Losing Massive Frames capturing VHS

[R1Cohen]

All is well except for old VHS tapes I'm trying to capture to avi's to dump onto DVD's.

Many scarce (Steambath eg) and I'm losing, probably 5% at least.

Granted these are old tapes - some 20 years - is there a way to limit this, short of a TBC which I can not afford?

Not all tapes, and they aren't copy-protected, just age. I've trieda vertical stabilizer I built years ago, but that really isn't the problem, they show fine, just in the capturing.

[BJ_M]

well you can capture over and over untill you get it all and then piece it back together in a editor ... this isnt as hard as it sounds .

it helps to record the audio seperate as one track alone..

[R1Cohen]

well you can capture over and over untill you get it all and then piece it back together in a editor ... this isnt as hard as it sounds .

it helps to record the audio seperate as one track alone..

That's not going to help me as I'd have to record 30 second to 1 minute pieces.

What works, although I'm loath to do it, is to copy to another tape, then capture from teh new tape.

Another generation which makes the capture worse, but less then .001% dropped frames.

There has to be a better answer.

[Gazorgan]

Dropped frames is usually from the capture device, not the source? Are you capturing faster than your PC can support? A test is to capture at a lower res and see if the problem goes away. Try VCD rsolution, then work your way up.

If the tape is sufficiently damaged that it can't produce certain sync signals, then you are going to get some unusual video signals out. This can include frames that are 480 high ( as opposed to 240 interlaced) or some multiple of 240 (no vertical sync). You could get some funky horizontal problems, but theses aren't as bad usually, and show up has horizontal line errors.

A few dropped frames are better than no frames at all. The life of a VHS tape is WELL short of 20 years, I'm suprised they play at all!

[lewisp]

I had this problem capturing my old-ish VHS tapes to the point where I gave up. It always happened at the same point on the tapes, and I assume it was to do with the strength of incoming signal. The tapes would play great through the Hauppauge WinTV software that comes with the WinTV PCI card. However, when I tried to capture using VirtualDub I got massive frame drops. I reckon the windows DLL that VirtualDub uses is crap compared to the one WinTV uses.

I have a digital camcorder, so I connected it up to record from my VCR. Then I connected the camcorder through firewire to my PC and used firewire capture software to get the video. No more frame drops and the picture quality is quite a bit better too.

[fmctm1sw]

I don't have any solid numbers to back this up, but I seem to drop less frames on VHS when I capture completely uncompressed.....