Image issues playing digitizing VHS tape?
 

I'm new to this forum, so bear with me. I have been working on digitizing some old home movies for a friend and I'm having issues with the quality of one specific tape. Every few seconds there's static or dropouts near the top and descending a little bit. The tape does this on multiple VCRs; and using the tracking buttons does not seem to help. When I opened the front flap of the VHS case, I noticed the tape is a bit wavy along one edge. Could that be the problem? Anything that I can do to clear the image up from this? I have attached a short sample of the video to demonstrate the problem, as well as a picture of the actual tape.

Hm, seeing how you say it happens on all VCRs then it is most likely a problem with the tape itself. If manually tracking didn't help then it could've been recorded on a dirty machine. Or played back on one before you got your hands on it

Is this the original camera tape or possibly a copy of it?

I'm not sure, but if I had to guess it's probably a copy. It has 5 different family holiday videos on it, one right after another.

OK. The reason I asked is that in the worst case the noise was caused by a mistracking of the playback deck when it was being copied. But can't be sure from here.The frilling at the lower tape edge may affect the tracking as it's right over the control track area. But hard to be sure. Perhaps try a deliberate manual mistrack and see which parts of the picture are affected.

Welcome. :)

What gear is in use here?

- VCR/camera
- TBCs
- capture card

This all affects quality, too. Random gear = random quality, random issues.

Thanks! I'm using an Insignia DVD/VCR combo because it gave me the best color/image quality of the 3 VCRs I have. Then an S-video cable from the VCR to a Panasonic DMR-ES10 as a passthrough TBC. And finally for capture I'm using the S-video out to a ClearClick Video2Digital Converter3.0 (don't hate me, lol).

All the other tapes I'm working with turned out fine with this setup. It's just this one tape in particular. And it's not the end of the world if I can't fix it, as I'm sure my friend's family will enjoy the video regardless. But I'd feel better knowing I did all I could to get it right.

Yup, when I experimented with the tracking buttons, I found I could make that general area of the video much worse, but never any better. Do you think there would be any difference if I took the cover off and adjusted tracking manually with a tool? Or is that exactly the same as using the channel buttons for tracking?

In any case, I'll reach out to the family and see if they have the originals hidden away somewhere. Since these tapes were at my friend's family ranch, it seems reasonable to assume they're copies. It would be nice if her parents had better versions I could use, but then I'd have to do the process all over again. :smack:

Based on what I see, and now know, it's likely just the VCR not wanting to play that single tape. It's either EP/SLP outside the range of that VCR, or a misaligned recording. This can likely be transferred fine, perfect even, just not with the gear you're using here. This assumes it's not nth gen (copy of copy).

- VCR = grit my teeth, "fine"
- TBC(ish) ES10 = acceptable
- capture card = but that ClearClick is a complete piece of crap, and has obliterated the quality of the converted video

You have many issues in the attached sample, but the primary is alignment/tracking for that one tape.

Do any other tapes jitter/shake, not just tracking errors? That VCR is suspect, but mostly due to alignment concerns, ignoring the low-end combo quality (soft/blurry VHS).

I'm sad when I see tapes transferred like this. It could have been vastly better. :depressed:

Yes, well I initially started this project thinking it would be a lot simpler and cheaper than it has turned out to be. My laptop is 10 years old and OBS was turning out like crap so I decided to just get the ClearClick and be done with it (or so I thought). It honestly seemed to look just as good as what shows up on my TV, and way better than what I was getting from OBS. But I'll try to get a better setup now I guess.

For VCR, I assume a JVC SR-V101US would be an improvement. There is one for sale on Facebook right now for $125 but it needs repair and is basically for parts. According to the seller: it turns on, rewinds and fast forwards, but just won't play on the screen. I wonder if it's worth the effort to try to tinker with it? If it's just a few bad capacitors, then that's no big deal. A high price tag for such an unknown though.

I will look into a better capture device. Maybe a Diamond Multimedia VC500?

Despite its convenience, I've never gotten OBS to capture without dropping frames. Most people use VirtualDub. This will be another step that complicates your workflow (since it doesn't capture in formats that are easy to share or play) but it will capture the video as close as possible to the original signal (depending on the CODEC you choose).

Getting into your computer, the highest price performance device I know of is the IO Data GV2. Everything else begins to climb in price from there.

I can't help much with the distortions on the tape itself. It looks like the ES10 is combatting some heavy flagging though. Perhaps a better VCR could pull things together. The IO Data GV2 also has some ability to combat signal errors, though it's pretty basic.

The internal tracking can be adjusted over a wider range but if the best picture on each of your three VCR's is somewhere in the middle of the range at the remote I suspect adjusting internal tracking wouldnt help. But if your VCR's give the best picture at the extreme end of their manual tracking range, ie: all the way to the left or to the right, (is it?) then possibly a more extreme adjustment would help.

But the loss of signal being near the top of the picture suggests an entry guide misadjustment. This is more tricky to adjust and most users wouldnt attempt it. That assumes the noise could be removed by internally adjusting one of your decks but only if the error is not already "baked in" to the tape you are playing.

Yes unless they have been badly damaged in some way since duplicates were made, if they were made, the original camera tapes are better for digitising as copying to another tape degraded picture and sound to some degree.

The internal tracking can be adjusted over a wider range but if the best picture on each of your three VCR's is somewhere in the middle of the range at the remote I suspect adjusting internal tracking wouldnt help. But if your VCR's give the best picture at the extreme end of their manual tracking range, ie: all the way to the left or right, (is it?) then possibly a more extreme adjustment would help.

But the loss of signal being near the top of the picture suggests an entry guide misadjustment - when the tape was recorded or copied. This is more tricky to adjust and most users wouldnt attempt it. You could acquire another VCR but unless it too was custom "misaligned" to this tape it wouldnt do any better in this respect.

Yes unless they have been badly damaged in some way since the duplicates were made, the original camera tapes are better for digitising as copying to another tape degraded picture and sound to some degree.

If it is just the one tape, I can transfer it for you for free once you've already made your best possible transfer since there's always the possibility of things getting lost in the mail. My guess is that the issue is the crimped/wavy edge that you mentioned at the beginning. I suspect certain machines will handle that better than others, but since I've got access to just about every VHS machine that contains a line TBC, I suspect I can get it looking better than it currently does anyway. If interested, PM me.