Canopus ADVC100 Capture freezes w/ bad quality tape

[airwid]

I was trying to capture an old VHS tape in Ulead Video Studio 7 that is not of great quality, but also not any worse than some others I've successfully captured. When I would preview the capture, the VCR (AIWA HV-MX 100) would play normally, but the preview would get stuck on one frame for 30 seconds with no audio. Other places on the tape it was a bit more choppy, freezing on a frame for a second or two, with the audio doing the same this time. I put the tape in the cheapo VCR connected to my TV and it played fine. And I tried another tape of similar age and quality and the capture preview looked OK.

Is this something that a TBC would correct? Since this title is now available on DVD, I'm not sure I would want to invest in that, unless this happens with some frequency w/ the ADVC-100. This is the first tape of about 25 that I've done since I've had it that it hasn't been able to handle.

[redwudz]

I have ran quite a few really crappy long play VHS tapes (6 hours) though my ADVC-100 with no freezes as you describe. A TBC will always help with VHS tapes, though. I use WinDV and a cheap VCR with no TBC.

[mracer]

Did you try the clean dirty signal function of the ADVC-100?

As many of us can attest, you have to feed quite a shite signal to the ADVC-100 to trip it up. Since this movie is out on DVD, why don't you just buy the DVD version? It would be quite a large and stupid waste to buy a TBC just for the conversion of one VHS tape that is already out on commercial DVD.

[airwid]

Did you try the clean dirty signal function of the ADVC-100?

As many of us can attest, you have to feed quite a shite signal to the ADVC-100 to trip it up. Since this movie is out on DVD, why don't you just buy the DVD version? It would be quite a large and stupid waste to buy a TBC just for the conversion of one VHS tape that is already out on commercial DVD.

Well, I just realized that it's still only available on VHS (but the director's other films have been released on DVD). But, sure, I'd still sooner just keep the VHS rather than spend hundreds on something I don't really need.

Is the clean/dirty signal function the same thing as the macrovision cheat? (didn't see anything about this in the manual) I haven't tried that yet but will give it a shot.

[mracer]

yes the "clean dirty signal function" is the same thing as the macrovision defeat. Says alot about what macrovision does to a video signal, doesn't it?

[yodel]

I guess investing some money in a JVC vcr with build in TBC,
is money well spend, i'm happy with mine (S-VHS) HR S9860.

[airwid]

Well, I tried the macrovision defeat as it's described, so assuming that the recent ADVC-100's still have this feature, that didn't quite work. It came through a bit more, but still choppy. I played around with the tracking, and could actually get the ADVC to capture the video, but the picture was complete shite (black and white and fuzzy, i.e. the tracking needed to be adjusted further). I tried another VCR and the same thing happened. My computer has VCR inputs, so I plugged the VCR directly into the computer, and it played fine. The picture's not stable on the VHS, but not the worst I've seen. I think I just found the one tape that the Canopus can't handle early on in my capturing career. I probably get a newer VHS of the movie to capture, unless there's anything else I could do. Thanks for the input.

[yodel]

You are also sure about the tape's tv-system ? PAL or NTSC ?
all settings correct ? also keep in mind, when your vcr is converting a tape, it shows okay on your tv, because it accepts allways 50 or 60 Hz frame rates, but the ADVC100 does not accept this..
NTSC50 or PAL60 is not within "legal" NTSC or PAL

[airwid]

yes, the AIWA VCR plays NTSC/PAL/Secam whatever. It will pickup whatever system the tape is in automatically usually. If that's off, it usually only affects the color and you can fix it right away. You're probably right about the frame rates. The tape I have is a copy and a poor one at that...

[yodel]

What i mean is, As soon as your vcr "goes" converting, the ADVC100 will not accept this... so only pure PAL , if you have a PAL recorder,
or pure NTSC , if you have a NTSC recorder.
Only with Laserdisc players, i noticed this with Pioneer's CLD1850, you can do both formats, because either disc will have a pure output of the player.

[airwid]

I've been using this same VCR with the ADVC 100, with 100% success, with both PAL (being converted to NTSC signal by the VCR) and NTSC tapes, until now. This tape is in NTSC also, so there's no converting being done for this particular tape. And I've used a pure NTSC VCR, with no difference in performance whatsoever. I've concluded at this point that it's the tape and nothing but the tape...

[Cole]

I don't know if this will help at all, but I have had a similar problem with capture with poor VHS originals using a Canopus ADVC50 and I solved it thus:

I use Edit Studio 3 to capture only (doesn't loose this facility after trial period) .

Under the capture program, under options > Scenes Tab, there is a 'Sensitivity' bar and I have mine set at about 20, but if I have any problems 5 is the lowest that I have set this.

Edit Studio 2 (which could be optained Free with some UK PC Magazines recently) had a similar option where the defauls was about 75. This did cause some of my older VHS tapes to fail capure and again lowering this figure solved the problem.

Hope that this helps.