SECAM digitizing pinking vs. B&W flagging?

[qcalv]

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.

[latreche34]

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

[themaster1]

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