I have purchased the above device and connected and old Sharp videocam to it and can see the picture and record but the video is in black and white and stutters. I am trying to find answers but none are looking like what I need. This is connected with the min connector to the rca jacks on the unit. ANy help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You
Hi,
There isn't enough information for me to understand exactly what you have going on. I gather you have purchased a hardware device, to which you have connected your video camera via the three RCA jacks (red,white,yellow plugs)?
I'm guessing that device is connecting to your computer via a USB port, or is it physically installed into an expansion port inside your computer?
Bascially, you have to ensure you have the cabling connected correctly, bad color or black and white could be from wrong cabling connections. I'm guessing that isn't the case, however, because you also describe stuttering.
The stuttering suggests your PC or the conversion device doesn't have the resources to execute the recording function. When recording, check your computer resources to see if you have any resource exhaustion happening. For Windows, run Task Manager and check your performance tab to see if your RAM is maxed, or the CPU is maxed, the hard disk drive could also be thrashing.
If you have a computer powerful enough to do the recording, then I'd suggest that the conversion device you are using isn't providing the required quality, or the problem may be at the source, with the video cam out put itself. Connecting your video cam directly to a TV with the RCA jacks will let you know about that.
If none of this helps, please detail exactly what devices are involved and how everything is connected and perhaps we can offer more help.
Good luck!
TeeRay
I have aSharp camcorder with a white and yellow rca jack I connect to the converter. My ram usage never goes above 30% and cpu usage is very low. When the video starts it has color and a little choppy but then goes to black and white and stutters more. The USB port is built in, no card. WHen I connect to a vcr or tv playback is excellent So I am beginning to think the device is the issue.
Having Googled "USB-AVCPT" I can see it is one of the many types of such interfaces manufactured (an in-line digitiser with USB output) by various manufacturers under a great variety of names! Unfortunately, as you have discovered, the quality of the output is generally pretty poor. (Several years ago I had one whose output frame size was very small and even at this small size, the quality was not what is needed if you want to produce a DVD or similar export in anything like "reasonable" quality).
If you have a large number of files to transfer from your camcorder it really is worth your while to look into the various "pro/semi-pro" products from the likes of Grass Valley or similar manufacturers. Several years ago I was able to buy a Grass Valley ACEDVio PCI card for my computer for about £50GBP (it was a "special offer" on Amazon UK). I have never regretted this purchase since clients now pay me to turn their VHS and similar video footage into DVDs etc.!
Obviously you may have no intention of "selling a service" to other people but, although the purchase of a dedicated "pro" unit is not cheap, if you want high quality output you really do need something better than the device you currently have; in my personal opinion, manufacturers of such devices are being exceedingly "economical with the truth" when they claim they allow you to transfer analogue footage to DVD!