Star Wars Jitters - ?Macrovision Hangups?

[Kneller]

Using 1GHZ Athlon, 655 RAM, XP Pro, ATI AIW 8500DV I am trying to put my Star Wars trilogy VHS on to VCD.

Firstly Macrovision.
All I got was a green screen with audio. Fixed this with download of ATI Macrovision remover from doom9. Super duper things going great etc.

Is this the best way of doing this?

Main Q : Jitters.
When I watch the movie via the VCR through the ATI AIW all looks good, smoother than smooth. Come to record it and another story. It looks like the first line of the first field is intermittently being omitted from the source. Is this an artefact of macrovision? I think the line that is dropped is outside the normal viewing area of TV. But when in capture mode you get to see warts and all. The result of this omitted line is the picture ever so slightly bounces. Causing dropped frames and me to start twitching.

Now I'm not worried about me twitching but unnecessary dropped frames is the devils work! Hey it may even be the dark side clouding the real issue!

So after all that reading the Q is.
Why is the line omitted causing the jittering and how can I get around it? No/very little frame loss is the goal!

PS the VHS tapes are in mint condition! Capturing at 350*288 hufvuvy PCM 44/16/S etc. I know this pc can do more than this as I capture my mini8 at 720 etc.

[Kneller]

Hey no suggestions?

I don't think I'm doing anything illegal. Its my VHS and only for me to watch. VHS tapes get worn out.

[Kneller]

No suggestions.

Am I doomed to fade away and die?

[ginge]

Putting Star Wars VHS onto VCD is a useless jester.

There are great quality DVDs taken from the far superior (to VHS) Laserdisc versions.

[borghe]

From my limited experience here are some thoughts I can offer up:

NTSC interlaced material jitters. It is an artifact of the interlacing. In some instances you can work around it. PowerDVD defaults to correcting it with either a bob or weave correction. AVISynth can work to correct it. Capturing it in there is very little you can do to fix it. It is only once it is in that you can apply some filters to try and correct it.

The jitter is NOT a result of a scanline being omitted. I am doing perfect 720x480 captures of my laserdisc and I still have jitter. It will happen no matter what.

Now the second problem is dropped frames and missing scanlines. If this is happening, you have to determine how badly you want to put this on VCD. IMHO, aside from just the experience of doing it, there is very little to gain. Your picture will be worse, and about the only functionality you gain is having it on a non-degradable media and you don't have to rewind. The first one is offset by the fact that your VHS tapes of the SE trilogy will probably not degrade by the time Lucas puts the SE trilogy on DVD (2005-2006).

For my conversion I am going from laserdisc, going to DVD, and using the original theatrical releases from The Definitive Collection. I am including all chapter stops and encoding and authoring all special edtion content to a separate features disc for each movie.

Now I am not trying to discourage you. If you are looking for the experience and fun of doing this, then I would look at your problem from the point of your ati card. The huffyuv codec is more than capable of doing this, so my thoughts are it lies within your card. That being said, realise that you are in a way taking a step back by putting the VHS tapes to VCD, especially the SE trilogy which will most likely be out on DVD within the next two or three years.

[spiderman2k1]

you need a sima copy master for 50 buck to fix the problem you can buy one at best buy

[thxkid]

You need something with TBC (time base correction) VHS has terrible time codes mine only copy perfect when I run it through and record it on my Panasonic DMR-E20 DVD recorder, it had a full field TBC built in and good VHS actually is cleaner looking than the original VHS, plus thats how I got all my Laser discs over to DVD, Star Wars Triology SE, Disneys Song of the South, Lion King, Aladdin, etc......., tried even to capture the laser discs, the panasonic does a whole lot better job, unless you can put a stand a lone TBC between your captures.

[Kneller]

OK digesting your kind suggestion, TBC, why am I doing this etc. I'll report back at the weekend.

Thanks again for your time people!

[Marco33]

Why are you doing this.

Cause you, like everone else on the planet would like the SW Original trilogy on DVD. I find the SE versions disturbing.

(cooo shhh)

George Lucas

(cooo shhh)

You Rebel skum.

[txpharoah]

The SIMA device may not help too much. It's a stripped-down TBC, not a full one by any means. The Datavideo TBC1000 is great, and priced decently. The only time I get jitters is from PAL tapes output from a Samsung Worldwide, captured NTSC from the NTSC Samsung digital output, and put onto NTSC DVD. The jitters is slight, and only noticeable if you put you face close to the tv and stare at the same object. Then again, you can do that anytime with your tv or computer monitor too, just a bit less noticeable.