dropped frames and choppy vid

[robcat]

Hi, people of the forum

I have a question, I'am try'n to tape a video from my vcr ( which has worked in the past with other projects). The tape was from 1978 and was transformed from a video projector (18MM) film. It was done by my dad he had some one do it; converted to vhs. When I try to capture it I drop about 250 frames in about 3 minutes or less of vid, the end product is choppy and audio out of sync. When I put in a more up to date vid all is well. I have cleaned out all my hard drives removed all clutter and have fragmented all my drives. What Gives.

[Ken Berry]

It would be useful if you could give us at least a hint as to exactly how you were going about the capture, the settings being used, and above all, the capture device being used.

[heinz-oz]

The coding of that old tape has deteriorated to the degree that if gives you problems now. Try to convert it to DV-AVI by recording it on a MiniDV camcorder with AV in. Do not use the pass through function but record to a MiniDV tape. Do a short test first to see if this has any effect at all.

[sjj1805]

The observations made by Heinz are correct.
A few years ago I converted not only my own VHS tapes, but also those of friends and family. Several Hundred.

Here I was using the exact same computer, software, VHS player and settings. 95% of the tapes converted with no problem but some of the remaining 5% ended up being scrapped. No matter what I tried - adjusting tracking, cleaning the tape heads, rewinding the tapes several times and so on, they were simply old and worn.

You have to make a decision with some of those tapes
Soldier on and try to save as much of the tape as you can and then apply various first aid techniques afterwards - such as chopping away bad bits, re-aligning the sound etc
OR
Consider them lost - the amount of time and effort involved in an attempted restoration might not be worth it.

A lot will depend upon the content and sentimental value involved.

[robcat]

Sorry for the lack of detail,

My wife say's that I'm not a detailed person. To the beginning. My Dad bought a old video camera in 1977 we went on a trip to Portugal in 1979. In the late 90's all the old vids were converted to Vhs. I made a copy for myself in 1998. now I would like to convert them to DVD.

I'm using a Zenith vcr through Pinnacle 10 (sucks, will not allow me to get sound when using vs9, is there a way around that. I think I need some kind of codec. I posted this question regarding no sound and someone told me that I was missin a codec, how do a find it and how do I install it. I really want to capture through vs9 and not pinnicale 10.), vs9 allows me to use their functions more like bite rate video size eg 720*480 or 352*288.

After looking at some post's this is the format that I tried. In 1hr and 38 min of capture I dropped 10380 frames

Mpeg-2
upperfield
24 Bites
480*480 4:3
variable bite rate 2200kbps
AUDIO
mpeg layer
48000 hz
16bit stereo
layer2
bite rate 224kbps

Thanks guys for the reply's
I have a lot of vid to go through and your help in the comming months or years would be appreciated.
tx

[skier-hughes]

You still haven't said how the vcr is plugged into the pc!!

If you connect the video to a video input and the audio to the sound card, then the cycles of each signal are different, which is why lots of analogue capture ends up with out of sync audio/video.

You should find using a time base corrector will stop this from happening, but keeping the two signals together.

The dropped frames is a different story.
Your pc is well fast enough to cope with this sort of capture, so we need to look in depth at what you are doing.

Capturing as an mpeg is hard as the pc has to encode as it captures, have you tried capturing as a dv.avi file, if VS9 will allow you to.
480*480, is this a typo?
Or maybe 640*480?
Either of these will also mean the pc has to resize the video as it captures - not good.
Did you mean 720*480, std ntsc size?
This would be the best size to capture at, as it should be native to the vhs signal.

There are also some tips here for getting the best from your system, like turning off anything you don't need
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/Tutorial ... rVideo.htm

[robcat]

Hi,

the VCR is plugged into the computer through Pinnicale adapter Red White and Yellow jacks are used ,from the Pinnacle adapter it goes to the pc via usb cable.

[sjj1805]

From what I have read on this forum Pinnacle capturing hardware can only be used with Pinnacle Products. I don't have/use Pinnacle so cannot comment further on that.

The way I got my VHS recording into the computer was by purchasing a TV Card. There are several to choose from with varying price ranges.
I would opt for one termed a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) or HVR (Hybrid Video Recorder) - the PVR is an analogue TV card where you can view the terrestrial TV channels (From your roof aerial). The HVR will do what the PVR can do but also includes the fairly new Digital TV stations where you now get several more TV stations again from your roof aerial. In the U.K. this is called 'Freeview'
No doubt there are similar systems throughout the rest of the world.

I have previously written a guide about how to capture from one of my two Hauppauge TV cards with MovieFactory - the procedure is very similar in VideoStudio:

MF4: Create DVD from Hauppauge TV Card

Your VHS player will plug into it in one of two ways.
a. Via the standard co-axial aerial connection - just like a normal TV set.
or
b. Using RCA plugs (If your VHS has a SCART output you can get a SCART to RCA converter)

You will also see from that guide that like most TV cards, it has its own capture software - in the case of Hauppauge it is WinTV2000.
You will also see in my guide that the quality levels set during capture should depend upon how long your recording will be. If you are recording something that last a hour then you can use fairly high bit rates and the normal full screen dimensions

PAL

High Quality (Approx. 60 min per DVD)
MPEG files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 8000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps

However if you are recording something longer - perhaps a 2 hour recording you would alter your settings accordingly

Standard Play (Approx. 120 min per DVD)
MPEG files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 2500 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps

If you use the software that comes with your TV card (or other capture device) it creates a video file on your hard drive which you can then import into VideoStudio.

The added benefit of using a TV card is that it also transforms your computer into a TV set complete with teletext.

In fact the computer in my 'Guest Bedroom' has been turned into a Home entertainment centre. The Computer is:
A computer
A TV set
Radio
DVD Player
Digital Photo Album
Reference Library
Office Suite
Internet connection point
and so on.

[skier-hughes]

Steve is right, you'll need to use the pinnacle software to capture. You haven't said which model pinnacle device it is, without such knowledge it's hard to say what might be going wrong.

[robcat]

Hey

I'm Using Pinnacle as the capture source 710-USB Rev 1.0. I'm using their software Pinnacle studio 10 using white red yellow jacks.