Problem with capturing from VHS and VHS-C source

[Bobbo01]

I use (for capturing) a studio dc10+ card on a windows 98 machine with 128k memory, and the Studio 1.6 software. (I cant use anything higher because newer versions of studio don't work with windows xp, and newer versions of studio dont have the 'check video signal' option, which prevents dropping frames)

Anyways, on with the problem....

When i capture from a vhs/vhs-c source and playback the AVI file, a distorted bar is present on the bottom of most of the media (strangely, not all). I have a television connected through the computer (it goes VCR -> PC -> TV) When i play the material from the VCR, the image shows up fine on the TV. ONLY when i play it back on the computer, does the disorted bar show up.

It looks something like this, Imagine the Blue area is a normal screen, and the gray area is the distorted bar that flashes every now and then.



This distortion does not show up when my source is Video8/Hi8/Digital8. Only with VHS/VHS-C. It is very annoying, it shows up on VCD/DVD and VHS tape output. Basicly, once I record it..the distortion is there forever. Yet it's not on the source tape.

My capture settings are 640x480. It shows up when cropped (608x464). I use a data rate of 3000 kpbs. but changing that higher or lower doesn't make the problem go away.

Any help would be appreciated, Thank you
-Bob

[redwudz]

It's not unusual to have noise at the top or bottom of a VHS tape video when displayed on a computer. If it doesn't show up on a TV, it's not really a problem. (It's lost in the overscan area of a TV.)

Outside of slowing an encoder somewhat because it's dealing with 'noise', most of us ignore it. You can crop it out before an encode, but you will change the framesize. Better to blank it out if it really bothers you.