Capturing from VHS

[bobm67]

I have an ATI AIW 7500 64DDR on an Athlon 2000 512mb system with XP Pro and MMC 7.6

I have an old VHS tape that is not the best quality. When I view it on the VCR it is a little faded (not bad) but it is very watchable. When I try to capture it, the top of the screen is a wave of the top of the video. In other words the video at the top is screwed up and shifted like a wave.

Is there anyway I can capture this video in the quality that I see it on the VCR?

Any help would be appreciated. If you need more info please let me know. This is very important to me.

Thanks

[csaag]

Well I've been doing the same thing - archiving old camcorder tapes to SVCD. Unfortunately I've found analog VHS is about the worst source you can have. Mine were in better shape than what you described but I still can;t get the resultant SCD to look as good as the VHS tape - at least in scenes with hgh motion. Little or no motion scenes look pretty good.
I had to apply some filters in VDub & Tmpg to help the picture (ones like temporal smoother & 2d cleaner. Setting the Sharpen filter in Tmpg to large negative values helped also)
I also had wavy lines at the bottom of my captured video. I ended up using the crop feature in Tmpg to cut out the bottom 8 rows of pixels.
8 rows isn't much out of 480. I don't know how much of your video is messed up. If it isn't much then just crop it out.
It really is a question of the source - I just copied Star Wars AOTC with DVD2SVCD and I'm amazed at the resultant quality. Worst comes to worst and you may have to take it to a video place that has professional equipment if it's really that important.

[oldfart13]

"Flagging" at the top of the screeen means sync errors on the tape. This may be able to be cleared up with a Time Base Corrector. Cheapest of those I've seen go for about $300US. If it's too much, take it to a pro conversion place and get it put onto DVD...

[bobm67]

even if it plays fine on the tv?

[xed]

Sadly, yes. Almost all VHS videotapes contain sync errors due to
degradation of the videotape, fading of the magnetic information on
the tape, thermal winter/symmer shrink/stretch cycles, etc.
The fact that your VHS tape plays back fine on your VCr doesn't
mean it has no sync errors. It simply means your VHS videotape has
sync errors that your VCR and TV are able to compensate for..
Alas, digital video capture devices are not so forgiving. A TBC
is mandatory for capture from videotape.
...And isn't it amazing that after all these years of technological
advance, TBCs still cost $2,000?
Back in 1989 a digital TBC cost two grand. Today, it still costs
two grand. Are we supposed to believe there has been no technological
advacement in video for the last 14 years?
Somebody needs to mfr a cheap $50 TBC pronto. They'll make a fortune.

[brum_57]

I use a cheap £50 "Video copy box" it isn't a tbc but it strips out macrovision and stabilises the video signal. it worked wonders on my old Dr Who videos!

Brum.

[Sonic21]

brum_57
I have been thinking of giving a DATAVIDEO VP-260 Video Copy Maker a try and seeing if that will correct things.
This sounds similar to what you have got? How well does it work?

At about £50 its cheaper than a TBC!