Not a full frame capture problems.

[fwbaumann]

I have some very old videos that were converted to mini dv tape. When I capture the mini dv tapes to Pinnacle, Premiere or Ulead via firewire there is not a full picture. There is a blank line or space on the left. (About 5% of the picture.) The image is intact, but there is doesn't fill the frame. When I play the tape back on the DV camera there is no space. Nor is there space with a s-vhs output to a TV. The original video was captured with an old vidicon camera with low resolution. Anybody got any ideas on what is going on and how can this be corrected?

[FulciLives]

This is called TV OVERSCAN.

Just about all TELEVISIONS have TV OVERSCAN which means you never see the extreme edges of the picture (on all four sides).

However, on your computer monitor, you see the entire image.

So that blank spot is there all the time ... you just cannot see it on your television.

This is normal.

If you want us to see it then the best way would be to load the AVI into VirtualDub and do a copy and paste to the clipboard, then copy it into an image editing program and then save a high quality JPEG (up to 100k which I thnk is the limit of posting a pic here) and then post it here.

That way we can tell you if it is more than normal or not.

But black on the sides is common with most forms of video.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[fwbaumann]

The blank space is just on the left side. Tapes taken with the camera do not have this extensive a blank spot (about 5 to 10%) on the editor. This seems to be a little more than overscan. I had the VHS tape converted by professionals as the level was too low for me to do it even on a S-Video deck. The old VSH tapes were from 1981 and the place did a good job, except for the blank space associated with the editor. Just darn I don't know what the problem is. I could crop or zoom but I don't want to loose quality. I could capture with S-video, but then there would be recompression problems. I'm between the rock and the hardplace.

[FulciLives]

Well when you go to do the final MPEG-2 DVD encode (assuming that is your goal) then crop the black on the left, center the image, and add equal amount of black on either side.

This way the black, with TV OVERSCAN, should not be noticeable on a television since you are putting half on one side and half on the other.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman