Huge flickering during video capture

Mike222 wrote on 12/11/2010, 5:53 AM

I have problems with huge flickering in captured video. I am capturing from a analog Betamax video through a Canopus ADVC-55 (composit). The picture moves 50% to the right for about 1/10 of a second, every 10 to 20 seconds. Could this be due to my graphics card (Video Card 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT) ? The same VCR shows a fine picture when directly connected to a tv.

I have turned off the antivirus and firewall and windows update. Nothing in autostart. Anything else I should turn off?

My computer:
Windows 7 64 bit
Dell Inspiron 530 Intel Core 2 Q9450
RAM: 3072MB DDR2 667
HD: 750GB SATA
Video Card 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

Comments

MSmart wrote on 12/11/2010, 8:00 AM

The ADVC55 connects to the PC via FireWire so your graphics card plays no part. How long have you had it? Has it ever captured good video?

Mike222 wrote on 12/12/2010, 11:10 AM

Thanks for the advice about the graphics card, it surely saves me a lot of hazzle and time. I just hooked it up this weekend and it has been the same every time I play the tapes. When I connect the composite cable directly to the tv it works fine, but when I connect it to the Canopus ADVC-55 then I get jumps in the picture in the beginning of tapes, up to 20 minutes, it seems so far. The jumps are most common in the beginning, about once a second, and then they come less and less frequent until they disappear after a certain amount of time depending on which tape I use. Excepth for the beginning of tapes, the ADVC-55 works fine. To me it appears that the Canopus ADVC-55 is overly sensitive to something that that my CRT-tv has no problem with. Should I return the ADVC-55 and get something else? Anything else I should try?

MSmart wrote on 12/12/2010, 11:59 AM

I was going to suggest you post over at the ADVC forums, but it looks like you already have.

You may have a bad unit, contact their techincal support or try to exchange it to see if another will work better.

What app are you using to capture the video? One that came with the ADVC55 or the VidCap app that comes with VMS?

You're right, the ADVC-55 is more sensitive in that any slight abnormality in the analog signal is going to be magnified when digitized. The analog signal from the VCR to TV will just be displayed as noise or not discernable.

Does the VCR (or should I say Betamax player --- you did say you had Betamax tapes, right?) have the ability to manually adjust tracking? If so, you might try adjusting that. I have to do that once and a while when capturing VHS tapes.

Added: what camcorder(s) do you have? You may be lucky in that they allow A to D passthru so you may not even need the ADVC.

amendegw wrote on 12/12/2010, 3:11 PM

MSmart's suggestion about the tracking adjustment is a good one. Here's a couple more:

1) You're not trying to capture a commerical tape, are you? A copy protection scheme such as Macrovision may be causing the problem.
2) You might need a TBC (Time Base Corrector). I believe the ADVC-300 has one - or you can add an external one.

Good Luck!
...Jerry

Mike222 wrote on 12/14/2010, 10:36 AM

Its from camera and from tv, not commercial tapes, I know now that the latter ones can cause problems.
I got a Datavideo TBC-1000 and now it works just fine. Thank you everyone for all your timesaving and helpful advice!
Mike