recording from VHS to DVD - picture flickering.

[glen_s]

I am making some copies of old home VHS tapes for a friend, the quality is not that great, (as with many home vids) and there is noise along the bottom of the screen that cant be fixed as my VHS player has no tracking adjustment. This I could live with however, but when playing/recording the VHS thru the Panasonic recorder I have (DMR-ES16) on one tape the picture keeps flickering to the point it is unwatchable. I thought maybe it was the VCR so I tried playing it on another and all I got was the noise, so I hooked this VCR up to the DVD and get the same thing. When I go straight to the TV from either VCR all I get is the noise minus the flickering, so the problem is with the DVD. What is odd though is all other tapes play very clear thru the DVD.

I have tried turning the noise reduction on/off/auto but to no avail.

Is this a hopeless case? Is there some way I can record this VHS tape to DVD and have it watchable? I'd sooner record direct but I do have an ATI AIW card on my pc if thats an option.

[wabjxo]

You could try running the tape thru the 2nd VCR (line out/in in series) to the DVD, and if that doesn't do anything, thru your PC card to the DVD... just to see if any of your devices can stop (filter) the flickering?

[jjeff]

I don't have a ES16 but on some other Panasonics I've been able to change the following to help with flickering:
Push DISPLAY, arrow down to VIDEO, if progressive is ON you may have the option to change the TRANSFER option. If so I find that changing this to VIDEO gives me less jitter. I think the default is AUTO1. Good luck.

[thecoalman]

If the first band of noise is juts a few pixels high this is normal, it resides in the overscan area of a TV and is not visible. I haven't seen a VHS or other analog recording yet that didn't have it. Waht you can do is mask the area with black. Here's a typical example:





As for the flickering it's most likely Macrovison if its commercial tapes or "false macrovision" if its home tapes. If that's the case the ATI AIW most certainly will not help.

More info and some sample clips to compare here: http://www.nepadigital.com/mv/