camcorder to laptop help ? easycap or dazzle ?

boblibarn

hi all i have lots of 8mm tapes that i want to put from my camcorder (old fashioned non digital type) , onto ,my laptop with a view to burning them to discs, i purchased an item called "easycap" but it does not recognise my device, having read forums on the easycap, it seems this is common, i have asked in my local electrical store and they suggested i purchase an item called" Dazzle", can any one tell me if its worth the £50 ?

aerostar

What Windows operating system do you have ? Did you get a cd with it ?

boblibarn

hi , it operates on windows 7 , and yeah did get a cd, everything installs fine, but the camcorder is not recognised by the programme if that makes sense and when i check on the computer folder , it dosent show any removable items , not sure if thats making sense sorry not very technical minded x

aerostar

The camera will not show in your PC, you should be connecting the audio out and video out signals from the camera to the Easycap unit, video in, audio in.

You need to test that the Easycap is being seen by the PC, if you have SKYPE then connect the Easycap to the Pc, then run Skype, go into settings, video and see if the Easycap is listed there, if it does it will probably show a black screen. Now connect the video out of the camera to the easycap video in, press play and see if a picture appears on Skype, if so then it is working.

I have a easycap that works with XP, I will see if it works with W7 tomorrow sometime, and post the results.

Is your W7 64bit or 32bit ? (Right click My computer, properties then it should say windows 7 type, home ultimate etc and 32 or 64)

aerostar

I have tested with W7 Ultimate 32bit and it worked. 64bit you will just have to try !

I have put the drivers on filefactory for you to download. It is a zipped file containing the drivers 32bit and 64 bit with info on installing. I suggest you make a restore point prior to trying them out.

http://www.!!!!!!/file/cc0616a/n/EASYCAP_drivers.zip

Download using filefactory basic.

Here is the Readme in the files

EASYCAP Windows 7 32bit Ultimate
Uninstall all previous drivers, and device.
Connect Easycap, wait for box > new hardware, and select install manually.
Point to BDA32 directory, let it install.
Copy the AMCAP program to desktop.

Run Amcap,(old microsoft program) if you get a message no video devices found, then try re-booting computer, if it still happens....I do not know why.

If you do not get the above message, then click on devices and you should see the easy cap usb device there.

next Click on Options, make sure preview is ticked.

Then click on Video capture pin, select PAL I, note at this point signal detected will probably say 0. Click OK.

Reselect options, click video crossbar, and assuming the output from your camera is video composite, make sure that shows in the left panel and video decoder out in the right panel, audio you can sort out later. click ok.

Press the play on your camcorder, and hopefully you should see a picture !!!!.

This is what I did to test on W7, but used a video camera input.

If this works then the capture software supplied with the Easycap should see it as well, so should skype.

The above is for 32bit windows, if you have 64bit, select the BDA64 directory, I do not know if these work.

I specifically did NOT use the setup program in the supplied directories, as I do not know what that does, install the drivers only makes sure nothing else gets in the way.

Note you will get a warning about unsigned/tested drivers, just continue.

boblibarn

thank you so much for all your help i will give this a try as soon as i get home from work and thanks again, i will let you know how i get on,

boblibarn

hi have tried everything you suggested,but still get no picture, i have installed the easycap on my daughters laptop (which runs windows xp) and everything seems ok, prob is her laptop is quite old and runs really slow , plus she uses it a lot for homework etc , so its really not practical to transfer on to there, any more ideas would be great , thanks

aerostar

There were 5 downloads of the drivers (now removed), so there are 4 other people who read this thread and downloaded the drivers, so have they just done it to see what they were or have the done it as they had problems, so come on other downloaders, let us know what and why and if it worked for you.