Bright, dark, bright, dark

[Stuart Lee]

Occasionally when viewing or capturing VHS video through MMC 7.1 (SCART on VCR to composite input on breakout box, good quality cable) the picture alternates between light and dark (a change in brightness of around 25%), changing every five or so seconds. This only happens on certain tapes (which look fine when played on a TV).

Any ideas?

_________________
ATI A-I-W Radeon
Pinnacle DV500Plus
Athlon 1500+
512MB DDR RAM
VIA motherboard chipset

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Stuart Lee on 2001-12-06 05:57:09 ]</font>

[Hollywood004738]

Heeeelllllloooooo copy protection

[henkjanl]

Had the same problem with my Rage Fury Pro. I thought it was a hardware problem and returned it to the store and got another one, the problem was the same with the new board. Las week I discovered there was a new driver from ATI, this solved the problem. So I think the problem is in your driver hopefully you can get a new one at the ATI website.

Henk-Jan

[henkjanl]

For sure it is no copy protection problem, I don't think my camcorder is able to generate somthing like that!!!!!!!

Henk-Jan

[Stuart Lee]

> Heeeelllllloooooo copy protection

Don't think so, mate - it's a CCTV video of a sewer! But I'll bear it in mind if I get the problem with different tapes.

[uteotw]

It is the macrovision protection.
The problem is that when you playback the captured video , it will be looping the same frames over and over. ATI's drivers are crap and wrongly triggers the Macrovision.
Do a search for Macrovision and ATI in the forum.

It happens to me all the time when I capture from my S-VHS VCR anything taped on MTV , but it doesn't if I capture directly from the cable. It also happens several times when there is a very bright picture change on Discovery or National Geo. Otherwise , other channels are OK.

MMC7.2 + newest drivers for your all-in-wonder card is meant to fix this. By "fix this" I mean it will still flicker between bright and dark but there shouldn't be anymore loops.

I've installed the latest drivers + MMC7.2 but I didn't capture any material recently that would be symptomatic of this problem.

May be MMC7.5 will resolve this completly but I doubt it.

[Stuart Lee]

Hmmm.

Thanks for the advice; I'll do a spot of reading on Macrovision, though I'm still baffled as to why it should apply to our own tapes of sewers!

Regarding MMC7.2, I'm triple-booting XP, 2000 and 98SE - XP has MMC7.2 but I was under the impression that 7.2 is XP only. Is this not the case?

In the meantime I'll try viewing it on XP to see if it makes a difference.

Thanks again - everyone - for your advice. And please keep it coming!

[uteotw]

I'm using MMC7.2 with my AIW32 on a Win2000 box without a problem.

I will do some capture of problematic tapes with MMC7.2 over the weekend and will upgrade to MMC7.5 and try again.

I'll post the results later.

[uteotw]

Well... it's still wrongly triggered here and there but a lot less than it used to , and there are no more loops when it does.

So overall, I'm sorted out with my personnal tapes.

I didn't have time to try with MMC7.5 but I believe it should still be fixed.