Alignment issue or something else? Horizontal lines, EP tape

[daysaf00]

I have about 200 tapes that I'm transferring to dvd (all are originals of tv recorded material from the 90s). These tapes were recorded in EP/SLP mode (I know, I know) with 5-6 hours of material on each.
Many tapes play just fine, but others are giving me some issues. I don't have the machine they were recorded on originally, and there were 2-3 of them I had back then.

Upon playback of the problem tapes, I get horizontal lines that crawl up the screen briefly. Sometimes they come and go quickly, other times they last a little longer. It can be 2-3 lines or more. It really just depends on the tape. Some machines give better result than others, but nothing incredible. I'm wondering if these were recorded on a misaligned vcr, and if so, would it be possible to take one of my machines (I have 4 or 5 different vcr's I've purchased on eBay) and have a tech "mis-align" it? I don't care about the VCR once my tapes are transferred, so having it re-aligned later isn't a factor.

I'm just wondering if this would help at all?

This picture is hard to see the lines, but gives a rough idea. (Imagine 4 or 5 of these that crawl up the screen, and come and go).

[johns0]

Please do not cross post,one thread is enough,i deleted your other thread.

[sanlyn]

This seems like a continuation of your earlier post.

There's not much you can do about tape recorded on a poorly aligned machine that no longer exists. Panasonics from the late 1990's seem to be able to track many damaged tapes, but some tapes are so distorted and/or damaged that nothing can track them. Purposely misaligning a VCR to mimmick an older one is darn near impossible, as the misalignment would have to be exactly like that of the former machine, and without that machine I don't know how anyone could gauge the mechanical parameters involved.

In your earlier posts you mentioned old Sharp VCRs as a possibility. True, they were known to be able to track just about anything -- within reason -- but image quality sucked. These Sharps haven't been on the shelves for years, so good luck finding one that's not in such bad shape that it won't destroy a bad tape. Sharps were not that durable to begin with. Some would suggest finding a high-end JVC with built-in tbc; I'd argue against that, as even a good JVC -- if you can find one that hasn't been used to death -- would reject most damaged tapes.

One thing you can try: even a good-tracking VCR will have trouble with physically problematic tapes, but from your image posted you can see that the entire frame is intact with no tracking distortion on the borders or any tears or whatnot. If you can get a working Panasonic, Toshiba, or Magnavox DVD recorder you can use their built-in line-level tbc's as pass-thru units. To use as pass-thru, you connect your VCR to the recorder's input and connect its output directly to your capture device. In other words, just "play" the tape thru the recorder, rather than recording it. The problem with recording old, scratched, bruised, crinkled, messed-up tape directly to MPEG is that noisy tapes are almost impossible to clean once its other problems have been digitized into lossy MPEG. Chances are, bad tapes will need additional clean up in your PC.

You'll be surprised how many problems a line-tbc can resolve, although it can't fix everything. It's possible that if the white streak in your image manages to survive a tbc (likely, it will), you just might be able to repair such things in software with Avisynth.

It's difficult to judge the extent of the problem from a single still image. If you can record and post a short video sample, even if it doesn't look great, members here might be able to tell you more.

[robjv1]

Yeah, those lines are pretty typical of tapes where the physical tape has some sort of integrity issue or has been slightly chewed in a VCR on a previous playback. As you said, some VCRs will do a better job with it than others, so you'll either just have to pick one and live with it or attempt to filter it out to make it less noticeable. On two of my VCRs those lines always show up as bright white streaks, where on another it duplicates a line or two above or below it to mask it, so for that line it is a similar looking effect to what happens to the picture when you fast-forward a mini-DV tape while it's playing.

One thing to note -- if it is physically damaged (and you'll be able to hear it on playback on that spot) I would not recommend playing that tape more than a few times, because you run into the danger of it breaking at that point and having a new problem to deal with. Working on it on the PC would be a much less destructive process.

[themaster1]

Post a video sample to see

[jmac698]

Like most problems of this type, it's probably completely fixable, although the solution is time-consuming. Make two captures of the same spot and post them. Hopefully, the noise appears in different spots. If so, it can probably be fixed to the original quality. Otherwise, there's a way to interpolate into the bad areas.
Of course, you'll need a good avisynth scripter to fix it, but if it's interesting enough I might have a go.

[daysaf00]

Here are a few more pictures of what I'm experiencing. Some tapes it's happening a lot, others just here and there, and others I don't really see any problem like this. It's strange considering they were all stored in the same location of my house (guest room closet). These tapes are all TDK as well.

I'm really not sure if it's a mis-alignment issue or just deteriorating tapes. A few of my 94, 95 and 96 tapes have this problem, but most all of my 1997 tapes play just fine, my 1998 tapes have some issues, but my 1999 are fine too. It's strange.