Need help with Studio 9

[Ranb]

I got Pinnacle Studio 9 a while back and am converting my home movies and other tapes/disks to DVD/VCD.

The home movies can be a real bear to capture. Anytime the tape shows static between scenes, the program will drop frames and stop capturing. Is there anyway to prevent this?

I would like to capture using my dvd rw drive as the source, instead of plugging in the dvd player, is there anyway to do this? I have no way to use calbes to connect the dvd drive to the studio 9 capture card.

If I have a video file from another source, can I copy it to the hard drive, then render it with studio 9? Or can I only render files that have been captured by Studio 9?

The manual seems to be written for complete computer nerds, or people who already know how to use it. Thanks.

Ranb

[davidhorman]

I had a lot of trouble capturing from VHS to Pinnacle Studio 7/8. It was a good VHS, too - unfortunately I think the Pinnacle cards are a bit touchy when it goes to the signals they receive.

Have you tried duplicating the existing tape to another? You'll lose a generation but what you'll have will be a single recording.

I finally solved my problem by buying an MPEG encoder card which passed it's input directly to it's output, then feeding my video through that and into the Pinnacle card. I think the MPEG card acted as a "blanking inserter" - it replaced all parts of the signal except the actual picture.

If you want to re-encode a DVD without bothering with video capturing (which will lose you quality) you could use something like DVD Decrypter or SmartRipper. This would spit out the exact MPEG data that's on the disc, which could then (maybe) be dragged in to whatever you want.

http://www.doom9.org/ is a good resource to learn about all these things.

David