Will a TBC fix this? (see pics)

[overloaded_ide]

My 1 1/2 cents
All the vcr's you have tested in do have nice clean heads right ?
You cleaned the E-bay machine too!

I know that's not gonna be the problem here, but it might help if you haven't cleaned for awhile! My nearly new Batman tape had a few images like that tonight. Heck I couldn't even get it to play at all really. Ran a wet head cleaner with Denatured alcohol through it about 3- 4 times and playing perfectly now!
I just converted some fairly old un-cared for tapes. about 5 plays was all it took to dirty mine out! After cleaning plays good as new again.

Sometimes it can be those little things we over look that make the biggest difference

[johns0]

To properly clean video heads open the machine lift off the cover and have a q-tip with 100% isopropanol and put the q-tip to the video drum and place it in the middle where you see the gap,then rotate the video head clockwise while pressing firmly but not to the point of breaking the heads,they are very brittle and small.Do this without having the cotton tear off and do not place a tape in right after or you will see the kiss of death with that tape as it grabs the head drum and spins tons of tape around the heads.As to the tracking noise it might be very hard to get rid of,the best way is to manually track as the tape plays,older panasonics are good for this.

[indolikaa]

Alcohol?!

You mean Clorox bleach won't work?!

[Theophilus]

So I'm resurrecting this thread after two years of compounded frustration. My revised question is:

Will an external tbc prevent my DAC-100 from dropping frames? I have accepted that the distortion in the picture is not going away. I want to be able to capture each frame, no matter how bad. Will an external tbc allow me to do this?

[davideck]

In general, as long as the PC can keep up, an external TBC will eliminate dropped frames. However, it's hard to predict how any TBC will react to the sync disturbances in your images; it might actually make things worse.

[Theophilus]

So I finally got a Datavideo TBC-1000, and it fixed the problem. I have no dropped frames at all now even on the ugliest of frames. I actually have confidence now to start a capture and walk away. The DAC-100 captures everything. I highly recommend getting a TBC.