Well ive just about had enough !
Im flogging all my old bits on ebay and going for a new agp 'all singing, all dancing' graphics and capture card.

The 2 external devices i have will capture fine from an analogue camcorder but not from a vcr ??
Have tried just about every bit of software / configuration and its made no difference. My old ati 8mb pci card will capture from any analogue source without frame loss, the downside is the cards hardware will only allow recording in 5 formats that are not good enough for full dvd reproduction.

Even iuvcr could not trick it into allowing other formats.

The new card im looking at is the ati radeon all in wonder 9800 128mb but ati's useless website does not have 'full' technical specifications available..............Grrrrrrrr

The next piece of hardware had better work because i do not want to spend any more money for quite some time.

Phew, rant over

Cheers