VHS to Mac

I have the Diamond VC500MAC capture device. I installed Catalina yesterday after finding the 64bit driver you mentioned. However after installing the driver Quicktime does not recognize the device (except for audio). VLC doesn't recognize it either. You were able to get it to work? Any suggestions how?

I use this one. Very similar looking hardware, but it's the software that makes or breaks these products. I looked into most of them to replace an old converter that only worked with FireWire.

Diamond's package was the only one that offered higher quality capture options. Less compression means less pixelation and artifacts. There were lots of options to choose from in the supplied Empia software, and you can still use that in Mojave or earlier, but not in Catalina since it's 32 bit software.

They've replaced the Empia software with a 64 bit plugin that links to the QuickTime Player. It's the bottom link of the downloads page (the red button to the right of OS 10.15 64bit Driver).

It will see the capture device and give you an option of High or Maximum.

I would always use Maximum to get as clean a capture as possible from tape. You'll get a very large file, but you only need it for as long as it takes you to make a DVD. Anything you use video editing software for to get the captured video to a playable DVD is rendered as MPEG-2. That adds yet more compression. So the cleaner (less compressed) capture you can start with, the better the final DVD will look.

It's also half the price of the El Gato device. The only thing I need to mention is I haven't tested the new 64 bit capture yet to see how well it does.

Hello Macnician,

I got my VCR out and tested the new 64 bit version using the OS included QuickTime Player under both Mojave and Catalina. No problems with either.

Hadn't thought of using VLC to to the capture. I'll have to try that one.

Unfortunately, since I can't replicate your issue, I also can't make a suggestion.