Good Day.
I am having difficulty dubbing VHS>>DVD.
Having lurked a while, I have seen several references to the error code 25 which is what I get. Has there been a solution suggested?
Details:
Copying home-made movies (orignally transfered from camcorder) absolutely no off-air or Macromedia content.
Using TDK and Sony brand 1-16X DVD-R media
Following instruction manual, machine starts to record, then stops (with error 25 message: tape cannot be recorded) after a few minutes (as short as 21sec to as long as 58min, no two times the same length, even from the beginning of the same tape.
Repeated re-starts will eventually finish the dub, but it takes about 5 starts to complete an hour of transfer.
The time is not set, and I have no TV signal connected.
Moderator, please connect this to the proper thread if there is one currently running.
Bob. Nice meeting you! The problem is an unwanted side-effect of the unit's built-in Macrovision detection circuitry. If that circuitry didn't exist or could otherwise be disabled the problem wouldn't occur.
During video playback, should the active video recording device encounter a section of content containing a complete loss of video signal (more commonly referred to as snow) it perceives this as a copy-protection violation attempt.
The recorder will subsequently report an error code to that effect and immediately terminate the recording operation. This will also occur for any portions of the content whose sync component of the video signal is extremely unstable or badly distorted.
In essence, the unit's fooled into believing the source content contains Macrovision copy-protection encoding, due to the random deviances occurring in the sync portion of the signal being monitored. In this case, it's nothing more than random noise due to complete lack of video signal.
The problem's very similar to how virus-detection software will often falsely identify benign code as being infected, simply because it happened to randomly contain the 3-byte signature of a known virus. Particularly in the case of audio, video and graphic data this is going to occur with considerable frequency simply due to the random nature of the data.
As mentioned earlier, disabling the unit's built-in Macrovision circuitry is the most ideal remedy, although not easily accomplished with any video equipment manufactured after 2004.
The best work-around is not to have your recorder running during those times when the video signal's unavailable or not present on the source content. If possible edit-out any such gaps in the source content beforehand. Once this has been accomplished you won't have any problem copying the content using a standalone recorder.
Attachment of a time-base corrector (TBC), sync regenerator such as the "Sima SCC video color corrector," or any decent Macrovision removal device between the player and recorder, will also easily remedy the problem. Many Panasonic combo recorders have a built-in TBC rendering them far less prone to this Macrovision false-triggering problem.
The tapes I am dubbing are transfered from a combination of camcorders and even old "super-8" films, so they do have a lot of noise and occasional tracking errors. So what you've said makes sense now. I don't know if I will go for the SIMA unit or just hire a service to perform the dubbing (I've only about 10 tapes to do). But I feel much better that my recorder is not broken.
Bob. You're very welcome. If you have any friends who own a Panasonic combo, it should be able to accomplish the job without any problems and having to spend unnecessary dollars. Good luck with the transfer project!
