Hi8 to DV, wavy lines at bottom

I'm using an ADS Tech Pyro A/V Link to connect my Samsung SCL906 Hi8 camcorder to my PC. The camcorder is connection to the device via an S-Video cable and a white composite cable (for audio), while the device is connection to my computer via a FireWire card.

I've tried using a multitude of software, including Adobe Premier Elements 1, Ulead VideoStudio SE 8, Nero, Windows Movie Maker, etc., capturing the source video as both MPEG1 and AVI.

The problem I'm having is that the bottom of the video, I'd say 1/4", is all wavy and distored, but the rest of the picture is fine. I've also seen this same thing happen when a co-worker of mine captured VHS to computer.

What is this distortion on the bottom of the screen and what can I do to avoid it?

 

Buy a $1500 VHS player...or ignore it.
It's almost impossible to get a perfect capture from VHS.
Because part of the tape contains no information, and another edge contains the audio track, this can show up in the video, because the capture device grabs the whole thing.
You can filter it out with cropping if needed, but only during postprocessing.
You won't see it on the TV anyhow. It will be in the overscan area.
If you're serious about having to remove it, try ffdshow's postprocessing...IF your capture software supports it.
DScaler also has a postprocess crop option I think...

 

Hi rebootjim, I haven't started my Hi8 to DV conversion project yet, but my old Hi8 camera already had replay problems - the video flutters at the top. I had aleays thought that this was a tape path (on reply) alignment problem.

Are the effects related? Is the audio "bleed" into the video another symptom of the same thing?

Cheers.

 

Any distortion you see in the capture, is usually caused by misaligned heads. Either in the VCR, or the cam (or both).
In some cases, you simply cannot remove it.
(Remember that tape uses a small portion for audio, which can show up in captured video, because the capture sees the complete frame, TV's do not).
Overscan on most TV's will take care of (hide) between 8 and 20 pixels (sometimes more) on all sides/top and bottom.
If you are going to encode the captures to mpeg for svcd or dvd, then you can crop in your encoder to remove it, or crop in something like virtualdub, and frameserve it.

 

Thx for the tips rebootjim, cheers.

 

I noticed the same issue in a recent VHS transfer. Next time I'll use TMPGEnc to trim the top and bottom of the frame to remove it.