VHS to DVD brightness issue

[Dawgsfan]

I'm digitizing some old VHS tapes on a tight budget. These are off-air recordings I made years ago. I'm using a Toshiba SD-V280 for playback and connecting it via red/white/yellow RCA cables to a Cinevision RV4000 VCR/DVD recorder combo unit for recording. I've been very pleasantly surprised with the results, except for one recurrent problem...

During playback on the Toshiba, once in a while the brightness will drop out then return. I've attached a brief sample, heavily compressed to upload here. This has happened with a few tapes. When I play them back in the Cinevision's built-in VHS player, there's no brightness dropout. (I don't like to do a direct VHS to DVD dub on the Cinevision because the VCR portion has inferior sound and picture quality, but the DVD recordings through the line-in are great).

Could this be as simple as needing new RCA cables? Unfortunately, the Cinevision doesn't have an S-Video in, so that's not an option.

The dropout happens at the 5 second mark.

Thanks.

[timtape]

Yes the drop in brightness occurs at frame 326. I'm not sure which is the better capture, before or after frame 326. The earlier capture blows out on the player's white uniform while the later may verge on losing some shadow detail. But that's not your question.

I would definitely check or swap the RCA leads, making sure that each plug is fitted all the way onto the VCR and recorder's sockets. While watching the picture, gently wiggle the cable and plug. It can sometimes expose a bad connection.

Sometimes the sockets and plugs become tarnished and require a little cleaning or polishing to make for good electrical contact.

[Dawgsfan]

Thanks! Appreciate the feedback. Will buy some new RCA cables.