VideoHelp Forum
+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 5 of 5
Thread
  1. Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Location
    Queensland.
    Search Comp PM
    Howdy everyone !.

    I have 2 PANASONIC DVD Recorders (DMR EZ48V) and DMR ES15, both running off a PANASONIC Cathode Ray Tube Tv.
    I've purchased an Enhancer, which is an Electronic device that strips the Copy protection Signal from Commercial DVD's.
    It works fine when copying Region 4 DVD's and VHS Cassettes, however when I go to duplicate Region 1 recordings, the
    Picture is slightly compressed vertically and has a wide Black Bar running along the bottom of the Screen.
    The settings on both Recorders have been changed to NTSC without success.
    Adjusting the enhancer did'nt work either.
    I've got a number of NTSC VHS Films that could be transferred to DVD.
    What could be happening ?. Please see attachment.

    Please be as detailed as you like.
    Image Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version

Name:	IMG_6300.JPG
Views:	857
Size:	88.5 KB
ID:	22989  

    Click image for larger version

Name:	IMG_6301.JPG
Views:	917
Size:	136.0 KB
ID:	22990  

    Click image for larger version

Name:	IMG_6302.JPG
Views:	878
Size:	118.8 KB
ID:	22991  

    Quote Quote  
  2. Member hech54's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Yank in Europe
    Search PM
    It's a waste of time to "record" any DVD.....just make a copy on your computer and be done with it.
    Quote Quote  
  3. I assume you're converting the tapes to DVD by using two DVD/VHS recorders with the copy protection removal gismo in between, or something like that?. Then you'd put the DVDs in your PC drive for copying/converting if need be?

    The problem you're having seems to relate to the device stripping the copy protection and possibly the fact it's not designed for NTSC.
    If you don't have any luck with it there's lots of capture cards for PCs. Mine's a Winfast combination TV tuner/capture card thingy. Generally they happily ignore the copy protection on VHS tapes (macrovision). Mine does. It doesn't have a problem capturing NTSC (I'm in Australia too). You can connect a VHS player directly to the card, record it to your hard drive (several formats, including standard DVD files), then edit/re-encode/burn etc when it's done.
    Last edited by hello_hello; 24th Jan 2014 at 10:30.
    Quote Quote  
  4. Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    United States
    Search Comp PM
    Originally Posted by hello_hello View Post
    I'm not sure i really understand your process. Does the PC have a DVD drive? If so, normally you'd just stick a DVD in the PC's drive and copy it to your hard drive. Or you can use something like DVDShrink (set it's output file size option to something large so it doesn't try to re-encoding while ripping). If the discs contain copy protection DVDShrink can't cope with, which they won't if you burned them yourself, there's MakeMKV, DVDFab and AnyDVD for ripping (AnyDVD isn't free).

    Thinking about it.... PC DVD drives are set for particular regions. You can change their region a few times. I don't think I've ever had a problem ripping a DVD with a different region than my drive, but it might be something to be aware of.

    The problem you're having seems to relate to the device stripping the copy protection and possibly the fact it's not designed for NTSC.
    If you don't have any luck with it there's lots of capture cards for PCs. Mine's a Winfast combination TV tuner/capture card thingy. Generally they happily ignore the copy protection on VHS tapes (macrovision). Mine does. It doesn't have a problem capturing NTSC. You can connect the VHS player directly to the card, record it to your hard drive (several formats, including standard DVD files), then edit/re-encode burn etc when it's done.
    As I recall DVD region settings on PC drives come into play when using commercial software players like PowerDVD, but not when using ripping software. I agree that DVD ripping software would be a better choice than re-recording.

    You are lucky to have a capture device that ignores Macrovision. Many (maybe even most) PC capture devices don't ignore Macrovision, especially the better quality ones, and it is still hit or miss with cheap generic capture devices.

    [Edit]Thinking about this some more, don't PAL VCRs output what is known as a PAL 60 signal when playing NTSC tapes? PAL60 has NTSC line standard (525 lines at 30 frames), but with color converted to conform to the PAL standard. Real PAL has 625 lines at 25 frames per second. That is 100 lines more than NTSC provides. Perhaps the DVD recorder is adding extra lines to fill the frame because it is detecting a PAL color signal.
    Last edited by usually_quiet; 24th Jan 2014 at 11:02.
    Quote Quote  
  5. Yes, you might be correct about converting NTSC to PAL60 (even my DVD player) but if it did my TV could display that correctly so I wouldn't have seen anything but a normal picture. If the OP's tapes are being converted to PAL60 along the way, that might be the problem. The device doing the recording may not know it's PAL 60.

    I'm sure I've captured the odd NTSC VHS tape using my VCR, but it's been so long I can't remember the details.... just that I don't think I had any problem. I chose NTSC in the capture card's settings and it was captured as 720x480 with just the usual amount of crud top and bottom.

    I think in my case the VCR outputs the video in it's native format, in which case the TV/recorder would need to be able to handle/display it correctly, but I can't for the life of me remember whether my VCR can output NTSC video as PAL. I'm fairly sure it can't, but....

    Now you've got me thinking about it I'm less certain.... I'm remembering the VCR outputting NTSC and capturing it as NTSC (and I recall it displaying NTSC on it's front panel when playing a NTSC tape), but maybe I should check. I've had a PAL VHS tape sitting on my desk for six months, waiting for me to get motivated to hook up the VCR again and capture it for a friend. I might try to do just that very soon, and while I'm at it I'll try to find a NTSC VHS tape to test just to make sure it all did happen the way I remember it did.....

    I do recall..... maybe because I saw it an action more.... my DVD player could convert NTSC DVDs to PAL so it didn't matter if the TV could display NTSC, although my CRT TV could.... it'd display PAL or NTSC on the screen when it switched. I remember finding it amusing because with the DVD player set to output video in it's native format, the DVD player's menus were NTSC despite it being a PAL player. NTSC would display briefly on the screen whenever I used the menu.

    PS. I see you quoted my previous post before I edited it. I removed the stuff about PC drive regions because I had a re-think regarding what the original poster was doing and decided it probably wasn't relevant. Although reading the OP again, it does seem he's using the two DVD recorder method to copy DVDs when he could just be sticking them in a PC DVD drive and ripping them.
    Last edited by hello_hello; 25th Jan 2014 at 11:27.
    Quote Quote  



Similar Threads

Visit our sponsor! Try DVDFab and backup Blu-rays!