Top Screen Tearing/Distortion
 

I'm transferring a VHS tape for my brother. It looks like a poorly made copy of the original. The problem that I'm having is that the there is top tearing that comes and goes at certain points in the tape. I'm using a JVC HM DH5U and the AVT 8710 TBC to capture. I read a guide that said you could crop the tearing out if all else fails. The problem with this is that when the tearing occurs it's almost like it shifts the rest of the lines down and distorts the whole image so I don't think cropping will help. The funny thing is when I run the tape through a standard RCA VCR it doesn't tear. Any ideas? The RCA VCR only has composite out so when I tried to capture from this VCR it looked horrible.

do you have an AG-1980 or SR-W5U available?
some tapes totally freak out a normal JVC TBC and IIRC the D-VHS TBC can not be turned off.
i have 1 such tape here and tried in just about every TBC equipped VCR imaginable including all the D-VHS's and it only plays right in a AG-1980, a JVC W-VHS or my JDM Panny NV-SB900

No I don't have one of those VCR's. I was hoping my JVC would be all that I needed. I guess sometimes the high end equipment works against you. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I hate giving them something that is of such bad quality.

there is really no single VCR they can do it all (well maybe the SR-W5U...)
you really need at least 1 JVC and a AG-1980
JVC are great most of the time, but certain tapes & EP/SLP tapes are better with a Panny

you could always just send the problem tape out and have it done if you dont want to purchase another deck

Composite itself doesn't look much different from S-Video if your capture device handles it properly. (It's more likely that the RCA sucks.)

A decent thrift store VCR and a Panasonic DMR-ES10/ES15 may be all that you need, although even that would probably be more expensive than sending the tape away.

Well I kept "monkeying" around with the problem tape and it finally ran fine through the JVC D-VHS. I don't know why. I ran it through the barnacle AG 1960 I bought off of ebay, then I ran it through my klunker RCA and then I did a fast forward-rewind on it. Then in utter desperation I tried it again on the JVC and it worked. Weird, huh? Guess I'm not complaining. This was my first semi-real job and I was getting pretty discouraged. The other tapes they gave me were a bag full of Digital8's and I've been blowing right through them. It was just those crummy VHS tapes that killed me. I've been looking and calling thrift stores trying to locate an ES10 recorder but I've not had any success yet. It seems like one of those would be good to add to the equipment list.

The JVC D-VHS units have sync filters much like the Panasonic ES10. That's why. :congrats: