Overscan or something else?

[agamid]

Just making sure that the black bars on the sides and the distortion at the bottom is just overscan and not a sign of a problem with the capture card or vcr, sorry if this is a newbie question but I just got my capture device yesterday. If the picture looks a little rough it's because it is from a old tv recording.

Using a JVC VHS HR-VP47OU going to a Dazzle DVC100 to my computer, the image looks the same in windows movie maker and powerdirector, and I've already updated the drivers to the latest version for the Dazzle.

Thanks

[thecoalman]

Yes it is, you can apply a mask on the edges to make it uniform. Also helps because you won't be wasting bitrate on the noise.

Don't crop unless you only intend to use it for computer playback.

[agamid]

Thanks for the info, I'll have to find how to do the mask, since I plan on playing this stuff mainly on a tv. Thanks agian.

[thecoalman]

You won't see it on a 4:3 TV because that part of the signal is not viewable. Not sure how 16:9 TV's handle it.

In any event your better off just masking it.

[jagabo]

Overscan refers to the way televisions draw a picture that is larger than the viewable area of their screen. On a CRT the electron beam is literally scanned beyond the edges of the bezel. On LCDs and plasmas the incoming frame is enlarged and the edges are cropped away to simulate overscan.

So the black bars at the sides of the frame and the VCR head switching noise at the bottom isn't "overscan". But it will be hidden by overscan on most TVs.

[jman98]

As jagabo says, it's not overscan, but I've seen this also from old TV recordings on DVD. If I watch them on my PC, I can see that the image doesn't completely fill the 4:3 window just like in your screen capture. All I can figure is that this is normal because I've seen it so much. Even standard def TV captures that I do from broadcasts sometimes look exactly like this.

[filmboss80]

Yeah, what those guys said. Head-switching skew at the bottom is very common with older analog tape formats. If you are going to view on a computer monitor, you always have the option of cropping the edges, using a variety of programs (like VirtualDub, Avisynth, etc.).

[edDV]

The black sides result from capping NTSC to 720x480 when 4:3 PAR actually maps to 704x480 active area. 720 capture results in 8 pixels of blanking capture on both sides. You can crop your video to 704x480 and then encode as 704x480 MPeg2 for DVD. 704x480 is a valid DVD resolution. ATSC SD digital video is broadcast as 704x480.

Your video sample is also somewhat h shifted left. This was probably a recording issue and can't be corrected. There will still be some black on the right side at 704x480 due to this h shift.

[agamid]

Hey thanks for all the replies/info guys, I'd like to mask it since I'd like the video to look decent on a computer and on a tv (I know on a tv it will look ok with out doing anything), filmboss80 suggested some programs to crop it but does anyone have any suggestions for programs that could mask it (relatively easily)? Also any suggestions for a reliable (preferably free) capture program the ones I have now are pretty awe full - nothing like leaving it capturing for an hour or two to find that it illegal operationed or is just sitting there not responding.

[edDV]

USB2 cap devices are usually limited to included proprietary driver software.

You can cap uncompressed from a simple tuner with virtualdub or other.
You can use proprietery internal compression cards like Hauppauge PVR or ATI AIW
You can use DV format transcoders like Canopus ADVC (my default).

[jagabo]

I don't know if any of these will work but check out GBPVR, BeyondTV, and SageTV.

[agamid]

I'll check out those options, thanks for the info.