All VHS transfer has purple tint

[fishpond]

Hello everyone,

I’ve been transfering VHS tapes to my computer, and I’ve got a problem were the output's upper half has a purple/green tint instead of the intended color.


[Attachment 62674 - Click to enlarge]

I’ve tested a bunch of things to isolate the problem:

• Not present on camcoder screen (8mm tape).
• Not present on VCR to TV (VHS tape).
• Is present on 2 different PCs, with 2 different captures cards (HDMI upscaler/RGB), on all OBS/VLC/VirtualDub

You’d say there’s something wrong in the conversion to PC - however, it only happens to home movies. I’ve digitalized other tapes (all VHS recordings off TV) just fine with this setup. I’ve only been able to fix it sometimes, by stopping the tape and rewinding to the beginning, or sometimes it fixes itself after a lot of playback - but whenever either of these happen, it comes back after a dozen minutes of playback or so.

I really don't understand what's wrong.

[dellsam34]

If you use a camcorder or a VCR with S-Video this problem is less likely to be seen.

[fishpond]

Interesting. Sadly my VCR doesn't have S-Video, even though it's a semi-professional unit. What is going on, though? Why does this happen?

[dellsam34]

The chroma separation is very poor on most of those cheap capture cards and HDMI adapters from composite, Either have a good capture device or a good player via S-Video that have the chroma and luma already separated, Having both a good player and capture card is ideal.

[fishpond]

Bingo! That makes so much sense, at least I'm relieved to know what the issue is. Thanks.