VCR to DVD. Signal copy protected?

[Bob Burwell]

Some one gave me 2 Home video tapes to copy to my DVD recorder. I made the first one OK but the other is coming up with "Signal copy protected". It's only a home movie from a video camera so why is that? Any ways around this one? I'm not equipped to copy to computer yet.
Thanks for any ideas!

[mjc]

Was the tape a reused tape, by any chance?

There shouldn't be any sort of copy protection from a camcorder...unless there is some commercial content copied onto the tape or the tape was a reused one that had held commercial content (the track that the protection stuff is recorded on isn't always erased when something is recorded over it...the tape needs a date with a bulk eraser to guarantee that the copy protection has been totally erased).

You may be able to get around it by playing the tape in the camcorder and hooking the output of the camera up to the input of the DVD recorder.

[Bob Burwell]

Thanks for that. It's an ordinary full-size video tape which would have been a copy of the original camcorder tape. Although the box says Mitsubishi, the labels say "Woolworths". It doesn't look like a commercial one that's been taped over. A bit strange isn't it!

[mjc]

I had a VCR that would copy commercial tapes easily...but those copies couldn't be copied, because while the VCR itself wouldn't prevent the copying, it would write the copy protection on the new tape, too. If I reused those tapes, without using an electromagnet to erase them, about half the time, even if it was from noncommercial sources the copy would fail...usually it would have sound but no picture...sometimes the video would be off color and distorted.

[Bob Burwell]

Yes OK on that. If you're doing home taping is there an option to copy-protect it? I wonder if that's what was done originally. I could try another VCR. Otherwise I might just pay someone to do it.