Pyro A/V Link

[au7usa]

I just bought a ADSTech Pyro A/V Link, and big surprize, i have the same problem as everyone else. Playing anything through my VCR composite video works fine, as long as its not the VCR tape. TV tuner, DVD, the guts of an old composite webcam, they all work fine.

My question:
What exactly does a Time Base Corrector do? I can understand why if the timeing of an interlaced source is not the same as that of the capture device then every so often the fields would get swapped. How would you even fix a file that didn't play the fields in the proper sequence, and then did for a while, and then didn't again. (I suppose you could cut it up, and do the parts separately)

Does a Time Base Corrector convert Interlaced to Progressive, or does it just provide a "Timing Signal"?

[au7usa]

Doing a little more reading, it appears that a Time Base Corrector does both.

Looks like a Time Base Corrector completely disassembles the video and rebuilds it (to DV standards).

[ofbarea]

I also have the ADS A/V link and when capturing from VHS tape I usually have some dropped frames (always drops in 32 frames chunks). But the end result is usually very good. I think that dropped frames in 32 frame chunks could be related to the locked audio feature of the device. I will disable locked audio and try again.

I noticed that the number of dropped frames is different depending on the VHS used. I did some testing with 4 different VHS and this is my finding:

The best results were obtained using a 10 year old 4 heads Panasonic and with a Toshiba (5 year old).

My Zenith VHS (3 year old) was very bad and with a Sony I had many dropped frames.

So I will exchange my Zenith VHS with my brother’s older Panasonic.