Capture problem with Hi8 Sharp Viewcam?
 

Hello all.

I have been knee deep the past week in vhs and hi8 tapes trying to digitize my old home videos.

I have gotten all my VHS tapes done with the Ion VCR2PC device which also has yellow and white composite inputs for another video/audio source. I got all my VHS tapes done pretty easily with the built in VHS tape player in the device.

I have just started the Hi8 tapes which I used a Sharp Viewcam EL-665U to record with and have connected the camcorder with the AV cable to my Ion VCR2PC through the yellow and white inputs.

The problem now is the video feed just keeps flashing and flickering and I am unable to get a stable picture.

I have done alittle bit of testing with connecting the Sharp Viewcam to a different source to view if the problem was with the cable, camcorder or usb converter device.

While the camcorder is connected to the TV by itself it plays perfectly.

I have an old dvd recorder connected to the tv that has composite inputs to test through there and the problem returned and the signal was constantly dropping and returning in the same way the USB converter was.

So now I am clueless to what is actually the culprit of this problem as the camcorder plays fine on the TV by itself(cant be the AV cable from camcorder) but not stable connected to the dvd recorder or the usb converter.

Please any help here. this is absolutely driving me insane.

You likely need a TBC on the camcorder analog output to stabilize and clean up the video signal. Most capture devices need a clean, stable, legal video signal. Most TV sets can deal with sloppy signals much better than capture devices.

Thank you for your reply. I am a novice in all this. I had to do a quick search to find out what a TBC is. Can you recommend one to me for my particular setup I would like to keep it as cheap as possible I only have about 10-15 hi8/8mm tapes I need to digitize and from the looks on prices for a passthrough or TBC it might be better to go the drop off service route with those particular tapes.

Do you have a capture example? That seems a bit excessive even without any sort of TBC.

https://youtu.be/adXrxYaeFK4

I dont want to start throwing money at this problem hoping it will get fixed because doing all of this on a minimal budget was my initial goal.

So my first step is to see if maybe the Sharp Viewcam 3.5mm->Composite av cable had an issue and I ordered a new one for $10.

My next step is to seek out a low cost TBC, this is where I sort of need some advice.

Some research turned up the Panasonic DMR-ES15 as passthrough TBC, will this suit my purposes or will I need a dedicated TBC device?

I would suggest picking up one of the newer Sony Hi8 or Hi8/D8 cameras with TBC/DNR to play back the tape (and a capture device that can handle S-Video). An ES15 may work too (and also help for VHS tapes) but sounds like your current camcorder is struggling a big to track the tape, something an external device can't fully fix. Maybe it's gotten slighly misanigned over time.

While connected to the TV though everything is fine and the picture is stable so how is it a tape issue?

You're being a cheapskate and capturing with garbage components. You're have falsely generated copy protection errors errors from inferior equipment. What do you expect?

The tbc pass-thru will help get a cleaner image with better scanline timing correction but it won't defeat copy protection errors or clean up the bad moire distortion. No much anyone can do about other cleanup suggestions after PoopTube wrecked your sample.

A TV is not an analog-to-difgital copy device.With tape, it's an analog-to-analog-player.

Personally the equipment has been fine for my needs and the videos are home videos shot with cheap equipment to begin with so I dont see the problem of trying to do this on a budget and with already owned equipment. The videos arent in amazing quality but the memories are preserved digitally, my goal was achieved mostly before I started to try and capture the hi8 tapes in my collection with the old Sharp Viewcam.

My only problem is that exact flashing of the picture going black and coming back constantly. Is that really related to copyright protection?

It's a timing error in your input signal that "looks like" copy protection activity in your capture chain. Copy protection itself is a method for introducing signla timing errors in the video stream system -- so, if the tape isn't technically copy protected but has signal errors that resemble copy protection disturbances, that's why the resulting effects are said to be due to false copy protection errors. I've had that happen to me several times with home made tapes.

An effective frame-level TBC for analog capture is not a luxury. Bad tapes and good tapes both require decent components. Why would you want to use equipment that makes bad tapes look worse?

I want to thank everyone who helped me here, the ES15 has fixed my problem.

Glad to hear it.

However...
Too many people falsely assume that VHS.tape/analog is "low quality" when in reality it is their own playback/capture equipment that is actually causing the quality drop. Not a minor drop, but substantial quality hits. With the right hardware, a good transfer/conversion workflow, there is zero reason for a homemade tape to look bad. Many can look as clean/sharp as store-bought TV DVDs, if done well.

The only exception is when tapes have actual degradation, actual poor shooting. But do NOT assume you're in this minority grouping.

Analog video quality is all about the hardware. :wink2:

I would add a caveat - provided the original signal recorded was a good solid image. The common problems with home recordings include noisy off-air -cable signals, shooting in poor light, and poor camera heads. And this applies to both analog and digital home recordings. But content is king, so even bad recordings can be better (well, more appreciated) than none.