importing composite (old home movies) video into mac? (1 Viewer)

[Sam E. Torres]

hey guys, i've been trying to make a present for my mother with all of her home movies she made from all her kids...i made a version of it last year, but i felt really bad because it had glitches in it that i thought i could not avoid.

you see, when i would import it, it just casually blipped and skipped frames. other times the video would fade into white, almost as if it were right-protected video.

now, the way i was importing it, was kind of technically strange. i was playing the old vhs tapes on a pretty decent sony vcr i have and feeding it through my canon xl-2 camera and then passing it into my mac with a DV cable. however, the problem seems to be in feeding the video into the camera. it plays fine (with the occasional tracking problems...some of these things are over 20 years old) when i watch them on tv, but it's transfering them to DV that's causing problems.

i had tried a piece of hardware that my mom was sold to by a guy at comp usa, but i had similar dilemmas.

has anyone else experienced this? any suggestions?

thank you so much.

 

[Ken Chan]

Are the glitches the same place as the tracking problems? DV converters vary in how robust they are to that sort of thing.

You might try recording it onto the camera first. If you can watch the DV tape, it should transfer to the Mac without errors. If you can't record it onto DV tape, well then "there's your problem" You might try better VCRs (hard to find nowadays) or extra video "stabilizers".

I have used a Canopus ADVC-100, which is a dedicated DV converter box, with no problems, but my tapes were pretty clean and played without glitches. They don't make 'em anymore; there are newer/cheaper models from Canopos and other manufacturers.

 

[Sam E. Torres]

i can't record straight onto dv...and no, the glitches aren't on the tracking problems, they are sporadic and random. what do you mean by extra video stabilizers?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

A time base corrector is the obvious one. A nice industrial-grade framestore TBC will take your glitchy video and dump out nice clean video — at least as far as the recorder is concerned. The lines will all be the same length, the syncs will all happen at the proper times, the frames will come at a constant rate, and so on. The quality of the video won't really change, but it will be easier to record.

 

[Keith Paynter]

the "quasi legal" video stabilizers do the same thing that a pricier TBC will do.

Macrovision pulses are implanted in the non-visual area of videotapes, which affect the auto-gain control of other VCRs and DV camcorders, causing signal level changes. Stabilizers take the tape's information area and simply makes the signal black, defeating the pulses in the AGC signal.

Professional TBC units stabilize video signal based on transport drift. Professional video mixers with "genlock" (Generator Lock) can be used as well since it must synchronize the pulses of separate video sources.

Since these techniques border of defeating copyright protection, I will not conciously recommend their use.

 

[Ken Chan]

I should have been clearer. If the Canon does not allow recording from composite onto DV tape, then that point is moot. If you can record, and get the same problems on the tape, then the problem appears to be with the camera.

Since the problems are random, the problem is less likely to be with the signal, and therefore the stabilizers/TBCs might not solve it (although they may help overall). So what are the links in the chain?

- VHS tape
- VHS VCR
- analog cable
- DV converter (currently the camera)
- FireWire cable
- Mac

Switch out one at a time. Record some TV (the same length of time) on a fresh tape. Try different cables. Borrow someone else's Mac, or a PC with FireWire. Try another DV converter.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

How can he infringe the copyright on his own home movies, which are undoubtedly not recorded with Macrovision? Anyway, a "stabilizer" won't do the job. Gropped frames generally mean either bad timing on the VCR, or tape stretch. Either way, a frame-sync TBC will pull the timing variation down to something the video capture card can grab — if the computer has a composite video output, genlocking the TBC to that will be a good step. Replacing the VCR might be an option as well, although the possibilities there are rather limited.

 

[Keith Paynter]

I'm thinking that older tapes (even home made) that could be deteriorating may also be affected on the control track, and possibly affect the AGC of his DV's analog video input. I've had LD's (which were never encoded with Macrovision) drop out while capturing to my laptop. This may still be a good workaround.

Agreed that TBC is still the best albeit a more expensive way to go.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Now, that's just strange. An LD is crystal-locked to reference subcarrier, and the framerate is accurate within usually 50 parts per million. In other words, if you're dropping frames, unless the disc is rotted to nothing, you have a problem on the computer end.

 

[Buzz Foster]

Sam, something like this would serve you well for this project. I have one of these and used it to transfer several video tapes.