audio corrupt after vhs capture

[Habby]

I have successfully converted several of my own vhs videos to dvd using my sony vx-2000 as a pass thru device. So friends have asked me to do a few of theirs, all I can figure is the age of the tapes. I get about an hour of good info then the audio drops altogether and the video won't play past that. Even though the vcr tape plays fine on vcr. Any suggestions as to whats happening?

[harley2ride]

Sounds like you have a file size limitation with your hardware or software.

[Habby]

I have found now that rather than do a pass thru convert with camcorder, it's easier to just copy from vhs vcr to camcorder then upload. So far so good. By the way, Panasonic master professional tapes are great. 83 minits long.

[thecoalman]

Well I see two problems with that....

A) You are putting unecessary wear and tear on your camcoder, being it's an expensive one I don't see why you want to do that. I won't even use my GL2 for pass-thru let alone recording to tape. I use a ADVC 110 which does the same thing so I don't need to.

and B) That is going to take a lot longer.

When capturing VHS I usually have the capture progrma cut the files into 3.5 GB chunks as I'm capturing so I can archive the raw AVI to DVD. Most capture programs have this feature I'd suggst you look into it.

As suggested above you may have hit some kind of limitation but I have never had trouble with large captures like that.

[Habby]

Are you saying just dump an avi onto a dvd? Will stand alone players play it? I thought you had to render and go mpeg2.

[thecoalman]

For archiving.... not for playing. You can only get about 20 mins on a DVD of DV-AVI max. It won't even play in a 8x computer DVD player as the player can't tranfer the data fast enough... Possibly on a 16x but I haven't tried it.

Most people don't do that but I prefer to have two copies of my footage. The original tape and the discs. Time consuming but I have backups

[Habby]

I really could use an affordable mini DV tape player to save wear and tear on my camcorder. Do you know of one?

[thecoalman]

They cost as much or more than a cam, just buy another cam.

[slacker]

When using passthru do you need to set the audio levels of your camcorder or your PC? And when recording VHS direct to DV tape using the camcorder, do you need to set the audio levels of the camcorder? I know that many camcorders do not even have audio volume adjustments.

[Habby]

No, Just use a good quality vcr like a six head. The better picture you can send to the digital camcorder the better.