Help...

[abeelandig]

I have been transferring some old 8mm analogue camcorder tapes to disk using VitualDub and a Pinnacle Studio PCTV capture card.
Some tapes/scenes transfer to disk with minimal dropped frames and very good results.
Others sections of footage/tapes suffer from massive dropped frames making the captured video essentially unusable.
This is in spite of using EXACTLY the same settings in VirtualDub in all cases.
When this happens, I can take out the offending tape, put in a 'good' tape and immediately begin capturing with VirtualDub with little or no frame loss.
The footage on all the tapes is of good quality.
Does anyone know what might be causing this?
I have defragged the hard disk and shut down all unnecessary programs before capture.
Thanks in advance for any advice/help.

Compaq Despro EN PII 450 (upgraded to Intel Celeron 1.4 GHz)
Intel BX 440 AGP Chipset
768 MB RAM
Win Me
VirtualDub 1.4.13

[almostaborted]

i think you answered your own question...it's the tape

good quality footage is highly subjective on old 8mm analogue camcorder tapes

[abeelandig]

"good quality footage is highly subjective on old 8mm analogue camcorder tapes"

Not really sure what you mean by this...?

Do you know if anything be done to improve capture from the 'bad' tapes?
When I look at the footage from the 'bad' tapes, it looks high quality. There is no indication that it is corrupted in some way and will not capture properly.

[i_am_dave]

Is there a significant difference in the content between the good and bad tapes?

For example, is there a lot more motion or scene changes going on in the 'bad' tapes?

[abeelandig]

Hi,
The tapes are of similar type scenes and have a similar amount of movement as far as I can judge.
Reading through the 'sticky' at the top of this page concerning dropped frames, it looks like old vhs tapes can do this, with no easy solution to the problem.

[almostaborted]

what i was trying to say was that the video may look nice but the tape itself can still have problems

i've experienced video that looks ok but couldn't capture it cos the vhs tape was really old

[i_am_dave]

I was wondering. I know you will lose some quality, but couldn't you dub the bad tapes to another VHS tape and then attempt to capture it?
You might be able to clean it up a little afterward with VirtualDub.

It's a bummer, but at least it's better than not capturing the footage at all.

[abeelandig]

Thanks for your reply.
I guess transferring it to another tape might be worth a try.

[andkiich]

A TBC might help.