VHS capture card problems

[Dark Shade]

Hi all.

I'm going through an infuriating experience with capturing VHS home videos. I'm capturing from a Sony SLV-N700 VCR to a Datavideo DAC-100 external analog->digital unit over firewire
(VCR RCA out --> DAC-100 RCA in --> firewire out --> PC --> Virtualdub)
And while I totally expect the video quality to be subpar (these are 20-30 year old video tapes, possibly more recent copies of aforementioned old video tapes), I'm running into issues that are really driving me to drinking. I've calibrated Virtualdub to known good VCR capturing settings in terms of syncing, etc.

I often experience vertical hold problems (where the top of the frame shows up on the bottom and pushes itself up), stopping playback and playing again works about 50% of the time. 25% of the time it makes all audio "scratchy" like talking into a fan though a kazoo, the other 25% causes frame jitter, as described below.

Frame jitter pisses me off to no end. This is not 'dropped frames' (PC capturing these videos is the i7 machine in my signature). Frame jitter is where you will see a few motion frames and it will 'freeze' on a frame, then the next frame is several frames afterwards. It's like the strobe light effect. Rewinding the tape before the jitter and replaying works about 50% of the time. 25% of the time I have to completely shut down the VCR, eject the tape, reinsert the tape, turn the VCR back on, and hit play. The other 25% I have to power cycle the DAC-100. I can spend 10-20 minutes capturing a 30 second scene because of frame jitter.

I have about 10 home video tapes, one was a 6 hour long SLP/EP that took me all day to process, yet I had another tape that I literally pressed play, hit F5 to capture and 4 hours later I had a 60GB .avi ready for me WITH NO FRAME JITTER, VERTICAL HOLD PROBLEMS OR AUDIO ISSUES AT ALL.

What the everloving hell is going on here? I've hooked up the VCR to my TV and it plays smoothly. Hook it up to the PC and I might as well give up my day job in terms of hours needed to capture this footage. Of course the TV does not have TV-out so I can capture from the TV stream instead of directly from the VCR. Is this DAC-100 an old POS, do I need a new capture card, or am I just going to have to be submitted to an insane asylum?

Do I need a new capture card? Do I need a different VCR? Are there any FREE solutions I should try before I spend money?

 

[XenIneX]

You need a Time Base Corrector. Your tapes have degraded to the point that the VCR can't maintain proper tracking, and the capture device isn't smart enough to figure out what to do with the skewed signal. You could try cleaning the VCR's heads -- and probably should; those decades-old tapes are probably shedding oxide particles all over the place -- but that won't fix the fundamental problem.

Someone else will have to recommend a good TBC, as I don't keep track, and I have no idea if the cheap ones are worth a damn.

 

[Dark Shade]

Yeah I've looked into TBC's; unless I can 'rent' or 'borrow' one, they are out of the price range of someone who just wants to convert 10 VHS tapes.

I'm going to try a different converter box, something cheap in case it doesn't work. Beyond that maybe I'll just send the tapes to a pro and ask for them to be converted but not processed.

 

[XenIneX]

I'm going to try a different converter box, something cheap in case it doesn't work.

If it doesn't have a built in TBC -- and mention it explicitly in the specs -- you're throwing away money.