analog video capture - artefacts, poor video quality, lost connections

[kaeffchen_heinz]

Hi guys,


I recently started capturing old family home videos on Video 8 with the quite common setup of an AV2HDMI upscaler, an Elgato HD Capture Card and a Sony Camcorder.

After capturing the first minutes of tape, I started to notice a lot of artefacts, broken frames, wrong blanking interval and connection loss between the Camcorder and the upscaler.
It pretty much happened on all tapes with the exception of a few short clips.

Because I got a bit insane on eBay, I had the possibility to try a few different Camcorders and found out, that the tapes are playing fine in the viewfinder.

I also used other RCA-cables with no difference.

At last I tested the upscaler with an old game console, finding out that it works just fine.

Can it be a problem with the composite video out on Sony Camcorders and the tracking of the upscaler? He sees correctly, that it's PAL Video.


Maybe someone of you had a similar problem and has a solution.

Tl;dr: All the components work just fine on their own, but not together.

[jagabo]

The upscaler is losing sync with the poor time base of the V8 tapes/player. One possible solution is to pass the composite signal through an old DVD recorder with a line TBC.

[dellsam34]

Hi guys,


I recently started capturing old family home videos on Video 8 with the quite common setup of an AV2HDMI upscaler, an Elgato HD Capture Card and a Sony Camcorder.

After capturing the first minutes of tape, I started to notice a lot of artefacts, broken frames, wrong blanking interval and connection loss between the Camcorder and the upscaler.
It pretty much happened on all tapes with the exception of a few short clips.

Because I got a bit insane on eBay, I had the possibility to try a few different Camcorders and found out, that the tapes are playing fine in the viewfinder.

I also used other RCA-cables with no difference.

At last I tested the upscaler with an old game console, finding out that it works just fine.

Can it be a problem with the composite video out on Sony Camcorders and the tracking of the upscaler? He sees correctly, that it's PAL Video.


Maybe someone of you had a similar problem and has a solution.

Tl;dr: All the components work just fine on their own, but not together.

That's a very wrong way of capturing analog video, You need a camcorder with line TBC and S-Video out (not the crappy yellow composite out), a decent USB capture device, a PC capture software that is not bundled with the capture device and not a screen capture type of software.

When you are capturing HDMI you capturing whatever the HDMI adapter think the picture look like with all garbled scan lines and timing errors with nasty de-interlacing artifacts, When you are capturing with a USB/PCI capture device you are capturing the actual scan lines recorded on tape and you take control of timing those lines and producing a stable image.

[kaeffchen_heinz]

Thank you very much for the help.
I had a quick search through my video junk and haven’t found a dvd recorder or any kind of device with an S-video input.

Before I start my next search on eBay, what am I exactly looking for?
Do I need a dvd recorder, because it has s-video in, TBC and hdmi out or are there also other reasons?

And can you recommend any cheapish devices I should search for?
I’m not looking for highest quality, I just want to digitize old tapes and edit a few scenes together.

[dellsam34]

How about a capture device with S-Video input, There are a lot of threads asking about what capture device to get just look through them, If it's too much for you just get a DVD recorder and record your tapes onto DVD-R's.
Cheaper is what got you here in the first place, why are you still looking for cheap chinese junk?

[jagabo]

what am I exactly looking for?
Do I need a dvd recorder, because it has s-video in, TBC and hdmi out or are there also other reasons?

Does your Hi8 device have s-video out? If so, you definitely want to use it. But the DVD recorder is for its line TBC and frame sync function. It will probably clean the sync enough to keep your upscaler happy. (Though, as others have pointed out, upscaling is of dubious value.) Even if you decide not to upscale the cleaner syncl will keep your capture device from screwing up (another common problem).

And can you recommend any cheapish devices I should search for?

The old Panasonic ES10 and ES15 were very good for this (I don't now if the EU equivalents have the same model numbers). Some of their later models have the features too. But from what I've read they were less effective.

[kaeffchen_heinz]

It took me a while to find a DVR on eBay, but I finally found a Panasonic ES10. And the first results are still pretty bad. The best results I got, were with S-Video in and SCART out.
But still the TBC didn't do a good job. Compared to the old capturing technique, I don't see a big difference, except in color. (video examples)
The video is very shaky and it seems to be no problem on the tape side, because the data burn-in is all over the place as well. Except when the video is stopped.
Is there a hidden setting in the ES10 I haven't seen jet?

[jagabo]

In my experience, if a TV can display the picture normally the ES10/15 can also clean the signal well enough for decent video capture. I haven't tested it myself but I believe only some of the inputs on the ES10/15 apply the line TBC. I always used the rear inputs on my ES15, never the front panel inputs.

[oln]

It looks like there is a tape alignment problem, either on the playback camcorder, or on the camcorder when the tape was being recorded.