Infobase: About SCART


If you live outside Europe you won't have a clue what we're talking about. Inside the EU, SCART is a very useful analogue video and audio connector that's pretty much a standard.


A switchable SCART plug with input sockets
The SCART (also known as EuroSCART because it's only found in Europe) connector was introduced in the late 1980s as a means of enabling people to connect up their home VCRs, TVs and other video peripherals without having to worry about plugging a lot of separate cables into their appropriate sockets. Look at the back of your VCR, DVD player and TV set for evidence of the humble SCART. Very often, devices will have two SCART connectors in order to connect more than one device. Look at the contents of your camcorder packaging and you'll see now only AV cables but also a SCART adaptor plug into which the cables can be plugged. This, in turn, plugs into a VCR, Hard Disk recorder or TV in order to view and re-record your camcorder footage. And very handy it is too!

Unfortunately, the SCART adaptor that comes with your camcorder is most likely a one-way adaptor only. What does this mean? Well, it means that it's designed to help you to view the output of your camcorder on a TV or re-record to a VCR. The direction of the signal pass is out.

My supplied SCART is one-way only, so how do I digitise into the camcorder?


If your camcorder allows AV (analogue) video and audio input recording and you wish to make use of the supplied SCART connector, the chances are that you won't be able to because it will be an output-only (eg: one-way) SCART connector. So, to allow the AV signals to pass up the cable to the camcorder, you need to get yourself a 2-way switchable SCART, like the one pictured on this page.

Switchable SCART adaptor showing gold connecting pins
You'll see that this has a switch on the top which determines the direction of signal pass. It also has the full range of analogue signal connectors - twin RCA Phono audio sockets (White and Red), an S-Video socket (that's the circular one) and a Composite video socket (the Yellow one). With this connector, you'll ba able to play recordings out of your camcorder or re-record them, in addition to being able to accept analogue video sources from a VCR, HDD recorder, DVD Player and a TV source an either re-record them to DV, Digital-8 tape or disc in a DVD camcorder. For this, the camcorder needs to have Analogue-in (AV-in). Alternatively, you might be able to use the cam's pass-through facility (if it has it) to send the converted signal direct to a computer via FireWire. Check the user manual to be sure.

Words and pictures: Colin Barrett, SimplyDV. No unauthorised reproduction or distribution. Copyright 2002, 2005, 2008.

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