trying to capture atari video that my canon thinks is junk...

[zimcricket]

hi everyone- maybe this is an odd problem?

i've made some art with an atari 2600 and now i can't get my canon zr100 to digitize it.

i'm going through a vcr and i can see the images on tv (various color patterns randomly generated by the atari) but the canon thinks its white noise! the canon manual states that it might not work on poor signals such as ones with ghosting. i just get the blue screen.

other images are coming through fine- a movie on tape, the visuals to "combat" game...

any ideas? will a better stand- alone av/dv conversion box work?

thanks,

chris

[ßsimian]

will it record if you hook the atari directly to the canon?

[thecoalman]

If you are just trying to get captures for something like a website try an atari 2600 emulator and do a screen capture with camstudio

[2Bdecided]

The video outputs of many games consoles and older home computers are non-standard.

They're close enough for a TV to sync up and display them, but they are not the perfect "PAL" or "NTSC" required by most digital capture devices.

Often, they dispense with interlace, and consist of a stream of 262-line (or 312-line) fields - rather than 262.5 and 312.5 lines per field, which would give the standard 525-line and 625-line interlaced frames of "NTSC" and "PAL" respectively.

Cheers,
David.

[zimcricket]

thanks everyone for the ideas-

i've uploaded a photo of the tv to illustrate further.

to bsimian:not sure how to get the coax to the 1/8 " to try...

to thecoalman:thanks, but i'm generating images with a broken game cartridge, i don't think i could get the software to "misbehave" the same way.

2Bdecided: so when i record the images on a vcr tape, they show up on the tv...but then not by the canon... but the games themselves are being seen by the canon...

i know i've seen some posts about the interlace frames but i'm not even sure what to search- do you think there is a solution?

thanks again- so much! after wrestling with this for 8 hrs alone i'm really happy to have input!

chris

[grossjamesh]

There is one solution.

Find a TV with a monitor output
Feed the Atari signal into the TV then take the monitor output to the capture system.
The non-standard out put of tese early systems was always problem when it came to recording the image.

[ßsimian]

wow forgot how old the 2600 is. i thought it was like the atari 400/800 and commodore64 with separate chroma, luma and audio with rca plugs.

have you tried filming the tv screen with the cam? it's not exactly HD anyway.

[zimcricket]

hey y'all!


thanks alot- please forgive my ignorance- i'm just a musician.


when i have tried to film it looks bad. it was hard to get that image without dark horizontal lines...

so by monitor out- you mean rgb, right?

so i'll need a converter that accepts rgb, right?

right now all i have is the canon zr100 camcorder that takes a long 1/8" tri-plug that splits off to 3 rca's...

any other way to get the rgb back to the rca- like can i go into a dvd/r or vcr then line out? or does it really need to be rgb to converter to computer?

a million thanks!
chris

[2Bdecided]

2Bdecided: so when i record the images on a vcr tape, they show up on the tv...but then not by the canon... but the games themselves are being seen by the canon...

What do you mean? Atari>Canon works, but Atari>VCR>Canon doesn't? Then the answer is obvious!

Or do you mean that normal Atari games work, but your artwork/images don't? If the latter, then the Canon is "just about" working with normal games, but your artwork looks so much like video sync signals that it's confusing it. Or else it's just triggering a different video mode.


I don't think looping it into a TV with an output is going to help - the output will still be non-standard (if the input it).

A TBC might help, but it might make things even worse!

The easiest thing to do is to try a different capture card or digital recorder.

Cheers,
David.

[zimcricket]

thanks alot,david-
yes you got it-
the games work- the art does not.

i'll make plans to try a dvdr first and then rent some time at my local community video production school.

thanks so much!
and cheers to you,
chris

[zimcricket]

thanks all!

success! cheap samsung dvdr is recording the art patterns!

fcp is rendering them now!

the only weird thing is the dvdr thinks its getting a macrovision signal every now and then and shuts down the recording- but not really a problem cause its all there when i
finalize..

so thanks again- i'm very pleased

chris