I am capturing from VHS with an ATI 9600 AIW (latest drivers) on video composite connectors. I did a few tapes just fine, but then got to one that looked rather bad (best described as irregular flashes across the top and middle of the frame). At first I suspected a bad tape, but when I played it on another VCR attached to my TV it was fine. To rule out the VCR, I switched them as well as the cables (so now I have the VCR/cable combo that worked fine with the TV attached to the computer). No help, same problem. Then I thought the long purple adapter that came with my card was suspect, so I bought a new shorter one (http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2538000). This reduced the problem by around 25% but its still pretty bad. I moved the cabling as far away from other power cables and sources of interference with zero difference. I know that viewing on a computer monitor shows more anomolies then a TV, but this is very obvious flashes covering lots of area. I have not tried using the TV for a monitor yet. It's confusing that most tapes work fine. I have found two that don't out of about 10 I have played with. The tapes are all from the same manufacturer/producer and made around the same time so copyright protections seem out. I am going to try the S-video connector as soon as I can get my hands on something that will output that, but I was hoping for any other ideas folks might have. thx
Ahh on second thought it does look like macrovision. I never bothered to actually do a capture when I saw bad output in the preview (using virtualdub) but I decided to do a cap anyhow and it turns horrible. Contrast variations and frame freezes that scream macrovision. Gonna borrow an old VCR from a friend that hopefully ignores macro.
