white, flickering weirdness in VHS playback

[briansmccabe]

Hello -

I am playing VHS through the composite input on an ATI AIW 9800 Pro, using Multimedia Center v9. It captures to DVD-compliant MPEG-2 with zero dropped frames. Everything is working fabulously, with one major problem.

On any tape (old or brand new), VHS playback has a flickering whiteness in the upper 10% or so of the screen.

A few points of interest to help narrow down the problem:

-This occurs with two different VCRs hooked into the capture card at separate times
-Both VCRs have played back the same cassettes while hooked up to a regular television with no problems of any kind
-Capturing a snippet of the tape and playing it back on the monitor reveals the flickering whiteness
-Burning said capture to DVD+R and playing it in a set-top player hooked into regular television, it still has the problem
-Capturing television being piped directly into the coax input on the ATI card works perfectly

As near as I can gather, this eliminates cassette tracking as an issue (if tracking was a problem, I'd see the same jitteriness on the television). It's not the source material, as it plays just fine - in the same VCRs, no less - while through a tv. For the same reasons, it is not either of the VCRs (although it may be notable that both VCRs are JVC). I doubt it is the card's ability to display a decent image, since TV comes through very crisp and good. The tapes do this during playback through the PC even while capturing is not occuring, so it's not the card's ability to capture (plus the card captures live TV just fine).

This seems to narrow it down to the signal as it is transmitted through the (high-quality) RCA cables, and into the composite connector (a purple adaptor that takes in either an SVHS cable, or the red/white/yellow RCA cables - I'm using the red/white/yellows), and on into the card itself. Either the main RCA cables which I bought today are junk, or the Composite connector is junk - or the card simply does not "interpret" VHS very well at all, whatever that means.

Any suggestions?? I am almost at my wit's end with this ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro. If I cannot capture VHS, the card is 100% useless to me.

[thecoalman]

Another victim, look here http://nepadigital.com/mv . Only solution that I have heard that has worked is a TBC. Run you about $300 or more.

There's numerous posts on this board about this issue, do a search. Probably gonna be alot more now that the 9800 has come down in price.