video flickering in capture (please help!)

[briansmccabe]

hello -

I have been hired by a friend of the family to convert a large collection of VHS tapes to DVD. After capturing roughly four hours of material, I have found a recurring problem with the video.

The best way to communicate what goes wrong is for you to view a "demo" of this problem. It can be downloaded here: http://www.tgupc.com/misc/sample.zip .

Now to try and describe the problem in writing: Lets say I have a tape segment that is 15 seconds long and has two shots: shot A is of a tree, and shot B is of a car. You are viewing the tape on your monitor as it is being captured. After the shot of the tree is shown for, say, 5 seconds, it cuts to the car. During the shot of the car, you see the tree flicker over the car every few seconds, even though you are completely past the point on the tape where the tree appeared!!

That is essentially what happens in the demo video (only difference being that the shot is not a cut, but a zoom out). In other words, frames that are in the past "leap forward" in the timeline to reappear where they do not belong.

In playback on these tapes, this does not happen, so I am confident it has nothing to do with the source material.

Here are my system specs:

Pentium 4 2.40 GHz CPU
992 MB RAM
120 Gb Hard Drive (this is the drive I capture to)

Capture card:
Pinnacle AV/DV

Capture program:
Pinnacle Studio v9 (I can't find another app that will capture with this card!)

Any assistance or advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks -

Brian Mc

[yoda313]

Hello,
I haven't seen the test clip but I do have a suggetion. If it happens with every tape it could be a tracking issue. Try adjusting it to correct it. If that doesn't work try a different vcr. I've always switched vcrs if there is a constant tracking problem. Hope this helps.
Kevin
P.S. If it isn't tracking sorry for posting.

[yoda313]

Hello,
Ignore my post. I just reread yours and saw your source is ok. Good luck.
Kevin

[briansmccabe]

thanks. Any other takers? I'm sweating bullets here.

[DVD_Ripper]

Although we are all quite familiar with general capture and DVD production you may want to post this question up on the Pinnacle Forum. http://www.pinnaclesys.com ... I am sure with the AV/DV card you will find someone that has encountered the same problem.

But, as a precaution, download all the latest drivers and program updates from the Pinnacle site. If that has been done, remove and reinstall the program and capture drivers. Don't forget to use their RegDelete tool to make sure all registy entries are removed before installing again.

Good luck