Never capture to H.264. That's a distribution format, not a capture format.
In the video capture world, nothing good ever started with "I use Windows 8" or "I use AverMedia". So right away, I can pretty much guarantee that will be a non-starter.
I've never been fond of HDMI for analog. That's a digital carrier. You really need to use s-video, as that's the best that can be accomplished for consumer-end analog tapes.
As posted earlier, older systems are not really vintage, nor outdated. They're just not the "latest and greatest" whiz-bang systems designed around Facebook/Twitter, games, shiny screens to "watch movies", and "go mobile". Systems from the 2000s are for more serious tasks of the era, while systems now really are not.
The "thin line of noise" is probably you seeing the overscan. I really need to update these guides, but the concept is explained near the bottom of this guide:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...nd-sources.htm
What I do is this for my personal videos:
-
Huffyuv for capturing processing
- MPEG-2 15mbps+ high bitrate for archiving
- H.264 MP4 as need for streaming (either LAN or WAN)
After the initial
Huffyuv is processed, the MPEG is made, and the Huffyuv file is dumped. If needed, an added copy as MP4 is made, though deinterlaced first in Avisynth. Preferably, the MP4 is made directly from the AVI before the AVI is dumped, but is not required.
The ATI USB 600 may work for you, though I'm not sure about Win8 drivers.
Specific Tevion cards also work well. Good deal available now:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tevion-High-...item25aa924d28
A good VCR with TBC, and external TBC, are both needed.
A quality setup should have no drawbacks. In fact, the VHS format itself should be the only limiting factor.
I realize that some of this has been answered before, but I wanted to address it all in this post, since it was asked in this post.
