No more dropped frames ???

19th Dec 2003 05:50 #1

Member

Amazing story. When I first started out with this whole video biz, I tried capturing some very old 3 Stooges VHS tapes I had from about 15 years ago. I used my brand new Hitachi VCR and tried to capture these. Needless to say, I had thousands upon thousands of frame drops. So it comes time to transfer, and when I get here in Japan, my "video capture box" gets set up upstairs and I no longer have a VCR. Being cheap and lazy, I don't buy another VCR and on my way to work one day, I see one in someones trash can. I have a background in electronics, so I decide to see if I can save a buck and fish this VCR out of the trash. It was a sony stereo VHS. It had a broken ground on one of the RCA audio jacks causing a loud humming sound. I quickly fixed that and was in business. I connect it to my capture rig and popped in a few beat up tapes I have laying around. ZERO dropped frames. I got my 15 year old really beat up 3 Stooges tapes that would drop frames immediately. Still ZERO dropped frames! I actually will get a few drops I'm sure since I have virtualdub set up to drop frames (somehow) to keep audio sync. I've written this whole thing off as dumb luck but I have one big problem. NO REMOTE. The display is stuck on so I have the "SP 0:00:00" that shows up and I can't get it off. Then this little tracking bar wants to show up too. My brand new all-in-one remote won't turn it off. My friend told me his PDA can be downloaded with codes that might work. Does anyone know a good place to find these? I know, a little lengthy for me but a good story anyway...