Random green frames during capture

[bigjimintn]

I have just recently started capturing and editing video for eventual DVD-R use. My first effort used a Digital-8 camcorder with firewire and that worked just fine. Now I have moved on to capturing S-VHS using my analog capture card. (I would use the camcorder but it does not have inputs.)

My problem is that the incoming video is randomly interspersed with green frames. Sometimes there will be several seconds with no bad frames and then there will be several per second. The green frames are only half as wide, the left side, but they appear to have the entire frame's contents just reduced width.

I have tried several different videotapes to rule that out as the source of the problem, but it happens in all of them to some degree. (My VCR is an older Mistubishi S-VHS model.) It also happens when capturing from my Sony Hi-8 camcorder in analog mode, but it does not happen if I connect the analog output of my DVD player to the capture card. This tells me that the capture card is fine, it just doesn't want to work with videotape.

My capture card is an Nvidia Personal Cinema card by EVGA with the Geforce4 processor.

I have also tried routing the signal through my Sima SCC color corrector, which I used to use to tape DVD's but that had no noticable effect. I also tried the composite video signal vs. the S-VHS line, but that also had no impact.

I know the capture card can do an excellent job of capturing video. Does anyone have any suggestions to make it play nice with videotape?

[bigjimintn]

OK, I have continued to research this issue (I've read about half of the LordSmurf.com website) and I think I might be onto something. Lord Smurf makes a big deal about the quality of the source material and VCR. Somewhere I even heard mention about commercial tapes vs. home-recorded. Based on this I tried one of the few commercial tapes I own and...no green! Apparently this problem only occurs with tapes tapes I have recorded, which unfortunately is the stuff I wanna transfer.

I've also read much discussion about TBC and I have to wonder if that is the root of my problem. Using a TBC has been described as removing "jitter" from the images, and jitter (on steroids) would be a good way to describe my problem. Are the green frames I've described above cinsistent with time base problems?

The cheapest solution I've found, if TBC is my problem, is one of the JVC VCR's suggested by Lord Smurf that have a built-in TBC, but I am afraid that this would not address my Hi-8 camcorder issues. Does anyone know if the TBC would process the signal from the camcorder if I passed it through the JVC VCR, without recording it?

The next cheapest solution appears to be the Datavideo TBC-100, which would address both my VHS and Hi-8 needs. My only concern with the TBC-100 is that there are no audio jacks. Is there any delay introduced in the TBC process that might be noticable in the A/V sync department? I doubt that a single frame or two would be noticable, but I do want to avoid the hassles of re-syncing the audio if it can be avoided.

Would the TBC-1000 be a better choice? It includes audio jacks, and I assume that it would keep the audio in sync if there is any delay in the video.

Finally, can anyone confirm that I am on the right track? Also, if anyone has less expensive solutions, I am open to suggestions. I don't really want to spend several hundred dollars, this is not a really longterm thing for me, I just wanna transfer some irreplacable family videos and the like.