Here is the deal. At work we stream in 8mm tapes through a digital rapids DRC-500 board (using the analog cables) and use their program to capture. However, the problem is that we use the 8mm VCRs (Sony Z-box) so much that we wear out the buttons on the vcrs and are forced to use a remote.

I am trying to eliminate the need for using remotes by hooking up the DV port on the back of the Z-Box to a firewire board (IEEE 1394) and use a program on the computer to control the z-box via software instead of the remote. However, most software that allows you to control the Z-Box from the computer (via DV interface) also comes with capturing utilities that are not needed. All I need a simple VCR I could run on the foreground with 4 hotkeys (play,stop,rewind,fastforward) that does not take up much screen space.

The best program I have found was a program called AMCap, but the problem is that the program does not have any shortcut keys for its VCR functions, only its capturing functions.