Video artifacts while capturing Hi8 tapes?
 

Hi everyone, I discovered this forum while attempting to digitize my Hi-8 tapes and was hoping this community might be able to help me identify the particular video artifact I'm seeing, and maybe isolate what's causing it.

Some background on my setup:

Playback: Sony ccd-trv65 via S-video and red/white composite cables for audio

Capture card: ATI TV Wonder 600 USB using "Version 1.0" drivers found online (this could be a problem)

Operating System: Windows 10 (I know, I'll get back to this)

Video software: Virtual Dub, using the setup listed here: (http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-settings.html)

Attached to this post is a short video clip and a screenshot of what I'm seeing.

While recording the playback on virtualdub, every once in a while, I'm noticing what looks like flashes of duplicate frames or somethings appear on the bottom of the video. It's hard to describe, but I don't think this is typical visual artifacts in the overscan region because it creeps pretty high up into the video.

I've attempted to search for similar issues online, but I think my problem is I don't really know how to accurately describe what I'm seeing, so searching something vague like "video artifacts on bottom of screen" or "duplicate images on bottom of video" obviously doesn't really give me great results. I did excitedly find a post on another forum that seemed to have a similar issue (https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...what-causes-it) but the suggestions were things like it's an alignment problem, or I need to clean the heads, and before I do anything mechanical with the camcorder I wanted to confirm what I'm seeing is a similar issue.

One other thing I want to point out is that the playback of the videos look perfect in the flip out monitor attached to the camcorder, so at least to me that makes me think it's an issue with my capture setup and not the tape itself, but I could be wrong. Also this is the original device that recorded these tapes.

Another strange thing is that the audio sounds sped up? which I'm worried maybe I'm recording playback at too high a framerate? I looked up what Hi-8 recorded in and the internet is telling me 29.97 frames per second which I have virtualdub setup to record at, but perhaps this is too fast?

A few things that I'm uncertain about that could very well be the cause:

1. It was fiddly getting a driver installed for the TV wonder 600 on Windows 10, and before I attempt to either dig out an old laptop or dual boot windows XP on my machine, I wanted to try and get it working on Windows 10 as I've read others have had success with this. I've clearly gotten it close, so I'm hoping this is not related to the operating system, but if it is I'm willing to get an XP machine to try using the ATI TV Wonder capture software.

2. The S-video and male-male composite cables I have were bought on amazon and didn't come with either the camcorder or the capture card. I no longer have original cables of either. Maybe I need higher quality cables.

3. I've never cleaned this camcorder (didn't want to mess any of the internals up) and it's over 20 years old at this point I think. So that very well could be an issue.

4. Is the camcorder itself a problem? I figured with s-video out it should be decent quality but maybe I should look for a better camcorder to play back the hi-8 tapes

This forum has been immensely helpful in my journey to digitize my family tapes, and it's genuinely incredible to see a community like this still so active. Thank you to anyone for any help.

Win10 made the ATI 600 USB quit working, after updates nuked the drives. Many cards were affected, not just ATI 600 USB or its "clones". Some people saw this back in 2019, others didn't see it until 2020. Recent 2021 updates, with certain hardware, have started to mess with Pinnacle cards now as well, and some others. Ugly situation, ugly OS.

If it had been any other card/OS combo, I'd have written this: Video8/Hi8 is a drop-happy format, unstable frame timing. If not the camera (easy to test, use another), then it's probably simply lack of frame TBC. Changing capture cards, capture software, etc, all unlikely to do anything.

- You need a new capture card for Win10.
- Regardless of OS, you really need a frame TBC. (At very worst, ES10/15 for the non-TBC frame sync, but this Hi8 hardware combo will have quality conflicts.)

I really appreciate your response. A couple follow up questions:

1. Do you think it's worth testing dual booting Windows XP on my current machine and attempting to use the drivers and capture utilities from the other thread on this forum related to the ATI 600 USB? (I think you were the one who actually made that post).

2. I verified that my camcorder has TBC, but when you say "...but this Hi8 hardware combo will have quality conflicts" do you mean specifically the capture card/operating system/playback camcorder combo? If so is ES10/15 a model of a TBC I should be looking for?

Thank you again for your help

EDIT: Another question, should I be looking for a new playback device? Or is the current sony camcorder I'm using fine?