VHS display on PC

[jinu]

Hi Folks,
I am trying to capture the contents of a VHS tape to VCD. For this I am using VirtualDub to first capture the VHS tape into AVI format. But I am facing a problem. For some specific segments in the VHS tape the Display on the PC monitor gets jerky and starts flickering. This gets reflected in the captured file. To ensure the tape was not at fault I connected the VCR to the TV and found that the display was perfect. I tried switching off the display while capturing, but still the same problem in the captured file.

This problem always happens for the same segments and I just cant figure out as to why on my PC the display goes for a toss whereas on the TV it is fine.

I am using an ATI AIW 128 capture card with 32MB Ram. My machine is a P4-with 256MB RAM and 80GB HDD.

Can anybody suggest something to help.
Regards
JInu

[medievil]

It's called Macrovision. Vidoe tapes (Commercial ones that is) almost always contain it. It basically overloads the auto gian control to the point that it lowers the video level. When the level hits a too low point, you lose sync and the pictures starts jumping/rolling. There is no way to solve thins with out an external hardware solution, or a different capture card that pays no attention to macrovision.

[jinu]

Thanks medievil. I did some scouting about for more info on macrovision and have found two tweaks (For ATI AIW capture cards) to ignore macrovision info. One is called 'Soft-Cinemaster 98 + ATI DLL trick' and the other is 'Rage 128 Tweaker' program. Has anybody used any of this and if so with what results.

Medievil, you mentioned that there are capture cards that solve this problem, can you name some. Does PCTV Plus from Pinnacle solve this issue ?

[neomaine]

The hardware solutoin to your problem is a Sima CopyMaster. It 'filters' the video to 'improve' the picture... 8) You can pick one up for US$25-$35 at a Best Buy, Circuit city......

[jinu]

I have tried out both the software tweaking solutions and found that the ATI Tweaker program is meant for Macrovision elimination in the DVD Player and not the Capture program. As far as Cinemaster goes I could not get their files and hence could not try. But I think even that is limited to DVD only. So I guess I have to go the hardware way. Does anybody know of capture cards that have this inbuit. I was reading the comments of PCTV card on this site and found that it ignores the macrovision signals. But has anybody tried a full fledged capture with this card ??