Serious flickering on captured video?
 

Most of the captures I've tried have come out great, thanks to LS's gear :salute: (JVC SR-MV45 into a ComWorld Worldtop TBC into a Pinnacle 710 via S-video).

But one tape has a nasty flickering (I don't know the correct name). I've attached two brief clips that show it: one (CvideoClip.avi) is composite video played on the Zenith; one
(SvideoClip.avi) is from the JVC.

The flickering/flashing does not occur playing the source tape on the Zenith directly into a TV (probably no surprise there).

I imagine it might be some kind of tracking problem: the source is one of the few recorded on a rental camcorder in 1983, which I expect wasn't maintained very well. But if it is I don't want to mess with the JVC's tracking because it's working so well.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

It looks like the kind of frame dropout that I would expect to see without an external TBC.

Thanks for your feedback. I have one that has apparently been working fine, and on other videos it seems OK.

Any suggestions for something to check?

Unhelpful observation, but it almost looks like a CED capture with record skips! :laugh:

I agree, but it shouldn't be based on your setup.

I wonder if this would be considered frame tearing? I have very little experience in that area, so don't take my word for it. But if it is frame tearing, introducing a Panasonic ES10 into the chain may help.

You may be able to address some of those comets in AviSynth using DeSpot, RemoveDirt, RemoveDirtMC (I've had the most luck with the latter).

I'm wondering if any of the settings on the SR-MV45 might be used to good effect. I have the remote.

I may also play with tracking on the Zenith deck (composite) to see if it can be improved; I don't want to touch the JVC;s tracking since LS set it up.

The effect doesn't seem to occur in precisely the same frames each time, so maybe I can assemble one clean capture with a lot of cut/paste. It's our first video of our sons so it's probably worth the effort.

On CED: I hadn't heard of it. Fascinating technology. Amazing to see how much effort RCA put into it, especially since it couldn't be recorded. There's a lot of wild stuff in that era, as there is in 1940s-50s computer technology (using a cylinder of mercury for memory is my personal favorite; Alan Turing supposedly suggested using gin instead).

Thanks for the AviSynth tips!

I see compounded errors there, also appears nth gen.

ES10/15 may help, maybe. :hmm:

This isn't frame drops. This is a vhold-like timing issue. It can be tracking, but given all the others issues I'm less inclined to believe it. Or a compound issue, both.

If I recall, you have an A+ deck of mine. You definitely don't want to screw that up!

I see ugly tapes like this all the time. It's always something slightly different as root cause.

Yes, I did get the deck from you and it's been great so far. Had to put the project on hold since this spring.

I can't recall if I copied the original camcorder recording.

-- merged --

10 points to LS for spotting the root cause: it's a 2nd gen copy.

As we progressed through our input tapes I found the original, which exhibited none of the problems. So, sorry I don't have info on how I rescued the bad tape. Maybe next time.

Thanks for the follow-up post.
It's good to know my internal video radar (video-dar? vidar?) is still working correctly. :D