[iKevin]

I recently purchased a Formac Studio TVR so I could take some old VHS tapes of my little sisters birthdays and put them onto a DVD. The problem i'm having is that I keep getting these bizzare hiccup type noises/skipping video when importing. It doesn't seem to do it at any specific interval but it makes the footage useless.

I've tried hooking the formac up and importing directly into iMovie and I can do so without the skips, but the audio has a bizzare hum when using iMovie.

I have a iMac G4 800mhz and have nothing else running when trying to import and have nothing else on the firewire chain. Anyone else have similar issues or can provide any pointers?

Additionally, Had I have known what a sham formac's support is, I would have never purchased their product. Their website is only half functional and their phone system ran me in an infinite loop forwarding me back to the same menu asking me to make the same choices.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kevin

[iKevin]

Does anyone here have a formac studio? If so, are you able to convert your home movies on VHS over with it? I'm having what can best be described as a frequent hiccups when trying to rip our home movies. They play fine in the VCR, but don't convert worth crap. As a test I grabbed a video cassette that came with my burglar alarm and converted it without issue. I called Formac and they said the formac studio couldn't convert EP recordings and that was the issue but i've since tried recordings made in SP and have the same problem with those.

If anyone here has a formac i'd greatly appreciate any assistance as right now i'm in fear that i just wasted $300.

Kevin

[Diggory Laycock]

Hi,

Sounds very odd - have you tried Vidi:

http://www.mitzpettel.com/software/vidi.html

does it have a tv tuner? if you record tv does it also have the glitches?

[grovberg]

First, stop reading this and immediately go download Vidi as instructed by the previous poster. Use it instead of ForMac's awful software. That probably cleared up your problems.

Yeah, Formac makes nice looking products that are almost always a disappointment. The buzz isssue you're getting has been a problem with iMovie since version 3. Formac has a firmware update that will fix it, but certain ones have to be sent in and physically changed and that costs $60. Using Vidi gets around that problem.

Seriously, ForMac needs to send Mitz Pettel some money.
-Grover

[iKevin]

I actually had already tried Vidi (very nice btw) and had the same result. This seems to only happen on home movies. Factory VHS tapes work like a charm. As mentioned earlier, Formac told me that it was due to the tapes being in EP but I have since tried SP recorded tapes and have had the same problem.

When watching the movies on the tv the quality isn't all that great, but they play without the bizzare skips and quirks. It's just odd to me that i can grab live video off the tv and factory vhs recordings without issue...This only seems to happen on home movies

I'm concerned as this unit will be pretty worthless if it is so finiky about what movies it will record.

Kevin

[grovberg]

Originally posted by iKevin:
I actually had already tried Vidi (very nice btw) and had the same result. This seems to only happen on home movies. Factory VHS tapes work like a charm. As mentioned earlier, Formac told me that it was due to the tapes being in EP but I have since tried SP recorded tapes and have had the same problem.

When watching the movies on the tv the quality isn't all that great, but they play without the bizzare skips and quirks. It's just odd to me that i can grab live video off the tv and factory vhs recordings without issue...This only seems to happen on home movies

I'm concerned as this unit will be pretty worthless if it is so finiky about what movies it will record.

Kevin

Ah, sorry I misunderstood. You're probably having tracking problems then, and to be honest I have not found a clear path to fixing those. In my case, since I have plenty of VHS decks I can swap in and out, I can find one that deals with that particular tape's issues. Oddly enough, el cheapo VCRs seem to do better than our high end edit decks.

Do you happen to still have access to the camera in which they were recorded? Hooking that up might improve things.
-Grover

[iKevin]

I think you're right grovberg....I got a few more tapes that don't appear to have any issues at all. Even converted one that was almost 2 hours long last night without issue. Must just be dads old vintage camcorder tapes.

Thanks for the help!

For what it's worth, Formac actually answered 2 of my phone calls and also responded via email (although they were a little slow to respond to the email).

Kevin