Capture problems....

[davidra]

Dell 4600C, AIW 9000, XP Media Center, Movie Studio, MyDVD, ATI MMC, TMPEGAuthor and Encoder, DVDShrink

Analog capture: have seen a number of posts about flickering at the top of the monitor frame, and how this is due to "overscan". Many have commented that this won't show up on the captured video; it does on mine. Same tape, same player plays fine on a TV, but the captured video has an intermittant white flicker at the top of the screen, and frequent flickers througout the screen. I've also tried two different VCR's with the same result, and I've tried to capture with Movie Studio, MyDVD and ATI MMC, all with the same results. These flickers are visible when recorded on a DVD. I've downloaded the most recent drivers and patches that I can find on the Dell website. By exclusion, this appears to be either a capture card issue or a VCR issue, but the AIW is supposed to be a top quality card. Anybody have any suggestions? I'd rather not buy a new VCR just for capture, so I'm hoping there will be some other suggestions......Rick

[rsquirell]

The lines at the top come from closed captioning from commercial TV broadcasts...and should be over scanned by the TV...but if yours isn't and you want to eliminate the lines the cheapest program that will do this is TMPGenc Plus. in "settings"go to "advanced" and double click "clip frame" and take as many lines off the top that you want .

[davidra]

Not in this case.....these are home movie tapes. Clipping might help a little bit, but the lines aren't constant, they occur maybe every few seconds, and occasionally have a total screen flicker with them.

[megamachine]

Many times, artifacts around the edges that are visible on PC playback are not visible on TV. Are they visible on the TV. If so, then, R's method will work to remove them, even if the artifacts are intermittent, as long as they're along the edges of the frame.

[sfheath]

Have you tested the capture by outputing to TV?

[davidra]

Yes....I get the same flicker whether on standard TV or played back on the computer with DVD software.....

[sfheath]

I'm assuming you're using a svideo lead to connect?
Have you routed it carefully away from anything that might interfere electronically?

[rsquirell]

Could also be in the camera's VCR heads...another user said he had a repair shop clean (or maybe replace) the heads and all his problems went away...how does the 8MM VHS tape look on the TV? Can you borrow someone else's camera to see if you have the same problem with it?

[davidra]

Great questions....I'm using composite, not S video. None of my VCR's have S video, nor does the 8MM player, which was just bought. It turns out the 8MM player probably does need its heads cleaned, but the other problem occurs with both beta and VHS tapes on several different machines. I have played captures back on TV and still get the flicker. Using both VHS machines, I can play back the same tape on a TV without any flicker whatsoever. Only when running through the card do I get that problem, and I can see it on the preview monitor as well as on the final capture.....Rick

[rsquirell]

If they're "home movie tapes" they had to have been made by an analog VHS camera...it's that camera's heads I was thinking of.

[sfheath]

Despite ambition/good intention/whatever I've not got around to capturing myself yet so am on shaky ground. Also, I don't like recommending spending money but might it be worth investing in either a high quality composite lead or an svideo/SCART adapter?

On even shakier ground, is it possible to lower the bitrate of the capture?

I don't know the Dell models. What CPU/RAM are we talking?

[davidra]

It's a Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz, 256 RAM. I talked to a guy who does transfers for a living. He seemed confident it was a Time Base Correction issue, says he sees it all the time which is why he has a standalone unit. He also said based on the description of the picture I was getting out of the 8mm that it was more likely to be a capacitor than dirty heads. I guess there's no inexpensive way to do this, but I'll play with the settings......Rick

[sfheath]

Can you hunt down someone else with an 8mm player to try, just to eliminate the heads? Maybe try a de-gausser?
There are some gizmos for timebase correction I believe.

[mattgrant]

As far as i am aware, you get extra lines on a video signal which aren't used for picture recording. They can be used for things such as timecode, teletext and other data.

I always notice them when I'm capturing high quality video into the likes of our Avid Symphony etc. These bits should not be displayed on a TV screen as it cuts off the edges (which is why there are safe areas for titles etc).

If you are viewing your work on a computer monitor then it will display the entire signal, thus including any extras at the top of the picture.

If I output to a fornat for viewing on a computer, such as MPEG1 etc, then I crop the picture before the encoding.