Huge black bar right side video.

[Xtasy2002]

For some reason both of my video sources (one is a VCR, the other a digital cable box) come into my PC with HUGE black bars on the right side of the video. Some people refer to this as OVERSCAN. But it's more than that I think. Because if I record this video exactly as it is, burn it to DVD without cropping it in any way, and then play it on a stand alone TV a lot of the black bar is visible on the right of my TV screen! The black bar would NOT show up if going direct from VCR to TV btw.

Previously had a capture card that captured AVI to Huffyuv. Then I took the AVI through TMPGEnc and during the encoding process, managed to "Clip Frame" and cut off black borders on the right side of the video. This was perfect, the final MPG file when burned had no border and it fit perfectly in the stand alone TV and looked great.

NEW PROBLEM: My AVI capture card died so I decided to go with Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 card. I wanted to capture MPG in real time, and skip the entire encoding time in TMPGEnc. So far, it's working great BUT THE BLACK BAR IS BACK!!! The gigantic black line on the right of the source video is the same size on this hauppauge card as it was with my previous capture card. The problem is that the video I capture with the Hauppauge is already MPG. So I can't easily crop the black bar on the right before I burn?

Can anyone help? The goal is to basically 'stretch', or crop, or resize the video with this capture card or at least move it over to the right so the black bar isn't so big - without re-encoding it all. How?

[bottle-necked]

Move the capture card to a different PCI slot.

Sounds like a system problem to me. May be hard to find. May be something as simple as a bad power supply. I can't tell from here.

How old is your computer? When did the problem start? Is there any other problems? etc.

Good luck.

[Amaze]

is there a pci-slot that's especially good for tv-cards?

I'm asking because I've seen sound-cards should go in pci-slot 3...

[bottle-necked]

On some motherboards and with some setups 'some' PCI slots are set to share IRQ settings with onboard controllers (like IDE controllers or Raid controllers, etc) If you wer unlucky enough to pick such a slot you can have IRQ problems. That can cause what you are seeing. So can a weak/bad power supply, or a voltage problem on the board, a bad card in one of the other slots, etc etc etc. There are many things that can cause this.

You can back up to first base and start over. Remove all the cards in your system except for video. Disable onboard audio, onboard ethernet, firewire, etc if equipted. Boot up with your capture card is different slots and try to pinpoint which slot you can use. Might help

Test your power supply's voltage output.

Give this computer to someone you don't like and buy yourself a new one. (only kidding).

Run a voltage monitoring program to test the power supply.

May be the sound card. How old is it? Old cards draws lots of juice and can cause other problems.

You fried a cards by overclocking your system.

That VIA controller. (more than likely) Update or downdate the drivers.

Update or downdate the BIOS

I don't know.

Good luck.

[Xtasy2002]

There is nothing wrong with my system, at all.

I've used 2 different capture cards. The black border on the right is exactly the same size with either card. The black border is part of the signal itself, not the card or PC. If I hook up a video camera to S-Video in, the border isn't as wide (looks like normal overscan). When I hook up the VHS, the border is huge. And with the digital cable box, the border is not as big as the VHS, but still pretty large.

So the size of the border on the right changes depending on the device sending the video into the PC. The only thing I need to know is how can I capture with this card but specify to ignore X# pixels on the right side.. Or if not, how can I take a captured MPG and crop off the right side.. You see?

Maybe even if there's some kind of hardware that will go in between the source video and 'bump' it to the right before it sends to the card.

[luigi2000]

That is not overscanned. Overscanned or underscanned refers to the phase of television monitor scan retrace timing relative to the active picture portion of the video signal. Overscanned monitors will not show all the active picture. In this case scan retrace begins before the active picture portion ends, and ends after the active picture portion of the next line has begun. Underscanned monitors will show all the active picture including some of the blanking area. Consumer analog television monitors are overscanned about 5% to compensate for component tolerences of the deflection circuitry.

You're describing a video signal that has a horizontal blanking interval that is too wide. The entire period of an NTSC horizontal line is 63.5 microseconds (1/15,734 Hz). The time specified between the end of active video and the leading edge of horizontal sync (front porch) is 1.4 usec. Then the horizontal sync pulse takes 4.6 usec. Then the back porch interval takes 4.8 usec to complete the horizontal blanking interval of 10.8 usec. The time of one line of active picture is 63.5 usec - 10.8 usec = 52.7 usec. So the active picture is 83% of the total horizontal time; and 92.5% of the total vertical time (525 total lines - 39 vertical blanking lines divided by 525 total lines) or just 76.8% of the total signal time.

If all the active video is being captured, then your hardware has a video sample clock frequency that is too high. Search for a better capture device. GeForce 4 VIVO cards do a great job of capture using the Philips analog to digital converter circuitry.

Bona fortuna.

[bottle-necked]

Capturing AVI with VirtualVCR, you can set the program up to 'crop' the captured video by clicking 'Settings' 'Filters' - then add the crop video filter to the filter list. Click it then click 'Properties' then adjust the crop area. This will create a non-standard frame size. This can also be corrected by using a larger frame size in "Custom Frame Size" setting in the Video tab.

VirtualDub has this ability also. It's not hard to setup with a little practice.

TMPGEnc's 'Settings' 'Advanced' 'ClipFrame' 'then double click ClipFrame' - can cut off that area when converting to MPEG2 format. Just play around with these programs a little.

Good luck.

[yodel]

A black vertical bar could be an AC current interference, from a poor
powersupply or somewhere there's a shield wire loose of your cables ?