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I Called the manufacturer, and they said if I am not getting a blinking green light when I press the record button, then my device is defective. Finally started speaking to a human and I accidently hung up on us. I tested my camcorder on my TV and it plays just fine. I bought the first one and could not understand why it would not work. It's a mystery. I sat on hold for 22 minutes trying to get through to Diamond. Looks like I will be sending this one back also.
Seeing the high marks this item has gotten, I decided to try again. I cannot understand how I could get two bad ones. No blinking light, defective device. I ordered a second one. Basically the same conversation.
The video playing on my camcorder would not display on my computer screen at all. Called back, waited on hold 29 minutes this time. I called the manufacturer again. I sent it back to Amazon. Same thing on this one.
I've converted 11 years worth of VHS tapes to DVD without any problems. The VC500 has worked well for me.
(Please also see my review on DVD Maker 2 by KWorld if you wanna compare the products)SUMMARY:Pros: Very easy to use for anybody. I tried it on 4 different intel dual-core notebooks (3 are game-playing class notbooks, not the cheap sub-$1000 notebooks) and turned off everything possible (that includes killing spyware detector, virus checker, print spooler, screen saver, adobe daemon, iTunes daemons. Best sub $50 video capture product you could get.Cons: Somewhat PC/notebook load sensitive, may not be ideal if quality is optimal, or if you have very long programme to record (25 minutes+).************The copy I got comes with the Ulead editing software version 10. Anytime Vista is trying to do something (thus launching new and/or waking up an existing process) you could see the impact on the video.
I have much better luck (albeit more painful and time-consuming process) by using DVD recorder to capture the programme, then use DVD converter on my computer to convert it to MPEG4, WMA, etc. everything that Vista allows me to kill.). The results are way better but still the audio would start getting out of sync around 50 minutes mark.The fact that the product is improperly shielded doesn't help neither. The quality is way way better - never an out of sync issue, and the overall is closest to original. S-video is a must and not an option.So to me, this is useless. Works in a snap.
but still having issue.On 2nd experiment, I used the fastest notebook I have and installed Windows XP Professional SP2 (I didn't try SP3 since somebody said the capture software won't work on it). So if you just wanna capture some video to YouTube, some vintage quality home VHS (which the quality is low compare to recent playback technology anyway) that you ain't too crazy about, or if you are into video pirating (in which the downloading party typically watch it on computer and thus don't give much damn about quality anyway), you may find this tool very time-saving and convenient.But if you wanna use it for archiving valuable programme (like, your wedding video, out of print TV program, etc), I am not sure about using this in lieu of a good DVD recorder.The good comment: The tool is so easy to use, even an dummy could use it in a snap without getting an dummy how-to book. I didn't bother trying it since my utmost priority is capturing quality.Be forewarned that if you are using Vista, be disappointed unless you are running it on server class speed hardware. Even worst, if you happen to capture long programming, the audio will be noticably out of sync with the video starting around 25 minutes mark.
Maybe it will work for you, good luck. I end up returning this product since it is hard for me to operate with just one click of the button as it advertise. The only thing good about this product is it is cheap. It was hard to download the entire video directly to my PC and the color pixel does not match my window vista.
So far I've only tested it and have not attempted to capture full VCR tapes. Seems to be simple to use and does what it is supposed to do.
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