Don't buy the "Welland" units unless you're handy with a soldering iron. This piece of junk lost me over a day. Partly my own fault for not realising it was the cause of all my grief quicker I guess but it had worked flawlessly for months. It's now developed a mechanical intermittent in the power connector which is a real bust.
First problem was massive dropouts when capturing DV. First 3 hour tape I thought maybe Blink was right, kill anything not vital. Seemed to fix the problem as second go not a single dropped frame. That cost me 3.5 hours.
Next tape despite killing the same services, same problem, 350 dropped frames. Checked again and killed off even more services. Even more dropped frames, this was getting nasty. Ah I thought. I'd recently run a lot of Panny tape through this VCR, maybe mixed lubes had gummied up heads. Cleaned heads and got a perfect 3.5 hour capture. Bingo but what a waste of time.
So then I'm editing away and suddenly the preview screen freezes, OMG, was there a dropout that Vidcap and I missed, nope, Vegas has stopped dead, huh. Finally I realised the Power LED on the toaster is OUT! Wiggling plug and LED is back on and a few seconds later Vegas comes back to life. High speed drive to local PC shop to buy Unitek toaster. Much better in some ways, solid power connector and more of the disk is exposed to the air so it don't get quite as toasty.
No doubt this Welland thing shows up in other parts of the world under other names. This unit unlike the Unitek uses a standard DC power plug, the socket seems to be the problem. The Unitek uses a multi voltage power supply and DIN style power plug.
Hope this saves someone else from as much lost time as I've suffered.
Bob.
First problem was massive dropouts when capturing DV. First 3 hour tape I thought maybe Blink was right, kill anything not vital. Seemed to fix the problem as second go not a single dropped frame. That cost me 3.5 hours.
Next tape despite killing the same services, same problem, 350 dropped frames. Checked again and killed off even more services. Even more dropped frames, this was getting nasty. Ah I thought. I'd recently run a lot of Panny tape through this VCR, maybe mixed lubes had gummied up heads. Cleaned heads and got a perfect 3.5 hour capture. Bingo but what a waste of time.
So then I'm editing away and suddenly the preview screen freezes, OMG, was there a dropout that Vidcap and I missed, nope, Vegas has stopped dead, huh. Finally I realised the Power LED on the toaster is OUT! Wiggling plug and LED is back on and a few seconds later Vegas comes back to life. High speed drive to local PC shop to buy Unitek toaster. Much better in some ways, solid power connector and more of the disk is exposed to the air so it don't get quite as toasty.
No doubt this Welland thing shows up in other parts of the world under other names. This unit unlike the Unitek uses a standard DC power plug, the socket seems to be the problem. The Unitek uses a multi voltage power supply and DIN style power plug.
Hope this saves someone else from as much lost time as I've suffered.
Bob.