ATI 600 USB S-video working, composite not
 

I'm testing a ATI 600 USB and having video problems. In all cases, the audio is fine. I'm testing it on my Windows 8.1 laptop that I don't intend to do my work on, I'm just testing the device with the laptop.

Two problems: 1 - The S-video input is working in virtualdub, but not the composite video. This isn't a problem for the VCR, but I have a mini DV camcorder I wish to capture from and I can't get DV to work with the card I bought. I suspect the DV port may also be bad on the camcorder. Would a S-video composite adapter produce acceptable results?

2 - I would try using catalyst media center, but it's only letting me select "Digital TV (ATSC Antenna 1)" for the video input. I've tried multiple drivers and clean reinstalls using the drivers guide here, no luck. User account control is completely off for both computers.

My desktop that I'm going to capture on is Windows 7 Professional, and I can get more video input options in catalyst media center, so as long as the S-video adapter will produce decent results, I'll just use that for my mini DV camcorder.

I also just noticed what looks like overscan at the bottom of the screen. 1 is from a VHS retail tape, 2 is from a VHS of a crappy recording off TV. Is this overscan or something else? I see color bending into the black border so I don't know if that's normal or not. Thank you in advance.

My advice: pretend the composite input of the ATI 600 doesn't exist.

Buy a working MiniDV camcorder with S-Video output, transfer your tapes, sell it. If you still can't get Firewire copying working with the new camcorder, fine, capture from its S-Video output if you insist. But resorting to composite is going to create artifacts. The ATI 600's composite input has a poor comb filter that produces copious rainbowing and dot crawl.

You mean a Composite -> S-Video adapter, but the answer is no.

Yes, it is normal. Whether it's "overscan"... It is part of the image that would be hidden by overscan.

It's referred to as head switching noise. I intend to create a tutorial showing how certain VCRs can be adjusted to move the head-switching point out of the visible picture area.

IIRC I had to add a 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller driver to my win 7 pc to get the IEEE1394 "firewire" to work on my computer to download the DV files from my mini DV camera.

I think my computer was a VIA chipset and I was able to go directly to the VIA webite and download the needed drivers there

just a shot at getting your mini dv camcorder to work with firewire. Possibly a cleaner method of transfer.