VHS to MiniDV tape, is it possible?
 

I have been trying to save a VHS tape to a tape in my Sony HC90. The manual says I can do this but I can't seem to figure it out.

I have the AV from camera hooked into the AV Out on the VCR, I have the cam in VCR mode...nothing appears on the LCD.

Anyone achieve this on a Sony HC90 or similar camera before?

It can certainly be done. You might be running into a copy protection problem. (I really don't know if today's camcorders have the logic built in to detect copy protection or not.)

I tried it on another VHS tape that was not protected...same thing.

With some cameras, the image from the VCR only appears when you start recording. Try looking through your cameras menus, maybe for an AV->DV option.

I know not all of them will do pass through. I haven't really used a camcorder to encode or transcode to DV, so I have no idea which ones will do what.

Oops...the tape WAS copyprotected.

Thanks for your input, all is well now.

My DCR-TRV50 does it...besides the AV>DV option in the menu you have to be in Rec or Pause/Rec for it to work. Otherwise it will assume the other way around: DVin to AVout. It's very tricky and sometimes annoying, having to put a tape in camara for a operation that does not require one and most of all having to risk taping over some frames of something important. In my case I have to press both REC and PAUSE simultaneously and it becomes hard with the inherent human assincronism.

Sony is not the most logical manufacturer around (but then...which one is?)

Regards.

Paulo

Of course I would never encourage anyone to do anything illegal, but if you have a legitimate need to backup something for your own personal use, there are devices available to facilitate doing so. A good place to research regarding many video related issues is: http://www.videohelp.com

Jvc
 

I use a JVC VHS to miniDV/miniDV to VHS dubber. It works very well. Cost about $900 a coupla years ago. Might be too pricey, but we use it a lot, and as of now the machine owes us nothing. Don't have model numbers because it is in the office but I can get 'em for you. Doesn't seem to be anything on the JVC consumer or professional web sites.

Probably not much help in this case but still worth filing away for future reference, the TBC in most D8 camcorders does an excellent job of fixing those nasty glitches induced by you know what. They're also quite good at just generally cleaning up VHS and the Dynamic Noise Reduction is quite useable as well. Getting rid of as much noise as possible without mangling the image is a good move if you're going to DVD, doesn't matter if going to DV.

MiniDV gear doesn't need either of these features as it isn't designed to handle analogue tapes.

That never occured to me that a D8 might work real well for capturing/converting analog to digital. I might just give it a whirl and see what happens.

Bob has it right. I have some old Hi8 tapes I recorded a decade ago with seemingly irrevocable glitches, but the lowly D8 camcorder plays them with neither hitch nor glitch. I haven't tried it with external sources, but if it does the same, woo-hoo!