Is it Old or is it Macrovision?

[Tiggerpaws]

I am archiving a very old VHS tape
Mapletown.

It seems to act like its MV encoded though
I did not see any of the telltale white flashing
lines in the vertical blanking interval, and it
was not flashing bright-dark-bright-dark
it was simply fading from normal to bright
and back to normal then fading to bright
again.

I tried the search function but it won'
t tell me anything.

Should I just use a Macrovision remover or
invest in a time base corrector?

I am not sure if this is MV encoded,
it does not say in the video or on the
box, but it acts a little like it is encoded
but not the typical bright-dark flashing
and it is NOT very dark and weak like
MV its just normal then fades to bright
then back to normal and fades to bright
again, sometimes erratically and not
as even pattern thingy

Equipment used in the capture are
a Datavideo DAC 200 and a Miglia
Director's cut II tried both,
VHS machine is a JVC Super VHS
capable machine, HR-S5902U
capturing to mac mini 2Gb ram
ox x tiger 10.4 in the usa on
110V power. Tried capturing with
quicktime's DV record movie,
and final cut pro.

Sorry I have Asperger's and I don't
communicate well.


Forgive my handicap.

Thank you for all the kind answers
I get.

[johns0]

Looks like it has mv,old mv just faded from normal to dark continouosly..The Datavideo DAC 200 should compensate for it,might wanna try a tbc then if its just a poor video signal.

[rallymax]

yup that's how I always saw MV on PAL systems (I grew up in Australia).
if you haven't captured yet I'd do what we did back in the 90's. We got a universal PAL<>NTSC converter box. It took the MV out in process. It has slide switches so you could do NTSC->NTSC PAL->PAL etc.
look on eBay etc they are a little plastic box that looks like a modem.

[rallymax]

btw, the way MV works is that it puts a signal in the calibration zone ( in the Vertical Blanking Interval as you mentioned) that is WAY too high then WAY too low. It turns out that TVs ignore that reference and use their own 1v p-p reference. VHS recorders and now capture cards know that the source could be weak so they do rely on the reference. Give a high reference and the image gets dark, give a low reference and it gets bright.
SO.. that's how it worked.

If you capture with that and then want to fix it the damage to the image is already done, whites and blacks are clipped.

The software you use to capture is already too late in the process. You either have to get a capture card that has a ignore-macro vision capability OR you need to get a box like the converter I mentioned above that ignores it too.

good luck!

[orsetto]

If the tape you have is from the children's cartoon series "Mapletown", it may or may not be an MV problem. It was released on the FHE label, which rarely bothered with MacroVision, although the series was licensed by Nickleodeon which may have asked for MV protection. Its very rare in the USA to find an MV protected tape which does not show the little tell-tale squares in the blanking interval: there were many different versions of MV, some pulsed very slowly and some blinked rapidly, but ALL will show the squares in the VBI. If you see nothing there but a black bar, then MV is likely not your problem. You would need an external TBC or "video filter" to get rid of any MV coding, and such devices are not cheap. If this is the only tape you expect to encounter this problem with, it may be more cost-effective to simply purchase the four DVD set for $25 on the iOffer site.