Please HELP! This is my third post on print to tape problems

WesVideo wrote on 1/7/2002, 7:56 PM
I am posting my question once more in hopes that someone can shed a little bit of light on my problem. I am very pleased with Video Factory with one exception. I can capture and render with no problems but when I print to tape and attempt to output the rendered project on to a VHS,(I use a tv/vcr combo as a monitor) I either get this error message that contains all these binary numbers when I click on details or whan I am finally able to get it to work after 100's of attempts, the playback fades in and out at different times. I don't know if this is a "signal" problem or what. I am using a Hollywood Dazzle Bridge as a digital to analog converter and wonder if it is the potential culprit because when I went through Dazzles software and output to video, it did the exact same thing. I've upgraded memory (256meg), added another hard drive for a total of 80 gigs and I have a AMD 950mhz. I've downloaded the latest Direct X which initially appeared to have solved the error message when printing to tape but that was short lived. I e-mailed tech support a while back and it took forever for them to reply. I was told told that Dazzle has been problematic with the Video Factory software and to try a converter by SONY instead. It's bad enough that I paid almost $300 for the Dazzle, now I'm told I to shell out another $300? I don't mean to sound like a whiner but there are several projects that I did for people back in the summer months thru September!! that I can't even get to them because of this probelm. Thank goodness these folks have been as gracious and understanding as they've been. Any thoughts or other alternatives (ATI All in Wonder?)will be greatly appreciated!

Comments

pelvis wrote on 1/7/2002, 9:35 PM
If you render out a small (1 sec) DV file and send it to sonicepm@sonicfoundry.com I'll take a look. I kind of doubt it is a problem with the file, but it is worth checking. Make sure you render with the NTSC DV .avi template, unmodified (I'll presume you are doing this already...)
Chienworks wrote on 1/7/2002, 10:02 PM
I've got the Sony converter and it's worked flawlessly.

*sigh* not exactly what you wanted to hear, i suppose. :(

I have also printed to VHS with the ATI All-In-Wonder. It works ok, at
least well enough for most non-critical purposes. Render your file to
MPEG (or MPEG 2 if you can) at the highest bitrate you can. If you're
running Windows 98 or ME, you'll have the 4GB limit to worry about.
But even at 15,000Kbps, you should still be able to render a 37 minute
video in that size. It helps if you include 5 to 10 seconds of black at the
beginning and end of your project.

To print to VHS, close all programs and set your display resolution to
800x600 (the largest resolution that will allow NTSC output), and turn on
the TV output. Launch media player and load your rendered file, start
playing it, then immediately pause it. Press Alt-Enter to go to full screen
playback. At this point you should have a black signal going out to the
VCR. You may start recording and then un-pause playback in media player.

It's a little tricky, but it works well once you get the hang of it. The only
part that really bothered me is that the image came out squashed
vertically. I ended up with black bars across the top and bottom of the
screen, and everyone suffered "short & fat" syndrome. The distortion is
relatively minor though, and may be acceptable for most of what you do.

Give it a try. Feel free to contact me if you come across any details i may
have left out. For example, i didn't mention the audio connection, but i'm
assuming you knew that had to be done anyway. I may be making other
assumptions too without realizing it.