Commercial VHS capture very dark, crackling audio?

[milosz]

hi all, getting started capturing tapes with my setup & trying to figure out where the issues might be.

capture 1:

does anyone have any idea what might cause a commercial tape to look like this (very dark)? (see attachment)

i tried capturing this tape on my 1980 and 1970, with and without an avt-8710, with similar results. other tapes, commercial and non commercial, seem to work fine, so i am concluding that this is an issue with this specific tape.

capture 2:

again, a commercial tape -- the issue is with the sound. it's not overhwelming but there is occasional crackling/dropouts on the tape.

hifi/linear mix is off on the ag1980 that i used to capture this. i haven't noticed this problem with other tapes (to be fair, i haven't gone over everything with a super fine-toothed comb)

[themaster1]

Macrovision problem most likely, see here: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...rovision-tapes

[lordsmurf]

What is your setup?

On the 1st, the luma is terrible. Macrovision is one possibility, yes, but not the first, and knowing your setup may eliminate it.

On the 2nd, it's just corrupted HiFi. Does it do that on all tapes, or just this one? If just this tape, you may need to swap to the linear/mono track. Retail tapes commonly have many issues, too.

[milosz]

recapped ag1980p->svideo->avt-8710->svideo->aiw breakout cable->aiw 9000->vdub 704x480 YUY2

regarding the 2nd tape, i'm not sure if it's just that one, but it's the first time i've noticed that problem.

thanks for the comments so far -- any ideas for the first capture? if it's macrovision, what's the way forward? pick up an es10 or something?

[sanlyn]

An ES10 won't defeat Macrovision. Not all forms of copy protection can be defeated by TBC's.

I increased gain in YUV, but why is the image off center? Does it play that way on TV?

[milosz]

yeah, i noticed that on the captures i've been doing. i don't have an svideo input on my tv receiver so i can't confirm it either way, but my caps do seem to be maybe 10-15 lines off center.

what did you use to increase the gain?

-- merged --

actually i realized the tv has an svideo input -- the tv masks the image so it's more centered (ie. no black bars/noise lines on the right-hand side), but overall it looks the same.

the luma levels are much better when playing back through the television, though. the pq is still absolute garbage (the reds are really overpowering, for example). but i guess this is macrovision, then.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milosz

yeah, i noticed that on the captures i've been doing. i don't have an svideo input on my tv receiver so i can't confirm it either way, but my caps do seem to be maybe 10-15 lines off center.

They should play normally. Likely you have to use the old screw-in RF instead of the composite or s-video outputs for your your TV and tune the TV to channel 3, as in ye olden days with CRTs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by milosz

what did you use to increase the gain?

I used Avisynth. NOTE: "Brightness" and "Contrast" are not the same thing as bias gain.

ColorYUV(gain_y=650,off_y=-20)
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)
SmoothLevels(16,1.3,255,16,255)
SmoothTweak(contrast=1.05)

But that image still doesn't look right, whether it's centered or not. The intro part of the clip is still dark as night.

Something amiss here. Playback thru a TBC isn't perfect with Macrovision -- there are sometimes residual side effects, such as chroma flicker (but not always), which can be fixed later. It certainly should look better than it does. You might have the wrong input type setup in Virtualdub. Look at "Video.." -> "Capture filter..." -> "Video Decoder". The "Video standard" setting should probably be "NTSC_M". The dialog window is shown in the settings guide in this post (scroll down for the image): http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post45238.

[milosz]

thanks for the script, i'll try it out on the rest of the video. the intro part looks like crap on my tv also, while the rest is somewhat watchable.

the slightly off-center image seems like an artifact of the video card?

the video standard was set to NTSC_M.

[sanlyn]

If TV playback doesn't look correct, you can't point a finger at the card the card. It's doing the same thing the TV is doing. The audio crackle shouldn't be there, either. Other tapes play OK as you say, so it must be this particular tape.

Looks like it's going to be a search for hidden gremlins.

[milosz]

some clarifications

(a) as far as the luma, tv playback looks ok (but not great) for this tape. consequently i suspect the macrovision diagnosis is correct. i may attempt to obtain another copy to confirm.

(b) as far as the centering, with tv playback the image looks fine, but the only difference between the tv and capture is that the tv is doing additional masking on the right side of the image.

(c) as far as the audio crackle, that is on a different tape than this one (which i no longer have in my possession). i'll have to live with it, next time i'll be sure to do a capture with both the linear and hi-fi tracks.