Video Digitizing - need help

[cluelessgenius]

sooo....this is a weird one.

 

i got the request from my dad to save and digitize all his old cassette tapes.

 

now before i start i dont want to hear how i should buy this or that from all video enthusiasts im sure are around here too.

i have to work with what i got and make the best of it.

 

so starting i have his old video tape camera which doubles as a playback device for the 8mm PAL tapes it uses.

which seems to work alright.

from there it feeds the video to rca/cinch cable and that is then captured by one of those logilink usb grabbers.

which also seems to work.

 

heres my problem...i know nothing about video and am scraping for information on what are the correct settings for best result. ohh yeah im using VLC right now since i found all the special grabbing software (at least the free ones) to be finiky and buggy.

 

actual symptoms are that sporadically the video will change to grayscale with purple-ish lines across. then it goes back to normal then back to gray and so on.

 

if anyone of you old guys on here has any idea of what im talking about even id really appreciate some help here. 

also the grabber puts out yuv format i believe and im not sure what format to convert it to ideally. mp4? but with what video format? really im trying stuff ion the dark here to find something that works but anyone with some advice is welcome.

 

Spoiler

 

[Radium_Angel]

8 minutes ago, cluelessgenius said:

purple-ish lines

That *almost* looks like Macrovision getting in the way...

[cluelessgenius]

4 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

That *almost* looks like Macrovision getting in the way...

could you elaborate?

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, cluelessgenius said:

could you elaborate?

Along time ago, before ripping of DVDs was an easy thing to do, DVDs were encoded with a type of copy protection called "Macrovision" which would detect if you were plugging a DVD player into a capture card and copying the output stream. If it detected that, it would corrupt the recorded video, typically with purple and green horizontal lines like what you are seeing. (at least, that's what I got when I tried to play DVDs through a capture card under my BeOS box way back when)

 

 

[cluelessgenius]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

Along time ago, before ripping of DVDs was an easy thing to do, DVDs were encoded with a type of copy protection called "Macrovision" which would detect if you were plugging a DVD player into a capture card and copying the output stream. If it detected that, it would corrupt the recorded video, typically with purple and green horizontal lines like what you are seeing. (at least, that's what I got when I tried to play DVDs through a capture card under my BeOS box way back when)

 

 

ok...? but the cammera has a rca output to watch the video on a tv and sinceim using that i dont see how it would know that im capturing?

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, cluelessgenius said:

ok...? but the cammera has a rca output to watch the video on a tv and sinceim using that i dont see how it would know that im capturing?

Like I said, it *almost* looks like Macrovision getting in the way, but I didn't say that was the root cause.

You almost might have a bad/failing rca port, or the cables might be iffy.

 

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, cluelessgenius said:

ok...? but the cammera has a rca output to watch the video on a tv and sinceim using that i dont see how it would know that im capturing?

A google search for "green and purple horizontal lines on video" might give you some useful info. Some of the threads mention dealing with old gear and failing ports/cables.

[cluelessgenius]

3 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

A google search for "green and purple horizontal lines on video" might give you some useful info. Some of the threads mention dealing with old gear and failing ports/cables.

well the tape does have a slider on the top labeled SAVE and REC. now it is set to save. and as i understand it its to protect from writing over it. you thing that might be the issue? i have the camera in vcr mode so its not recording anyway but i really dont wanna loose the footage and im just not sure what this old baby is doing exactly.

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, cluelessgenius said:

well the tape does have a slider on the top labeled SAVE and REC. now it is set to save. and as i understand it its to protect from writing over it. you thing that might be the issue? i have the camera in vcr mode so its not recording anyway but i really dont wanna loose the footage and im just not sure what this old baby is doing exactly.

I doubt that would be the issue.

Let me ask you this, can you watch the video on the camcorder itself? If so, does it get the coloured lines you see?

[cluelessgenius]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I doubt that would be the issue.

Let me ask you this, can you watch the video on the camcorder itself? If so, does it get the coloured lines you see?

 thats actually pretty good of a point. stupid me could have thought of that. ill check.

[cluelessgenius]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I doubt that would be the issue.

Let me ask you this, can you watch the video on the camcorder itself? If so, does it get the coloured lines you see?

no lines. looks perfect but then again theres no color at all but im guessing thats just the display on the camera thats monochromatic. so the camera show no lines or glitching in color because theres no color to begin with.

[Radium_Angel]

3 hours ago, cluelessgenius said:

no lines. looks perfect but then again theres no color at all but im guessing thats just the display on the camera thats monochromatic. so the camera show no lines or glitching in color because theres no color to begin with.

Can you hook the cam corder up straight to an old TV, nothing in between? Just curious what you see, trying to pin point where the issue may be occurring.

BTW, you might have better luck asking on a dedicated audio/visual forum.

[cluelessgenius]

6 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Can you hook the cam corder up straight to an old TV, nothing in between? Just curious what you see, trying to pin point where the issue may be occurring.

BTW, you might have better luck asking on a dedicated audio/visual forum.

yeah but im not on any other forums of that kind so i thought id ask here first. ill try the tv later today when i get home. its not really old but it does have cinch/rca so... yeah ill try

[mariushm]

Are you sure it's not just a simple issue of treating the input signal as S-video when it's actually Composite, or the other way around?

Also camera playing in PAL format while your TV is NTSC could cause this ... the color information is not transmitted the same way as NTSC does, so a NTSC only device may not be able to decode it.

My advice would be to source a good capture card, with S-video and composite inputs, and a good broadcast decoder chip. Maybe two... one sold in PAL countries and one sold in NTSC countries.

 

The one I've used for a long time was a Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP Expert - has a 10bit broadcast decoder made by Conexant (there's 2000 XP versions without Expert in name which use cheaper average quality Brooktree chipset that's only 8 bit) and supports raw capture and has s-video and composite inputs and line in ... problem is it's PCI and only has drivers up to Windows 7.

Still, if you can find some old PC somewhere with an empty pci slot, these cards are 10-20$ on eBay (but again, i must stress it has to be the "Expert" model)

 

[cluelessgenius]

13 hours ago, mariushm said:

Are you sure it's not just a simple issue of treating the input signal as S-video when it's actually Composite, or the other way around?

Also camera playing in PAL format while your TV is NTSC could cause this ... the color information is not transmitted the same way as NTSC does, so a NTSC only device may not be able to decode it.

My advice would be to source a good capture card, with S-video and composite inputs, and a good broadcast decoder chip. Maybe two... one sold in PAL countries and one sold in NTSC countries.

 

The one I've used for a long time was a Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP Expert - has a 10bit broadcast decoder made by Conexant (there's 2000 XP versions without Expert in name which use cheaper average quality Brooktree chipset that's only 8 bit) and supports raw capture and has s-video and composite inputs and line in ... problem is it's PCI and only has drivers up to Windows 7.

Still, if you can find some old PC somewhere with an empty pci slot, these cards are 10-20$ on eBay (but again, i must stress it has to be the "Expert" model)

 

well its not a tv its a capture usb stick sooo... and i set vlc to pal

[mariushm]

9 minutes ago, cluelessgenius said:

well its not a tv its a capture usb stick sooo... and i set vlc to pal

well you can set vlc to pal but if the chip inside the stick supports only ntsc it doesn't matter.

It's not like resizing a video from 640x480 to 800x600, something player could do...it's about how chip converts analogue signal to digital format, if chip ignores "treat input signal as pal" command....

 

Try Virtualdub, should at the very least give you more options: http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/

 

 

 

[cluelessgenius]

3 minutes ago, mariushm said:

well you can set vlc to pal but if the chip inside the stick supports only ntsc it doesn't matter.

It's not like resizing a video from 640x480 to 800x600, something player could do...it's about how chip converts analogue signal to digital format, if chip ignores "treat input signal as pal" command....

 

Try Virtualdub, should at the very least give you more options: http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/

 

 

 

good point and as always with this kind of product theres not enough documentation. will try later

[cluelessgenius]

On ‎5‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 10:42 AM, mariushm said:

well you can set vlc to pal but if the chip inside the stick supports only ntsc it doesn't matter.

It's not like resizing a video from 640x480 to 800x600, something player could do...it's about how chip converts analogue signal to digital format, if chip ignores "treat input signal as pal" command....

 

Try Virtualdub, should at the very least give you more options: http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/

 

 

 

sooo...i tried hooking it up to my tv and the picture is perfect. but for the life of me i cant figure out a way too get that footage of the tv. hdd recording only work for watching it on the tv and will not be a readable format on the pc. 

so long story short : its definitly the capture sticks fault so i ordered a fucking expensive one on amazon. then ill record it all and send it back