bottom of VHS capture is shifted/messed up

[aurgathor]

Hi,

I'm trying to convert some VHS tapes to mpegs, but I'm having several problems with the most irritating being a few lines at the bottom of the screen that's shifted right by about 1/4 screen length and messed up in other ways, too.



My VHS player is a JVC HR-XVS44U (S-VHS + DVD), the capture card is a Hauppauge PVR-350, and I'm using the SW that comes with the card.

Is there any way to get rid of this artifact? Since this doesn't show up on DVD captures, I assume it's a problem with the VCR, but instead of replacing my VCR, I'd rather use some SW to trim the frames.

TIA

[equinox137]

That is video noise. It's common with VHS tapes and there's nothing you can do about except for either crop it out or stretch the picture. You will notice if you cap TV that you will also see either video noise or a black space about the same size. That's what overscan on TVs are for.

[lacywest]

This is as common as the birds flying outside on a nice day. It's a good way to tell where some videos come from. Is it DVD Rip or VHS capture ?? Those little funky lines at the bottom are a dead give away ... it's VHS capture.

[aurgathor]

OK, it's good the hear that it's inherent to the technology, and not a problem with my VCR.

So here is a couple more questions (I'm a newbie, so bear with me )
a) what software can I use to crop the frames? alas, my card only outputs mpeg, but I'm looking into buying something better with avi output since the PVR-350's built in encoder leaves a lot to be desired.
b) is there a capture card that would allow capture with a little higher resolution (i.e. 730 x 490, but preferably any user specified resolution within a reasonable range) so 10 lines from the bottom and 5 rows from both sides could be trimmed, so the endresult would be a 720x480 frame with nice edges instead of video noise?

TIA

[SatStorm]

You capture direct to mpeg 2, so there is no way to eliminate those lines with software during the proccess of capturing.
The only way is to re-encode your files and crop those lines that time. This is a bad idea, 'cause mpeg 2 isn't a good source for re-encoding. And also, encoding take time...

The other way, is to capture your VHS tapes to avi (I don't know if this is possible with your PVR card...), post proccess your source (crop, filter, resize, etc) and encode to mpeg 2. But this also take time (much time...)

In short terms, when you grabb direct mpeg 2 from VHS/ SVHS, you have to deal and live with those lines. It is the price you have to pay for choosing the fast way (direct mpeg 2 capture). Afterall, you won't see those lines on TV, after burn your mpegs to DVD / SVCD

Just for the info, most people (including me) choose to grab to avi from VHS. Real time mpeg 2 capture is good only for TV transmissions (IMHO of course).

[aurgathor]

The PVR-350 cannot do avi. (I realized this after the 30 days RMA period was up ) The time needed for encoding is not an issue as I can leave up my computer as long as it needed. Since the resulting mpegs will usually be played back on computers, I want them to be as good as possible.

TIA

[lordsmurf]

Overscan, leave it alone. Tv won't care.

[tatty]

Same problem with my tapes.

One solution may be - Buy the cheapest capture card you can find that has the BT8x8 chipset. Bin the software that comes with it and download a set of decent btwin capture drivers. Capture with VirtualDub - code with TMPGEnc. The coding setup gives you the chance to trim, crop and generally fiddle to your hearts content.

Be aware that AVI files are BIG, and TMPG encoding takes a while but if you have the space and the time, the results are as good as it gets.

[Werble]

Question about the PVR-350...isn't it possible to use software such as virtual vcr or virtualdub to record in avi using the composite ports that come on the PVR"s dongle? That way you can use any avi codec you wish and bypassing the mpeg2 encoding from the pvr-350. Just a thought since i don't own the PVR-350. Would it be possible? Then from there use another prog to crop out the artifacts of vhs capture before encoding to mpeg2.

[aurgathor]

Ok, to answer the last 3 posts:
a) no, I can't leave it alone since computers will show it
b) with 250Gig HDs selling for $150 or so (after rebate) space is not an issue; time -- I can leave it on overnight if needed; I just need to find out which are the appropriate capture cards
c) I'm not sure if I understand you -- in any case, the output on the 350 is comes from a HW decoder chip... According to tech support and also their website http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm#pvr the PVR-350 can't do raw avi.

[lacywest]

Unless something has changed an ATI AIW card can crop the edges out while capturing ... ATI MMC 8.9 ... and some of the other previous versions.

I've used ATI AIW 7500 to do this ... but that is with the ATI card and you have the ... ???? .... PVR-350

I just thought I'd mention this.

[xtreemkareem]

I'm guessing the Hauppage uses WDM drivers so downlaod VirtualVCR (free). Doesn't have half the capturing problems as virtual dub which is best suited for VFW drivers. Capture using PicVideo MJPEG or Huffyuv ( I frefer MJPEG, it's easier on my slow 5400 rpm hard drive and let me cap in full resolution NTSC w/ almost zero dropped frames. Also mush easier to load into TMPGenc). Do your cropping and encoding in MPEG. I personally add black borders to all sides in TMPGenc to compensate for overscan on TV, and also the image quality looks better in PC b/c as opposed to moving video, the black bars require only very little data and that other data can be better allocated to the rest of your video.

[SatStorm]

It seems that the specific card doesn't allow avi capture.

https://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCard=Hauppauge+PVR-350&Submit=Search&s...&Search=Search