vhs captures and lines at bottom of screen.

[freebird1963]

Hello,
Everytime I capture one of my VHS tapes I have lines at the bottom
of the screen. (These are old commercial tapes that I am backing up to DVD).
I have used couple different vcr's and capture devices (a dvd xpress and canopus advc -55). No video switches or any other devices in between either.
When I burn them to dvd they are still there when watching on the TV.
I thought it might have just been the monitor not displaying properly.
Playing with the tracking of the vcr's does not eliminate them either.
I guess they are noise lines ?? Why would they be there if not there when just playing the tapes but only capturing ?
Am I missing a setting in the capture programs ? WinDV when I use the canopus and Cap Wiz (the program that came with the dvd xpress) ?
I got a vidcraft detailer II and that did not help eliminate the lines either.
NTSC also. No Pal.

thanks
mark

[FulciLives]

There will ALWAYS be noise at the bottom of videotape captures. It is there when you play back the tape but televisions have OVERSCAN meaning the "extreme" edges of the picture (all four sides) are not seen ... usually by 5% sometimes up to 10% of the image is gone.

However a computer monitor does not have OVERSCAN so you get to see the entire image.

If you capture then re-encode you can always cut the last 8 - 12 lines at the bottom then replace it with pure black. It really is not needed but makes MPEG-2 encoding a bit easier. That noise sucks up bitrate.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[lordsmurf]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/understandsource.htm#overscan

[freebird1963]

Thanks for the info. I think I read the overscan portion of the link before. Sounds fimiliar.

FROM LINK:
//quote from link on overscan:
A tv set only show about inside 93 percent of the available image. The rest is hidden behind the box surrounding
the tube. This is called overscanning. Broadcasters and others in video know full well that this happens, so rest
assured that you are not missing much. In fact, the overscan area often contains little more than black bars or
video errors, and should be seen as a courtesy moreso than a hindrance. Recorded formats (VHS, S-VHS, etc)
suffer the most, in terms of overscan noise. Broadcast formats often have black bars in the overscan. Most
satellite streams have noise in the upper overscan, visual residue from non-video parts of the data stream.
You never see this portion of the image on a tv set, however computers have no such mechanism. So, sadly,
many people feel they must "crop" or "mask" out the noise.
//end of overscan link quote

However the lines are there on the TV. They are there weather I play them on the 55" TV or thru the infocus projector. They are there in 4:3 or 16:9. There are not hidden below and out of site.
The one thing I haven't done is tried a smaller tv.

[gadgetguy]

Perhaps you should post a screenshot since it now doesn't sound like normal overscan.

[lordsmurf]

Sounds like your equipment is showing you the overscan. Projectors can. As will some larger TVs. Better ones have filters to cover/mask it.

[freebird1963]

I am going to try a smaller 27 in TV and see If i see them.
Maybe the lasik surgey I had gave me super duper overscan sight
Thanks.

[jimmalenko]

If your TV is LCD then it's probable that you're seeing the whole picture - you certainly would on your projector for this exact same reason.


Try a CRT TV and I'm confident you'll experience overscan.


Either way, all you need to do is mask them with black. Your encoder should be able to do this for you. AVISynth can as well.

[SatStorm]

I always crop those lines when I encode with TMPGenc. I use "Full Screen:Keep aspect ratio 2" to avoid issues like resizing

[cooel]

These lines at the bottom of the screen are the head switching point on a helical scan VCR. If the VCR is set up correctly the lines should be no more than 6 lines up from the bottom. There are two video heads in a video and the lines are where one head takes over from the other. The better made the video machine, the narrower the lines are.