• Blackmagic Design

  Composite capture

  Posted by William Gaffney on November 7, 2006 at 12:14 am

  I am capturing an old VHS tape via composite using the ‘Y’ input on a Decklink Extreme/G5. During the capture I get an occasional loss of picture (and sound), about 3/4 frames. Is this a decklink issue or perhaps something else.

  Also when the capture starts it takes a little time for colour to appear, this is not a big problem but I’m just interested why this should be the case. Working with VHS again has reminded me how much fun it can be.

  J. Tad newberry replied 17 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  William Gaffney

  November 7, 2006 at 12:31 am

  Just realised I’m not the only one with this problem, should have done a search using ‘VHS’ rather than ‘composite’
• 

  William Gaffney

  November 9, 2006 at 3:53 pm

  It is a little disappointing that no one from Blackmagic can make any suggestion as to why a professional piece of equipment is unable to capture reliably from VHS tape. What started as a simple job has become time consuming, irritating and expensive due to the problem with my Extreme card.

  I did also try to capture via Blackmagic Deck control but having set ‘uncontrolled device’ in preferences it kept telling me it could not control the deck and would not capture at all.

  I am aware this is not an official Blackmagic forum but they do have a presence here and therefore should not seem to be selective about what issues they comment on.

  When I upgrade my G5 sometime in the future, it is unlikely at the moment it will have a Blackmagic card fitted.
• 

  Kristian Lam

  November 14, 2006 at 2:40 am

  Hi William,

  Apologies for the non-repsonse. I’ve been away from the office.

  The DeckLink card expects a stable video source but some VHS decks are unable to provide such a signal. This is why it is advised to run the signal through a Time Based Corrector (TBC) before sending it into the DeckLink card.

  regards

  Kristian Lam
  Blackmagic Design
• 

  J. Tad newberry

  September 8, 2008 at 10:02 pm

  that sounds like what i’ve heard before (the TBC part), but if the VHS signal goes through a BetaSP deck, doesn’t the BetaSP deck sort of act as a TBC? I’m about to embark on a lot of VHS transfer into FCP, and would really rather skip the step of actually RECORDING to BetaSP tapes first, and THEN capture, but if that is the most stable way, I guess that’s what I’ll do…

  thanks again!

  mh

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