Video Studio Pro X5 Cannot Adjust the Tracking

[lawprelim]

Hello All.
I have an old video on cassette that I'm trying to capture to my computer to burn to dvd. It's fine on my t.v. being played in my vhs player. When I connect it to my computer using the program Video Studio Pro X5, I can capture, and everything is functioning fine, but the tracking is off in the preview section. I've captured, and played it back, and it captures like the preview. It's got the wave at the top, and a tiny bit of it on the bottom. Does anyone know how to adjust the tracking, like on old t.v.'s so that the picture is centered? Please help, thanks in advance.

[Ken Berry]

I have moved your post to the Video Studio forum, as you are more likely to get responses there than in the Video & DVD forum.

Unfortunately, I have no real suggestion myself. Tracking, I thought, would normally be controlled in the VHS player/VCR. But it is quite common when dealing with analogue video captured as digital to have a small coloured band at top (and bottom?) This would normally not be seen in the finished product when displayed on a TV as it falls outside the "safe" area for broadcast purposes. But I am not sure that this still applies with flat panel HDTVs... Hopefully someone else will have a better idea.

[teknisyan]

Just like what Ken Berry mention, to my understanding TRACKING is a feature on VHS Player/VCR, I know this from experience, because whenver we watch a movie via VHS, someone must man the player to adjust the tracking just incase there's a problem with the playback. So the best thing to do is to monitor the whole playback and immediately adjust the tracking of the VCR/VHS Player when needed.

[skier-hughes]

Tracking affects the whole of the picture.

What you are seeing is distortion, from the extreme ends of the tape and as Ken said, tv's were designed with an overscan area which meant you didn't see this, but it was always there!!
If you are going to watch this on a pc or lcd/led/projector which shows all of the picture then use VS to crop the video file to remove it.

You may find using a high quality time base corrector will help to lessen the problem, but I doubt you will ever remove it, and the cost of a decent tbc for one tape would be uneconomical for most people.

[lawprelim]

Hi Skier.
That is exactly it. So you are saying that even modern t.v.'s are built so you cannot see it, because I don't see it on my flat screen? What his VS? Is it freeware? I might look into that, because I do enjoy learning new things. Thanks for the post.

As far as the tracking, it's not a tracking thing. I can adjust it on my VCR. I just thought that was it. But thanks for the posts.

[lata]

Hi

VS.........well thats short for Video Studio, just the initials.

When we play video on a TV it suffers what is called overscan, some of the video is lost around the sides of the screen.
This happens with all video and all types of TV, some more than others, can be 10%, yep that seems a lot.
Overscan does not affect PC monitors, here you will see the full screen.

When you use a video editor the preview screen may show a rectangle, choose to create a Title/Text then double click the screen
The rectangle represents the safe area, any text outside this area may not show on a TV.

We dont usually notice the effect when viewing video, but place the text to close to the edge and you will have problems.
Viewing Images as a slide show can show this effect as sometimes we crop the photos to fill the screen.
Again anything outside the rectangle may not show.

Fortunately the effect of overscan is helping you.

Do a search on google .............

[lawprelim]

Well, I have gotten the solution. Thank you all. I downloaded freeware called virtualdub. I used the resize filter to edit out the overscan. Thanks to lata, I was able to Google it easily because I wouldn't know what it was called. If anyone needs the instructions for using virtualdub to eliminate overscan, they are here http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-e ... -crop.html. I hope I'm allowed to post that. I have another problem now that I will post in a new thread also. My stupid program is always stopping the capture at different points, because it says it's protected. What a pain. Thanks everyone.

Paul

[lata]

Hi Paul

Sorry should have mentioned that Video Studio has a Distort option for the top track.
This allows you to re-size the clip, effectively stretching the wavy bits off screen.

Double click clip in timeline, Opens the options panel, Attributes tab, distort
Drag clip in preview screen diagonally to reveal corner, Drag corner trim handle to resize, make a little larger. (curser should be double arrow)
Right click preview screen and Anchor Centre/Centre

Using VS you only have to render once.