Not recording full length

Linda-Luu wrote on 4/9/2023, 6:05 PM

Not recording the full tape

Hello!

I have been using the Rescue Your Videotapes! 8th Edition (purchased in 2020) to digitalise my old VHS tapes. I have finally gotten back to doing it for the rest of my tapes, and have been using my old laptop, a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro with Windows 10.

It seems like everything is working, the small preview box shows the entire tape when playing, neither audio or video is showing any signs of damage. However, when I press “End recording” it only recorded a small part of the tape. I am saving the files to an external harddrive with approx. 800GB left of free space.

I have gone through around 3,5 hours of tape with only 6 minutes of the tape recorded.

Any suggestions for how I can fix this problem?

Comments

AAProds wrote on 4/10/2023, 12:24 AM

@Linda-Luu

Some ideas in no particular order:

-What's changed in your setup from 2020?

-Is the external drive formatted to NTFS? Might have a 2gb or 4gb limit for files if FAT 32.

-Can you do a test run using the internal drive on your Yoga?

-Is there some big glitch in the tape at the 6 minute mark that might kick off the recording?

-Does the external drive remain active when it gets to the 6 minute mark?

-Is the halting at 6 minutes repeatable?

-Try with a different tape.

-Try recording into another format eg MXV.

-Is any stop-timer set?

emmrecs wrote on 4/10/2023, 3:43 AM

@Linda-Luu

I would wholeheartedly agree with everything that @AAProds has written, especially this: -Is there some big glitch in the tape at the 6 minute mark that might kick off the recording?

I do a lot of such transfers for clients and by far the biggest problem, and most common reason for the sort of breakdown you are seeing, is that there is some level of discontinuity in the source tape, leading the software to "believe" the capture has stopped. In such circumstances you need to "monitor" the transfer, i.e., watch it throughout and perhaps, restart it each time at the point where it fails! Unless you are prepared to look at adding some sort of Time Base Correction (TBC) in the signal path or to try and find a VHS player which includes built-in TBC.

My computer has an internal PCI card, a Canopus AceDVio, for digitising analogue video, so somewhat more complex than using RYVT (which I don't have), but I still often need to use a TBC to try and ensure the transfer to computer goes without any breakdowns!

HTH

Jeff
Forum Moderator

Linda-Luu wrote on 4/10/2023, 12:57 PM

@AAProds Thank you for your input!

I must admit that I’m not very technically up to speed, but I tried my best troubleshooting.

To answer some of your questions:

- I am honestly not sure what changed since my setup in 2020. It is the same VCR (Panasonic NV-FJ626), same computer and even the same cables. Something I might have changed is the external hard disk which seems to remain active.

- The hard drive is formatted to NTFS.

- Doesn’t seem to be a big glitch around the 6-minute mark from what I can see.

- I tried running different recordings and some of them stopped around the 2 minute mark, some at 5 minutes etc. so the exact length was not repeatable.

On a positive note, I have tried to use the internal drive and a new format, and it seems to capture the entire length of what I record (I’m currently stopping the recording at random times to check). I don’t know whether it’s the change of drive or the new format that does the trick. As I am writing this now, I do actually seem to recall that I might have used the MXV format in 2020, and the other run was set to MPEG-2. Not sure though.

@emmrecs Thank you for your input as well!

AAProds wrote on 4/10/2023, 6:59 PM

@Linda-Luu

On a positive note, I have tried to use the internal drive and a new format, and it seems to capture the entire length of what I record (I’m currently stopping the recording at random times to check). I don’t know whether it’s the change of drive or the new format that does the trick. As I am writing this now, I do actually seem to recall that I might have used the MXV format in 2020, and the other run was set to MPEG-2. Not sure though.

That is good news. I feel it's probably the external drive. If you have another lying around, you could try it. There is a lot of data flowing to the drive during capture and any hiccup might stop the process. If your laptop has it, a USB 3 drive would be better than USB 2.