Any solution for video that looks terrible on the card but decent on a TV?

[Eric VanHeest]

Often when trying to capture video that was copied (several times...) between VHS tapes, I can watch the video on a television monitor hooked up to the same (or a split) composite cable from the VCR, and it looks "okay" if not perfect (color bands at the top of the video, but definitely watchable). Trying to keep captures of these videos (for convenience and to prevent further loss of quality), however, is utterly impossible. The video through the Marvel (or any other capture card) is completely useless - it has huge color-shifting bands in constant motion from the top of the video, large left and right shifts of 16 pixels or more and gigantic vertical leaps (almost 1/3 of the screen) on a frame-by-frame level. I normally just toss those videos aside as useless, but I'm curious if there's anything that can be done about it. Specifically, what does a television do that the capture card isn't apparently capable of doing to stabilize the crummy video? If I use a video camera and point it at the television, I can capture a usable video (videocamera captures of television aren't exactly beautiful, but they don't exhibit the severe jumping problems of the raw stream from the VCR). I really don't want to videotape the television Is there something (analog or digital) that I can get to help with these tapes, or should I just give up?

[Dr Mordrid]

What you're talking about is a "degraded source". Multiple copies cause the synch pulse and colorburst signals to degrade, and these are what cards like the Marvel use to key onto the signal for capture. Unless these signals are restored to their full specs you're S*O*L.

The *best* way to handle this is a device like the Elite Video BVP-4+ broadcast video processor. It's great for cleaning up degraded video. It's also great for making sure the highest quality signal gets to a VHS or SVHS deck from the video cards output.

Not cheap though at $629 USD. I have one and wouldn't be without it.

Elite Video:

http://www.elitevideo.com/

BVP-4+ page:

http://www.elitevideo.com/evbvp4.htm


Examples:

http://www.elitevideo.com/bvp4pictures/bvp4pictures.htm

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 30 November 2000).]

[Phire]

I own a Sima Color Corrector and personally I feel it's almost useless. I actually bought it for removing Macrovision and not picture manipulation. It seems that device has some of the features the Sima Color Corrector has. I also think that the Before pictures on those pages look better except for the one where the boy is standing in the dark. You can accomplish all the things that device does with VirtualDub's filters. I suggested to Donald Graft that a few of them be made, such as the Hue/Saturation filter. For 629$, it just doesn't seem worth it to me. Another thing with the Sima Color Corrector is that when your passing video through it, it degrades its overall resoultion quality. As for that resoultion enhancer on that 629$ device, it looks like you can accomplish the same thing with Sharpening filters. I just bought a good VCR instead of buying all these devices. I own a JVC HRS-9600U and the quality it outputs over other VCRs is a huge difference. My two favorite VCRs are the newer JVC models and the professional grade Panasonic VCRs.