So Father Christmas brought me a little doodad that lets you burn DVDs from your home video collection or save them as mpegs. It's a brilliant device but comes with very little in the way of documentation. So a couple of problems that someone might be able to help with:
- It seems to copy videos (VHS) direct from the VCR to DVD with no problems on the default settings (640x480, from memory). But when I try to copy home movies from the camcorder tapes on the same settings, using the camcorder in VCR mode, the resulting files are corrupt in some way. A 30-minute video, saved to the PC as an mpg file, will play for 10 minutes or so and then freeze. I've solved it by recording all my camcorder stuff at a much lower resolution (3xx by 2xx or something). I'm guessing that the camcorder setup is not giving the data transfer rate that the VCR can do, and recording less data (by reducing the resolution) is getting round it. I have just found my adapter for putting the camcorder tapes into the VCR - will that make it any better, or do I just have to put up with it?
- Since starting the archiving project on Christmas afternoon, I must have burned about 20 hours of tape onto DVD. When I look at my hard drive, I seem to have lost about 15-20GB of free space. I'm guessing (again) that the software is storing the video files somewhere prior to coding and then transferring them, and they are not being deleted. Does anyone know of a utility that can tell you what is taking up all your space and where it is located? I used to have one, but that was about three computers ago.
Any help most gratefully received, O Wise Ones.