I’ve been given a Samsung model VP-W95D which I gather is quite an old model.
Anyway, despite the absence of a user manual I’ve been able to fathom out, through trial and error, the various operating functions apart from one, which is:
When I record and play back I get no sound at all which leads me to believe that maybe I’ll only get sound when I play back through my TV.
This because the model as I said is an old one, maybe 7 years old or more
Am I right about the sound only being available when connected to my TV?
You may not even have a built in microphone. Now that you have looked into that, older ones usually require a headset plugged into the jack to hear the sound. In other words they don’t have a built in speaker.
Try the mfg. site for an online manual to download.
I downloaded the manual from here and took a quick look. Although the microphone is clearly marked on page 9, there’s no sign of a speaker anywhere. So, looks like you’re going to need to hook it up to a TV set or other external sound system. Do you have the Audio/Video cable shown on page 14? If so, the yellow phono/RCA plug is video and the white is (mono) audio. You can also use the S-video connector for the video part (better quality than the yellow phono/RCA, if you have a TV or VCR with an S-video input), but S-video doesn’t carry audio so you will still need to use the white phono/RCA plug for that.
I’m going to assume that both (a) and (b) below are true (if not, stop and report back):[list=a][li]The cable that you bought looks like this or this. The white & red mean that they’re intended for audio, so may have slightly lower video quality than the original Samsung part, but you should be fine at least for now.[/li][li]Your TV set has audio/video inputs that take phono/RCA plugs. If the TV has stereo sound they’ll be yellow (video) / white (left audio) / red (right audio), and if the TV is mono then they’ll probably be yellow (video) and some other color for the mono audio. [If your TV set is somewhat old, it might only have an RF input via F connector, in which case you’ll have to go in through a VCR, or buy a video modulator.][/li][/list]
Okay, so now we have to figure out which of white / red – coming from the camcorder – is video and which is (mono) audio. Since you probably don’t have access to an oscilloscope or a voltmeter, we’ll do it by experiment. Don’t worry – you won’t damage anything.
[ol]
[li]Find the Video input on the TV (it should be yellow, and maybe also marked “Video In”.[/li][li]Select that input on the TV (either a switch marked “TV/AV” or similar, or via on-screen menus – might be marked “Line In” on the screen, instead of channel xyz). Your TV manual should tell you. If you run into problems, let us know the model # of the TV.[/li][li]Plug the 3.5mm plug of your newly-purchased cable into the camcorder, the red phono/RCA plug into this TV’s video input, and turn both camcorder and TV on.[/li][li]Put a tape in the camcorder and record some video while speaking so we’ll have sound too.[/li][li]Replay the tape, making sure that you can see (on the camcorder’s LCD) what you recorded. There’ll be no sound yet, of course.[/li][li]Do you also see a picture on the TV? If so, that’s great! Go to step 8.[/li][li]If you don’t see a picture on the TV, DON’T PANIC! Just switch over the red and white phono/RCA plugs on your new cable. If you still don’t see video on the TV, let us know.[/li][li]OK, now you have identified which of the red or white plugs is the “video out”. This means that the other one is the “audio out”, and can be connected to the TV’s “Audio In”, or the amplifier of a separate sound system. Be sure to start off with the volume set low at first so you don’t break any eardrums.[/li][li]Once it’s all working, reward yourself with a beer.[/li][/ol]
Let us know how it goes!
[If it all works as above, but you’re not happy with the video quality on the TV set, you might improve the picture by getting an S-Video cable [bIF* your TV set has an “S-video In” socket.]*
The next step, of course, will be to get your audio and video into a computer so you can do something useful with it, and you’ll need something like this.
