I used only medium quality (two blue lamps) because high quality doesn't works properly and low quality ... seems too low.

After your upgrade dated 03.25.2008 I solved the problem regarding 0 bite files.

After a few seconds of no video signal something goes wrong and I obtain solarized images. I see this problem happens to a lot of people.

Do we need another upgrade? 

 Thank you in advance,

Mauro 

When I'm recording a clip, for some reason the audio gets REALLY distorted, I don't know how to explain it other than that, but I used both composite and s-video and with the s-video it lasted longer, but not by much.  The video also skips and lags.  I used best quality when recording through composite and better when using s-video, and it does the same thing?  I was doing a test recording of a video from my xbox (just a game trailer) and it did this.  I figured a way to preview though, plug the s-video into the PVT, and the composite into my TV card which sucks for recording and I can see what I'm recording, the thing is, it doesn't come out right.  Is this a firmware issue becuase I'm up to date, or is it a signal issue, there is no interuption in the signal.  Maybe a defective unit?

~HaLo2FrEeEk

I would like to request that the PVT produces a video with the aspect ration set to 16:9 or 4:3 (or whatever) depending on if a file exists.

16-9.txt

4-3.txt

etc.  Thanks.

Ability to connect to the PC to change settings on the PVT.

Settings like

• Aspect Ratio
• Timer (30;60;90;120;180)
• Bitrate
• etc...

Hello, I would like to able to store clips shorter than 30 seconds - I am engineer looking to incorporate the device into another system.  Cheers.

Perhaps I'm being completely stupid - but PVT only works with FAT32 hard drives, right? Windows Vista will not recognise FAT32 hard drives, therefore by extension PVT will not work with Windows Vista and possibly not with Windows XP either. Great!!

Surely this device just has to be made compatible with NTFS, or frankly, except for people still working with Windows 95 or 98, the device is utterly useless if you want to import footage into Studio 11 for editing on a modern Windows machine!

 Please, please tell me I'm missing something.....

Jonathan

Yeah your missing something :)  Vista and XP both understand and format FAT32 drives....

 Take a read, http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/5025760b-0433-4ba1-a2f4-9338915fdb4b1033.mspx

Cheers, I don't mind missing things if I'm learning at the same time!

Thanks for that - so Windows Vista should recognise a FAT32 external hard drive. Just that I've been reading that some people were having difficulties with this.

Still, it would still be nice if PVT supported NTFS in a future upgrade....

Jonathan

 

 

I use real player in addition to my video transfer to capture video clips. I am a teacher and I use a lot of news video clips in my work. Recently some web sites have started to block real player from downloading their videos. So now I really wish I had an easy way to capture video from my PC to the transfer. I am not interested in great quality. I have been very happy with the good quality setting that I get from my video transfer outputting from my tivo. Since I have so many clips that last from a minute to say ten minutes, I actually DON'T want dvd or HD quality. I am happy with the current file sizes and resolution. I want as many clips as I can get on my hard drive to use at work. I really wish that I could use a usb port on the PC to then copy video from web sites to my pinnacle video transfer. Is that a hard thing for you to do? Does it mean changing the whole unit or do you just need to add the extra input port? This is REALLY important to me. The price of educational dvds is outrageous and I think a lot of teacher would like to be able to do what I want to do (that is, to get the relevant clips you need for teaching right off the web). The education market is quite big. Sorry if my post is too long! 

I'm after the same thing.  Want txt file control of what occurs.

 For example, I want to backup sky programs to my PSP, but via a memstick (do not want to leave the PSP on all night). 

 I want to be able to write the highest PSP option, but via a memstick. This is not possible as the PVT detects the hardware and it chooses what format is applicable to good, better and best.

 Thanks

I bought this to simplify converting old home movies. I was originally transfering the videos to my camcorder then capturing them through firewire...This took alot of time also because my camcorder can only hold an hour of video...I got this hoping it could capture a 6hr tape. It has the potential, but due to the firmware design there is no way for me to do this without sitting in front of it for 6hrs.

The manual says that a forced recording can be started by holding the rec for 2 secs. The manual isn't clear on what forced recording is except that it overwrites the files on the usb media.

I would like to see the forced recording method to override the auto-stop feature and let the recording continue until disk space runs low or user intervention. There really is no need for an overwrite feature since the user has to view the media on an external source anyway...they can delete the file there.

EDIT: The problem I am having is the same as many other people on the forum: Recording stops on home videos during transition periods or with bad tracking. In some rare cases I have had files that switch to a 2 color green and magenta palete half way through...I will be sure to get more info when it happens again.

Ditto on this request.  I too bought this product just to simplify the digitization of dozens of home movie tapes, and the PC-free aspect led me to hope that my wife could do the conversion without my technical assistance.

Too bad this product is not working as described.  With the latest firmware, even if I use a "forced mode", the device will sporratically STOP recording at scene changes.  It is NOT consistent or repeatable that a given scene transition will cause recording to stop, but I have yet to get more than 30 mins of uninterrupted recording.

The specific symptoms are that I get it recording, all the interface LEDs are red, and I walk away.  Later (5, 10, 60 minutes later) I notice that the camcorder source is still playing, but that the input LEDs are all blue.  The Video Transfer box has stopped recording, and looking at the resultant files always shows that the box stopped recording at a scene transition.  I've tried several different flash drives, fat32 USB disks, etc. and the results are the same -

 Additional ask - make a provision for the device to write out a status page to a file on the USB drive so that we can confirm the firmware revision (did the update take?) and any config/log/info that might help the product work as described.  How about a diagnostic mode that causes this kind of info to be written if there exists a "debug.txt" file on the USB device root directory?

Very disappointing, and I waited 3 weeks before using it as I thought "What could possibly go wrong" - I can't return it to the place of purchase :-(

thanks 

 

BATTERY

If I can velcro this to my camera, I can record direct-to-iPod for immediate podcast delivery. Now that would be powerfull!

 Thanks for considering it and look forward to buy one. 

From the posts, it seems that the PVT is targetted at two tasks: (a) Converting Videos to Digital format, and (b) recording TV shows. While enough has been posted about feature requirements for the first job, I think one feature would help the second job immensely: The ability to start and stop recording automatically.

 Today's TVs already have features for starting the TV at a predefined time and switching to a particular Channel. All we need the PVT to do is 'watch' the video input and start recording automatically when a signal is detected, without someone pressing the 'Rec' button.

 My opinion is that the task of digitizing your old Video Cassettes will sooner or later be 'done'. After that, the PVT will only serve the purpose of recording live programs. While people may think of recording something they are already watching, the more logical situation is where one is not able to watch a program and would like to record it for future viewing.

Thanks for creating this forum, and listening to all the obtuse suggstions! :-)

Shripad
======

My problem is identical, and I don't need to say anything more since all my feelings have been captured! Pleeeeeese make the PVT continue recording without stopping at small breaks in the video signal! Without that feature, my money is wasted.

Thanks.

Shripad
-----------

Nor does it happen to me. My recording stops even when there is a brief pause in Video Signal. I took the latest firmware on 4th June, so I guess it is the lates.

regards,

Shripad.

Sillen:

thomus:

Interlacing in best quality is a big problem !

That is very true. Recording at Best quality is just a waste of time (if the source is interlaced). The resulting video is not watchable. You can't even deinterlace it afterwards because the frames are already compressed to a level where deinterlacing just doesn't work. Well, it does work to some extend, but the frame is already destroyed anyway (e.g very blocky or "blurred out").
[click to view image]

 Using Better mode is not satisfying either because the deinterlace method used creates a very aliased result. Image below is enlarged to better show what I mean. It still looks very aliased at original resolution though.
[click to view image]

 So, the only usable mode really is the Good one...which is not good due to the low resolution.

 

We need a better deinterlace method and an option to deinterlace at Best mode

EDIT: Perhaps an option to use custom encoding settings would be good?

E.g, you put a txt file in the root of your drive (just like "best.txt") with something similar to this:

Widht: 512
Height: 384
Audio: 96
Video: 850
Deinterlace: true
Crop: 4 10 4 10

Audio and Video would be interpreted as kbps.
Crop would be interpreted as: crop 4px from top, 10px from right, 4px from bottom, 10px from left

Looking at the march 25th firmware I think they did implement this

using linux I ran this command:

 strings CFUPDATE.BIN |grep -C 5 .txt

and got this:

custom.txt

vhres
vrate
arate
start
title
 

I will be playing around with this, but i suspect that these are settings for resolution, video bitrate, audio bitrate, not sure what start is, and title is probably a file prefex.

 

 

like others I would like an option to adjust the settings like or the ability to capture at the best setting without interlacing

Increasing the bitrate in Best Mode would really take this product up to a near 10/10 for me.  I use it to record the downlink NTSC video transmitted by remote controlled helicopters and planes.  There is a lot of motion in the videos and the 1.5 Mbit rate is just too low causing very bad motion artifacts.  Memory sticks are so cheap that it just does not make sense for the Best Mode to have such a low data rate.  Please at least double it to 3Mbit.  6Mbit would be outstanding and is still well below the data rate of most memory sticks.

Finally l would like to say how impressed I am with the ease of use and the ability for the unit to do firmware upgrades with such an easy procedure.  Very well thought out!

But PLEASE give us a higher bitrate encoding.  (Which programmer do I send money to so that this can be done quickly?)

Mike

 

 

   

 

Old Man Mike:

Increasing the bitrate in Best Mode would really take this product up to a near 10/10 for me.  I use it to record the downlink NTSC video transmitted by remote controlled helicopters and planes.  There is a lot of motion in the videos and the 1.5 Mbit rate is just too low causing very bad motion artifacts.  Memory sticks are so cheap that it just does not make sense for the Best Mode to have such a low data rate.  Please at least double it to 3Mbit.  6Mbit would be outstanding and is still well below the data rate of most memory sticks.

Finally l would like to say how impressed I am with the ease of use and the ability for the unit to do firmware upgrades with such an easy procedure.  Very well thought out!

But PLEASE give us a higher bitrate encoding.  (Which programmer do I send money to so that this can be done quickly?)

Mike

you can set the best mode to 5Mbit

make a blank text file called 'best.txt' and put it on the root or the video folder of the media

 

PLEASE add timed durations for recording. I like to take TV I've recorded and transfer via PVT to external HD. BUT I don't like babysitting it to turn it off. So the ability to make recordings in 1/2 hour increments is much needed. Example, press and hold a button to access timer, then click for each half hour.

I feel misled, I had a long online chat with Pinnacle support prior to purchasing and was told the recording would stop automatically when the input source was done! 

Thanks  for listening! 

 

 

 

lavinog:

you can set the best mode to 5Mbit

make a blank text file called 'best.txt' and put it on the root or the video folder of the media

 

Excellent!  I tested it and it works well.

Tell me the email address where I can send you money by paypal.

Also, one more request.  Can you also enable a higher recording rate in the "Better" mode (640 x 480) when the "best.txt" file is in the root?

Thanks!

OMM

 

 

I bought this product to convert all the DV tapes. I am sure there are others doing the same. I would like to see the following features in the future firmware..

 

A. Scene detection and video file saperation on scene change (especially helpfull with home videos)

B. Blue screen detection on camcorder input ( the unit seems to think the blue screen from the camcorder is a valid video feed).

C. Size or time based file split ( this will really help in editing the converted files to create watchable not so boring videos)

D.  NTSC vs. PAL capture (is this possible now?)

 

I have converted one tape so far (just got it over the weekend) and the quality is very good..

Thank you for a good product that works as said.

 LIG.

 

 

Old Man Mike:

 

Excellent!  I tested it and it works well.

Tell me the email address where I can send you money by paypal.

Also, one more request.  Can you also enable a higher recording rate in the "Better" mode (640 x 480) when the "best.txt" file is in the root?

Thanks!

OMM

I am sorry to say I am not a programmer for Pinnacle. I just found this information nested in their website.

Why do you want to raise the Better rate?...do you need to deinterlace?

One option may be to use the best.txt best mode and re-encode that with a de-interlace filter...you will lose some quality but should still be better that the better quality.

 

lig:

I bought this product to convert all the DV tapes. I am sure there are others doing the same. I would like to see the following features in the future firmware..

 

A. Scene detection and video file saperation on scene change (especially helpfull with home videos)

B. Blue screen detection on camcorder input ( the unit seems to think the blue screen from the camcorder is a valid video feed).

C. Size or time based file split ( this will really help in editing the converted files to create watchable not so boring videos)