Flashing bar on top of screen during capture.

[Da Fish]

I am using a Matrox Marvel G400 P866 512M Ram 40G HDD Sound Blaster Live to capture with a composite input. This configuration works exceptionally well most of the time, however occasionally while capturing from VHS source I have experienced a problem with a substantial flicker or flash over the top 15-20% of the screen. This flicker is not continuous but will occur randomly sometimes every second or so. It sometimes appears to have a pink colored band associated with it. When this occurs I experience dropped frames. When it occurs with a particular VHS tape, if I change to another tape the problem goes, if I use the problem tape in a different VCR the problem still exists. When a problem tape is played back on a TV through the same VCR the picture is stable and clean it is only into my PC that I have a problem. I thought it was perhaps to do with low quality recordings but yesterday I tried to capture from a Sony 3/4" Umatic tape source (this Umatic tape and player is the system used to mass produce retail copies of VHS tapes) and experienced the same problem. My PC runs a very clean install, is defraged and will capture perfectly from TV or most other VHS or similar inputs. I am at a loss to understand why this occurs. It appears to me to be some bad input signal but I have no idea what to try next. I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem and managed to resolve it. I have tried the packaged capturing software and AVI_IO, both show the same characteristics.

[kayfam]

Does this paticular tape happen to be commercially produced? If so more than likely what your experiencing is being caused my the macrovision copyright protection embeded in the video stream. If you had an ATI card there is a fix in the tool's section, but for your card I'm not sure. I'm sure someone around here can give you an answer on how to remove this.

[kayfam]

As an add-on to my original post I found some information over at DVD Digest that might help:
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/macrovision_general.html

[Da Fish]

I am pretty sure it is not macrovision as I have a patch to disable that and the tapes I have experienced problems with are primarily from my home camcorder. To be honest most of my capturing has been backing up my home made videos. This flashing on the screen is not all through the tape, sometimes it will occur for several minutes or so then settle down, later on in the same capture it may return.???????

[kayfam]

Da Fish,
The only other thing I can think of that might help is processing the video thru a digital time base corrector and see if this helps. This last option is kind of an expensive solution and I only know of a few consumer level VCR's that incorporate it. You can find TBC's that are used on the professional level, but they cost thousands of dollars. Off hand I know of JVC's HR-S9900U which includes a TBC for $599.95 suggested retail. I'm posting the link just in case you want to take a look at it.
http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?modelId=MODL026742&page=2

[Da Fish]

Thanks kayfam, I'm not looking to spend a lot of money on this. You original suggestion on macrovision does make me think, before i installed the macrovision patch I did find that some of my home videos would come up with the message "Copy protection detected, contact original manufacturer" or something to that effect. The patch may enable me to bypass that part but who knows, there may still be some affect on occasions?
Thanks for the suggestions.