Pinnacle Studio to LG VCR-no analogue signal

Hi,

I am trying to transfer family movies from old VHS tapes to digital format. The movies are filmed with a handheld 8mm, which I normally connect to a VHS recorder using composite (2-cable) since no digital, no firewire and no s-video available on either device.

For the conversion to digital, The software is: WinXP (SP2) and Studio 10 (ver. 10.7); the hardware is a Pinnacle's MovieBoard Plus (PCI). The video player is an LG DVD/VHS combo (model DVC 5930). All devices are capable of handling NTSC/PAL, the settings I use now are for PAL (but neither system setting has worked).

I can connect the handicam to the computer and transfer movies, no problem, but I would like to transfer older movies which are already on VHS tape. DVD and VHS Outputs from the video player are visible on the TV but only the DVD output is visible by the Studio10. Capture Device option is set to Pinnacle's PCI-700 (the other available is for DV and firewire, which I also tried but didn't work).

So, Studio 'sees' the analogue signal from the camera but only the digital from the VCR and actually, keeps 'seen' the digital signal, when I change the VCR output from DVD to VHS (visible on the TV), I even tried disconnecting all cables to the TV to prevent a signal override.

Any hints?

How can I make the Studio see the analogue from the VCR, or to make the LG to send only analogue to the PC?

Thank you for any useful recommendations,
Rube

According to Pinnacle, they stopped supporting this product 4 months after I bought it, cannot get e-mail response from them. Plan B is to borrow another VCR to see if the problem is on the LG side and also to get new graphics card (with higher memory than the present 128MB), but in the meantime, Any suggestions from video techies how this can be solved? It'd be appreciated.

Thanx,
RUBE

I use a Hauppauge TV Tuner card to pull the signal into the PC. Whether off TV cable or VCR or Camera. I save it as Mpg2 file. I then use Nero vision express to recode it to DVD compatible VOB files. Then I burn these to DVD+R disks using Nero recode. You may want to use other recode software,but this works for me...:)

I am actually waiting for a new graphics card ordered to see if it was a hardware problem, I hope that the new sw that comes with it also helps. I will get to it when I get time allows, hopefully sometime in August/Sept.

But, your tip is also helpful, I will let you know if either solution works.

Thank you.
RUBE