Capturing NTSC on a PAL VHS - no color

[paicolman]

Hi Forum,
I searhced the forum, but did not find this topic, I think it's a bit "unique".

So this is my story:

I have a video grabber capable of getting NTSC or PAL through the USB 2.0. I'm trying to capture some NTSC VHS videos, using a PAL video player JVC HR-258E, which says to have "NTSC playback on PAL TV" capabilities. In fact, the NTSC VHS can be atched in full color on my normal PAL TV set.

Now the problem:

When I capture the video to my PC, the NTSC signal appears OK, no distortions to notice, but NO COLORS! Everything is B&W. My newb diagnose is that the VCR leaves the NTSC signal partially untouched, but somehow reencodes color information into PAL standard.

So my questions:

Is my diagnose correct? and does anyone have any suggestions, other than getting a pure NTSC VCR player? I was even thinking of "fishing" the NTSC signal from inside the player...

Thanks for any info you can give me!

[FulciLives]

Can the VCR play back a NTSC tape as NTSC?

If so do that and capture NTSC.

But it sounds like the VCR is doing PAL 60 which is a format that most capture cards cannot do.

You need a VCR that can play NTSC and either leave it as full NTSC (so you capture NTSC) or can convert it to full regular PAL and NOT the PAL 60 format (in which case you would capture it as PAL).

But right now your VCR is outputing the NTSC as PAL 60 which is an all around bad method anyways let alone the fact that most capture cards cannot handle it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[paicolman]

Wow, thanks for the rapid and useful info!!
So it's what I thought: I have to get a pure NTSC signal somehow.

[ABMJR]

Playing back a PAL format on an NTSC will show no color since the chroma @ 3.58 mhz is a ctually located at 4.58 on a PAL signal/format...You are also losing about 100 lines of video some of this is not in the "Screen viewing" area...NTSC is a 525 line max format, PAL is 625...The extra 100 lines is about 1 mhz larger in size and thus the chroma is also offset the same..

[paicolman]

On this same issue, I got an idea but wanted to hear what the experts think of it...

It's quite difficult to find a "pure" NTSC player in Europe, but I thought, if I connect the PAL-60 player into aDVD recorder which can record NTSC or PAL, maybe then I have at least a digitized version of my NTSC movies. Or will I end up again with a B&W version of them? Any experiences?

[FulciLives]

Buy an NTSC VHS VCR from the USA and be done with it.

I think that capture cards with BT chipsets can capture PAL 60 but even then I'm not sure how well this works.

SatStorm knows something about that.

I'm not sure what you mean by aDVD ... a stand alone DVD recorder? ... I highly doubt that will record PAL 60

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[RoopeT]

PAL60 to standalone works just fine.

BTW, I can capture PAL60 with my old BT848.

[paicolman]

Hi both,

It seems to be difficult to find a VCR from the US to buy in Europe. and buying one in US will cost toomuch due to shipping, for something I'll need maybe only once...

RoopeT, you mean you can record PAL60 to a standalone DVD recorder ? that's what I was referring to.

[RoopeT]

I have no problems recording NTSC VHS with my PAL JVC SVHS connected to a Philips stanalone recorder (Any recorder should do, not just Philips ... others probably do better ). I believe the resulting DVD is 30 fps, thought, and not 29.97. However, I've even sent some of my discs to States and they're working fine on NTSC players.

[SatStorm]

The cheapest root:
Go buy a second hand cheap bt8xxx based card!
It won't cost you more than 20$ / 16€ and you always find something usefull for it...

When you buy that bt8xx card, install the btwincap drivers and use virtualvcr to capture.

You have to set virtualvcr as PAL 60 input and you have to capture at 768 x 480 with 29.97 framerate.

What ends up on your PC's HD is NTSC. From that point and on, you treat your source as NTSC.

Some DVD Standalones, indeed capture PAL 60. But I believe a second hand PCI bt8xxx card is much much cheaper (and you can always use it for various things that pop up in our hobby)

Few VCRs output PAL 60 at 30fps. When that happens, it is kinda complicated: You have to convert your capture to true PAL, because if you encode your capture to NTSC statering appears. There are few ways to do this, but the most common is IVTC, split audio / video, boost video to 25fps, resize during encoding using virtualdub, speed up audio to match video, multiplex audio / video to final mpeg. Those are advance stuff, let's hope you won't have to deal with...

[FulciLives]

Good advice as always SatStorm but the comments made by other people here including yourself truoble me ...

Some DVD Standalones, indeed capture PAL 60. But I believe a second hand PCI bt8xxx card is much much cheaper (and you can always use it for various things that pop up in our hobby)

Surely PAL 60 cannot work with most stand alone DVD recorders!?!?

I would make sure you (i.e., the person looking to do this) do some poking around as to what make/models can record a PAL 60 signal and just to be safe buy a stand alone DVD recorder from a place that has a good return policy should it not work.

I think a BT chipset capture card would be the way to go here if you ask me.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SatStorm]

Even if a Standalone DVD recorder supports PAL60, the VCR must output PAL 60 at 29.97fps.
That sometimes doesn't happen!

So, you end up again to the bt8xx cards for this. It is safe, cheaper and more flexible that way

[paicolman]

So if I understand you all guys, you have three possible scenarios here:

1) A PAL VCR and a bt8xx based capture card with the corresponding software

2) A "pure" NTSC VCR and any capture card.

3) a DVD recorder and a lot of luck.

So here is what I'm going to do...

1- I think I got a friend from Brazil, who can lend me his VCR. This will bring one more variable to the game, since Brazil is PAL-M, but they do watch NTSC movies all the time there, so... this will be my first attempt.

2- I'm planning to buy a Philips DVD recorder anyway (I work for Philips, but in the semiconductors part, but I get sometimes good prices in consumer stuff) so maybe I will get to try it out "just for fun".

3- If option 1 and 2 fail, I'll go for the bt8xx card. The problem here is a bit more a political issue with my CEO (aka wife): I bought this fancy Sony Vaio last year with included "gigapocket" capture card, because "it's for my hobby, honey", then it could not capture the NTSC tapes (crappy proprietary board with proprietary SW - my last Sony Vaio for sure!). Sooo, I go and buy a cheap usb video grabber via E-bay, which says NTSC /PAL compatible, because "it's for my hobby, honey", so If I try to get a third piece of hardware because "it's...over with my hobby" if you know what I mean...

One more question: Everybody talks about the "bt8xx cards", but do you know which brand/model would be based on that chipset?

Anyway, thanks a lot to all of you for the answers and points of view, it's great to learn a bit more...

[FulciLives]

Perhaps not the cheapest solution but then again not the most expensive solution either would be to just buy a VHS VCR that can play a NTSC VHS tape as NTSC and record with the hardware you already have.

Even if you order a NTSC VHS VCR from the USA you cannot spend more than maybe $120 USD tops and yes I am including shipping in that price. Well, ok, you can spend more than that BUT you can get a nice basic 4 Head Hi-Fi Stereo VHS VCR from the USA in that price range.

Surely that is cheaper than buying a stand alone DVD recorder ... of course if you buy that it would come in handy for all kinds of other projects LOL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[paicolman]

Thanks FulciLives,

The DVD recorder is planned for normal usage (I'll get the 725H, with HDD on it), and already "approved" after my 1 year old son damaged our dvd player (with a bit help from dad...). I'll post "results" here when I finally get my hands on it.

The US-VCR would be an option, if everything else fails...