SECAM digitizing pinking vs. B&W flagging?
 

Hello,

now three years after starting this personal project of digitalizing old personal VHS from my father, I am almost finished with the digitalization part but still have 1 or 2 tapes that gives me trouble, and I want to ask for some advices.

I do not have a TBC and I do not count on trying to buy one, especially because I really consider this is an overkill for this project. Took me already ages to get S-VHS deck with SECAM ability. And I believe this SECAM from France is really not helping in this project.

I have two workflows that worked on most tapes and giving me the best quality:
WF1: JVC 8500MS > Convertion SECAM to PAL / Copy ON / All the rest OFF > Panasonic DMR-ES15 > Hauppauge WinTV HVR950 (from LS)
WF2: JVC 8500MS > Convertion SECAM to PAL / Copy ON / All the rest OFF > Pioneer DVR-320 > Hauppauge WinTV HVR950 (from LS)
All with S-Video and Red/White audio cable.

I tried often to avoid the convertion from SECAM to PAL and do rather SECAM to DIRECT but in most cases, I get a B&W signal, or Pink frames or nothing stable in this regard.
Since in most cases I did not manage to get a constant frame rate in Virtual Dub (leading to massive desynchronization audio/video) I had to use AmarecTV which worked much better (at least with the Hauppauge WinTV HVR950 - it did not with the Pinnacle USB-500 I was using before).

I have few questions:
1. In AmarecTV when I change the device settings for Hauppauge WinTV HVR950 for the input signal (SECAM-L or PAL-B), it seems it is not kept thorough. It looks like to me it automatically detects what's coming in and adjust it. Why I say that is because when I switch the convertion SECAM to PAL or SECAM to DIRECT, I get anyway color. Any idea how this work? Can I be sure of what's coming in as input of the Hauppauge WinTV (SECAM or PAL)?
2. On some tapes, somehow WF1 is not working stable. I mean, that at some point I loose the color and get B&W. It may come back but this is completely random. It looks to me the convertion from SECAM to PAL is not working properly. So the next step I thought, let's use direct SECAM. Then again I get some strange picture, not really pure B&W but for sure not color. As if the DMR would not be able to output SECAM as passthrough. I read the manuals, but I cannot be 100% sure the DMR is able to output SECAM when having SECAM as input. I start to think it's rather always outputting SECAM and has exactly the same issue as the JVC to convert properply the "bad" SECAM input as PAL. Any ideas/knowledge about that?
3. Next step I decided to remove the DMR-ES15. But then I get really bad "flagged" pictures (see attachments). I do not remember getting such bad input in the past (I used at beginning standard VCR from Toshiba or Samsung). This flag effect, does it get over 2 years much worse? What is it due exactly? To the mechanics of the JVC getting worse?
4. Due to 3. I decided to move to WF2. It works then better and sometimes I get a stable color even if I stay in SECAM to DIRECT. Here I am pretty sure that the DVR is able to output SECAM as a real passthrough. But in the end the overall picture is pretty bright. Which is fine for indoor sceneries but quite bad for outdoor sceneries with a lot of white (like snow). Do you know why? Why is everything brighter? It seems the Hauppauge is doing that, because when I compare to previous digitalization I made in the past from the same tape with the Pinnacle USB-500 it seems brighter. Any ideas?

So to summarize, on 1 or 2 particular tapes I have following results:

- No Line-TBc passthrough, full SECAM => Flagged picture
- With Line-TBC passthrough, full SECAM => Too bright, and not stable color (pink frame or on top lines)
- With Line-TBC passthrough, SECAM to PAL => B&W picture, no stable color

Apart of buying a TBC that maybe would solve these issues, any chance to do something else?
Can I correct the flag in Avisynth?

Any other hints on my WFs?

Thank you.

I don't see how a frame TBC could help you fix color issues, line timing and flagging, I think you need a different capture hardware, SECAM is a weird format even back in the day, I remember it as the chroma sizzle format, because it always had chroma issues in a form of red and blue noise dots or snow, this is why PAL was mostly used later on for later formats such as DVD, DV, HDV ...etc

Try to enable "Secam out" rather than the "Auto" setting that should help for the BW issue i believe
According to my tests JVC s-vhs are not the best for Secam, i much prefer Toshiba's (ProDrum) and Thomson's (VTH series)
Secam -> Pal transcoding is not a bad solution especially if it's a hometape, the panny should be happier and re-time everything in the right ordrer. Sony's (HXD euro series) surely are happier, it's a fact. The limits being a slight color phase deviation which may need color correction later on. No big deal imo.

To remove the chroma noise (red/pink bar on the right side) you will have to use avisynth, no way around it, i've posted the script before