"Noise" at top & bottom of frame with Panasoni

[johnsees]

I've been copying my VHS movies to DVD with a Panasonic E55, and they look great on my TV. But tonight, I tried some of them on my computer, and they all have garbage at the top and bottom of the screen!

At the top, it's a slightly off-color thin area all the way across. At the bottom it depends on how I copied the movie:
If I hooked the VCR directly to the E55, there's a thin straight horizontal line slightly above the bottom of the screen. If I used the Sima GoDVD to make the copy, there's a line of "static" that hugs the bottom of the screen.

I used 3 different programs to play the movies, and it happens with all of them. It does NOT happen with commercially made DVD movies.

Anybody have any idea what's going on?

[redwudz]

Sure, it's normal. But it's in the overscan area of a TV, where it's not visible, so you can ignore it if you only plan to play the video on a TV. It's related to the head switching noise on a VHS recorder. Out of sight, out of mind.

EDIT: If it really bothers you, you can crop it. Commercial videos don't have it because they don't copy them from VHS. If they did, they would crop it. You can crop it also, but be careful not to change the aspect ratio. Best just to ignore it unless you want to play the video only on a computer which shows the overscan area that a TV masks.

[johnsees]

Oh, thanks, I'm glad to know my recorder's not screwed up!

How would I crop it, if I wanted to do that?

John

[lordsmurf]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/understandsource.htm#overscan

Do NOT crop it.

[johnsees]

The question was, "How would I crop it?" not "Should I crop it?"

John

[redwudz]

There have been quite a few discussions on the VHS noise in the overscan area. You can find some by doing a all forum search for 'overscan'. Cropping or blanking are two methods to get rid of it, but you may cause other problems.

[FulciLives]

The question was, "How would I crop it?" not "Should I crop it?"

John

You can't before you record it ... at least not with your Panasonic stand alone DVD recorder.

Once it is recorded then there is no reason to crop it as that would require a re-encode and doing that makes no sense.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[johnsees]

Thanks, guys, I appreciate the info.
More trouble is definitely not something I need right now, so it's unlikely I'll try to do anything about it. But it's always good to know what can be done.

Thanks again.

John