.

[Ken_ver_1_5]

that depends on the capture card. I had an ati tv-wonder and it never had
that problem but it had many other problems mostly quality related.
and this doesn't mean that all your tapes will have the sam problem.

not to sure if a internal capture cards now have dtd

I normally capture to the hd but I watch the preview screen
if it stalls I stop the tape and start just after the stall then use
editing software to remove the problem and make one file out
of it for dvd.

Edit:
one thing I forgot to mention is try a test with video coming
from a tuner ( not tape ) this is just to rule out any other
issue.

[Glen]

Thanks again Ken. I found that once it stalled, the preview window is frozen. I am not sure if stopping the tape in the camera and starting again would work. I have given it back to him for now but may try again.
You mention about a test through a tuner. I am not too sure what you mean (TV Tuner?).

[sybil]

Hi Glen - I'm going to add my comments over here. I responded in the other thread, then reread this one and remembered you're recording from a camcorder. I don't know if it's any help to you for me to try recording from a vcr with 2 shows recorded. If it is, I'll try it. What connector do you use with the camcorder? As far as I can see, the Hauppauge card will record to hard drive in several different resolutions, including standard dvd, then you edit (or not) and can record to dvd ( is that your intended final resting spot for your video?).

If you haven't already, check the info here:
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr150.html
If you go to the "Technically speaking" paragraph, the encoding specs are described. Does it look like it will do what you want?

[Glen]

Sybil, I use RCA connectors with the camcorder. I think Ken is right in that when I hit the noise part it freezes but I don't know why I can't get the preview pane going again when it has gone past. The technically speaking paragraph looks exactly like what I would like to do. I was hoping to encode the entire video to my hard drive and edit it but I think it is much too big to do that. All I am hoping to do now is copy it to DVD with something that will overlook those static areas. Thanks again for your help.

[sybil]

You should be able to encode the entire thing to your hard drive. If the drive you're saving to is formatted fat32, as my logical partitions are so they're accessible from linux, the file may be split, but will be treated as one. Fat32 maximum file size is 4 gb, so if I record something larger than that, the first file is about 4 gb, and the leftover file is the same name with a .001 extension.

[Ken_ver_1_5]

yes thats what I meant tv tuner...
yes Sybil is correct depending on the file type the file can be too large
for fat32. with the ads box going over the fat limit resulted in the
file be trashed but the box seemed to be going on with no problems.
certain files types are very large in there native format such as avi.
whatever capture device you use try for an output file that is as
close to dvd as possible (mpg) you should be able to get 2 hours
under or at the 4.1gig limit using ac3 for sound.