macrovision and tv-tuner card

[learner1]

I have a cheap hauppauge win-tv-go card and thinking about using
it to capture some old vhs movie tape before they deteriate
too much. Does anybody know how that card respond to
macrovision on the tape? My digital8 camcorder refuses to
capture the same movie saying copyrighted material.

[stream]

It responds like anything else without some kind of filter on it: the lines can look anywhere from slightly annoying to horrible. You can find hacked drivers for ATI TV Tuners that will remove the macrovision, but I don't think anything like that is available for Hauppage cards.

You can buy that $39 (or $99, depending on what model you get) CopyMaster thing that filters out macrovision colorstriping, or you can take the longer route of going ahead and ripping the VHS and burning it to DVD (with the macrovision still on it), then ripping that DVD with DVDDecrypter to remove the macrovision and reburning another DVD. That's a pretty long and stupid process though, so I'd look into the CopyMaster thing.

-jesse

[learner1]

I do have the Sima Color Correction, but that does not
work when trying to capture via the digital8 camcorder.
Apparently the tape contains more than simple
macrovision. It may have the digital protection (CGMS?)
on it as well. Will that be a problem for the tuner/capture
card even when the signal was fed via the Sima CC?

[FulciLives]

... or you can take the longer route of going ahead and ripping the VHS and burning it to DVD (with the macrovision still on it), then ripping that DVD with DVDDecrypter to remove the macrovision and reburning another DVD. That's a pretty long and stupid process though, so I'd look into the CopyMaster thing.

-jesse

LOL

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[stream]

LOL

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Okay, I guess "capturing the VHS to your hard drive" would have been a better way to word that, but you know what I meant.

-jesse

[FulciLives]

Okay, I guess "capturing the VHS to your hard drive" would have been a better way to word that, but you know what I meant.

Sorry but this will not work if the original VHS has macrovision that trips the capture card. However, not all capture cards respond to copy protection.

You cannot capture a VHS with macrovision IF the macrovision shows up through your capture card. You can't capture that and then "remove" the macrovision. It doesn't work that way. If I understand you correctly that was what you were saying to do but of course that will not work.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[fmctm1sw]

I have a wintv card and I capture VHS tapes (that I own) all the time. Even one that had "Protected by Macrovision" right at the beginning of it. It had no effect at all on the capture.

[FulciLives]

I have a wintv card and I capture VHS tapes (that I own) all the time. Even one that had "Protected by Macrovision" right at the beginning of it. It had no effect at all on the capture.

As I said not all capture cards are affected by Macrovision. If this is the case then there is no need to worry about it. However there are some capture cards that are sensitive to Marcovision. In such cases you will have to use a "black box" to remove the Macrovision from the video signal BEFORE it reaches the capture card.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[stream]

John,

Are you sure my rather roundabout method wouldn't work? Why couldn't you capture the VHS tape to your hard drive using some kind of capture software, convert to mpeg2 and author, burn to DVD, then rip that DVD with DVDDecrypter, and let it remove the macrovision as it rips?

I have a feeling it's because the macrovision colorstriping isn't actual lines written into every picture of the mpeg2 video stream. Is it more like a set of instructions built into the movies that instructs certain devices to place the lines on the screen? If that's so, then I doubt my method would work, because DVDDecrypter wouldn't know how to remove the macrovision.

I must be missing something, because I don't understand why that wouldn't work. I'm just trying to learn ;)

-jesse

[FulciLives]

Are you sure my rather roundabout method wouldn't work? Why couldn't you capture the VHS tape to your hard drive using some kind of capture software, convert to mpeg2 and author, burn to DVD, then rip that DVD with DVDDecrypter, and let it remove the macrovision as it rips?

The video signal you input into a capture card is an ANALOG signal. When this hits the capture card the MACROVISION is triggered (if the capture card supports it) and the ANALOG video signal is DISTORTED in the usual MACROVISION manner and it is then this distorted signal that the capture card then converts into a DIGITAL signal.

There is then no way to un-distort this captured video.

DVD ripping is different because the MACROVISION is not part of the video. The MACROVISION chip is inside the DVD player and if the DVD uses MACROVISION then it simply tells the chip to "turn on" and add MACROVISION to the video stream before it reaches the video outputs of the DVD players. With other sources though such as VHS the MACROVISION is already part of the video signal which of course is an ANALOG video signal.

Hope that all makes sense

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[stream]

Okay, so I was right in suspecting that on DVD's the macrovision colorstriping isn't an actual visual defect added into the mpeg2 video stream.

But, with VHS, you're saying that when the capture card is writing the captured VHS data to your hard drive, it's actually writing the video streams with distortion?

-jesse

[FulciLives]

Okay, so I was right in suspecting that on DVD's the macrovision colorstriping isn't an actual visual defect added into the mpeg2 video stream.

Correct but this only applies to RIPPING because if you try to capture from a DVD source and that DVD has MACROVISION then it will be mixed into the analog video signal as it comes out of the DVD player using the analog video outputs.

But, with VHS, you're saying that when the capture card is writing the captured VHS data to your hard drive, it's actually writing the video streams with distortion?

Correct. Assuming you have a capture card that is sensitive to MACROVISION but as I have said not ALL capture cards are affected by it. One good example would be the CANOPUS ADVC-100 or the very similar DataVideo DAC-100 ... both of these ignore MACROVISION although there is a "trick" with the CANOPUS to make it that way whereas the DataVideo unit seems to ignore MACROVISION without the need of the "trick". These two units by the way are the two most highly recommended capture units on this site.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman