Help with MSTC G2 Time Base Corrector

[Brian321]

Hi - I've been doing quite a bit of transferring of old VHSC and VHS camcorder films to DVD for myself and family members, and have always just assumed the odd wobbly picture and falsely triggered macrovision was just something you have to put up with. Then I learned about time base correctors and thought I might try one out.

Being a bit tight (!) I didn't really fancy spending £150 on a new one, so bought one an old studio quality one off eBay that was up as for spares or repair, as the description made it sound very like the power supply was on the blink, a very easy repair.

Anyway, the PSU was indeed dying (voltages dropping massively under any load, and only about 70% of what they should have been anyway), so I replaced it and the front panel controls now work fine and it's generating a picture. But..... The pictures it is generating are thoroughly messed-up! There are two problems.

1. The picture is B&W - this is true on both S-Video and composite (this particular TBC supports s-video, composite and SDI, I don't have any way to generate or view SDI)
2. It's shifted half a screen sideways so the picture starts perhaps 60% of the way in from the left, then wraps around and ends about 30% of the way in from the left, with the remaining 30% in the middle black, and 30% missing as it wraps around.

The equipment is connected like this:
1. Toshiba DVD/VCR to TBC by S-video connected to the SCART by an s-video adaptor.
2. S-video into the TBC
3. S-video out of the TBC into another Toshiba VCR/DVD through a SCART/s-video adaptor.
4. Connected to the TV via HDMI.

It all works fine if I connect the VCR/DVD combos directly through the S-video adaptors and s-video cable, or by composite, or indeed by RGB SCART. The TBC is set to PAL in and PAL out so there's no NTSC messing up the colour anywhere (although the same thing happens with NTSC tapes which play as PAL60 on these machines).

Is anyone familiar with these TBCs? Any ideas what I'm doing wrong or how I can fix it?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[smrpix]

Sounds like the timing is off. I'm not familiar with that unit, but one guess, perhaps it needs a genlock sync signal?

[Brian321]

Thanks for that, smrpix, and apologies for the long delay in answering, it's been a busy week! I'll have a play with the genlock and see what happens.