Image only in black and white ........... why ?

[waynesworld]

Hi there , can someone help me out with a problem I’m having with ulead video studio version 6. I know its an old version but that shouldn’t be a problem. It comes with an analogue card. My computer is a Pentium4 , 2.4mhz on Windows XP platform.

My problem is regardless of my settings within the program when capturing Video off my VCR I cannot get the image to be displayed in colour in the capture window on the program. I have tested the tape and VCR and played the tape through the Vcr on TV and all is in colour there.

But when I play the tape to be captured through the Vcr hooked up to my comp through the capture card and program I only ever see it in black and white , nothing else regardless of what I do to try and get a colour result.

Any ideas as to whats going on here ?

[NoM.O]

It could be that you have it set up for NTSC rather than PAL (or vice versa). I know you have to select one or the other during installation, but when I first set it up (VS6 SE) to use with a Belkin USB capture device, for some reason it didn't register these settings. In the end it turned out that the PAL and NTSC options needed to be changed by going into the 'Video Capture' settings, then 'Properties' (I think that's right, I'm away from my machine right now so I can't check). Have a look there and see what happens.

peace.

[Ken Berry]

How exactly is the VCR connected to your capture device: using RCA (yellow/red/white) cables or a combination of S-video DIN and RCA audio (red/white) cables? If using S-video, was the original VHS recorded on a VCR which had a facility to use S-video as well. As crazy as it may sound, I have found this to be a problem in the past and the problem manifested itself by a black and white image. Using only a yellow RCA instead of the S-video corrected the problem, though of course RCA gives a lesser video quality than S-video unfortunately.

[Terry Stetler]

If those don't work;

could be that the colorburst signal on the tape is degraded or, if a commercial tape, it has an early version of Macrovision copy protection that uses a low colorburst level. These can drive a TV directly connected to the VCR but through a capture card it will put the content into mono.

Feeding the signal through a video amp can help. If the image also rolls then the synchronization (synch) )pulse is also degraded and a different device is also needed: a time base corrector (TBC). The amp can boost the colorburst and the TBC replaces a weak synch pulse with a strong one.

Most capture cards don't have these, or they have cheap/marginally effective ones, so local video service providers are the best resource for normal users. They can feed the tapes signal through a Processing Amplifier (PROCAMP) and dub you a new/fixed tape, or better yet feed it into a DVD recorder.

[waynesworld]

Hi there fellow Ulead Users thanks for your info in regards to the problem with Ulead6. After going over your advice and thinking about what I had already tried it came down to the S-video cable as mentioned by Ken. So as he mentioned I tried the RCA cable instead of the S-video cable and then changed the Input Source to Video Tuner and all went to colour ! Amazing ! Thanks to you all.

Regards Wayne