Video Glitch Converting HI 8 to DV AVI

[Bob Carruth]

Not sure this is the right forum but since I'm using a Sony DCR-TRV510 Digital 8 to do the conversion it seems a good place to start.

I'm using the 510 in VCR mode to read tapes from 2 previous Sony HI 8 camcorders and output digital via the cameras firewire port. Depending on the input quality the results are pretty good with this exception:

Regardless of the capture software I use (PRE3, Nero Vision, or WMM) or, so far, which source tape all of the footage has a flickering line across the bottom of the screen as shown in this frame capture (with enlarged insert):



It reminds me a bit of what one gets when a VHS VCR is not tracking properly.

Many of the tapes were edited successfully years ago (analog tape to tape) without this glitch.

I can't try the alternative of using the original camcorder via S-Video to dub to the 510 since neither works anymore.

I've just started using PRE3 so I have a long learning curve. Is there any way to "crop" out the offending bottom 8th of an inch? Or any other suggestions?

FWIW Digital 8 tapes work fine.

Thanks.

[rfjg]

This is just normal noise in the "Overscan" area, you will not see this on your TV. You'll get this on all analog video that you capture. You could crop the bottom of the video, but really not required.

If your do want to crop, use the crop effect in the transform group of video effects.

[Bobby]

I have always had the same thing, and crop it out as rjfg says.

[Ken Jarstad]

What you are seeing the head switching information that is common to all analog video systems. That's why you won't see it with Digital 8. The television receiver always masks this video noise by the normal overscan area which is typically about 10 percent. When you were doing analog to analog editing the overscan area was never exposed like it is in digital editing. In PrEl you can turn on the Safe Title and Safe Action area bars in the Monitor Window to see how those areas are represented. Some purists insist upon cutting off the head switching junk claiming it will eat up processing time and storage space on a target DVD but it likely wastes little overhead. It is entirely acceptable to ignore it since it will never be seen by the DVD viewer.

[Bobby]

...ignore it since it will never be seen by the DVD viewer...

I am not sure about that Ken. My workflow these days for old videos (actually, almost all I ever do ) is to take the chapter AVIs I create from a fullscreen project for each chapter and then bring them into a widescreen project where I put in some wide background. When I generate an SD widescreen DVD and play on my plasma TV I do see it.

I could be wrong and will check next time I do it again.

[Bob Carruth]

Sorry for the delay getting back. I could have sworn that the problem was visible on the TV during playback. It's possible that was an early test output from Movie Maker. If it was I don't still have it.

I just did a short project and no glitch is visible on the final product.

I wasted a lot of my time and yours.

Next up: Try to get the captured color to match what I see on the Camcorder's LCD and when I play the tapes directly on the TV via S-Video. But that's a subject for a future post in the PrEL 3 forum after I re-read the Camcorder manual and that section in the PrEL 3 manual.

Thanks, everyone.

[Chuck Engels]

No problem at all Bob, this topic somes up a few times a year. It is good to have a documented answer to point future members to when they ask the same thing

No question, or time to answer, is wasted. It sticks around to help the next person with the same question

[Ken Jarstad]

Hey Bob, some folks have lots of time on their hands. Activities at city hall must be slow these days. (This is an attempt at humor.)

Seems that you could whack away a little more from the bottom........., then a little from the top......, and then you would end up with the proper aspect ratio for your wide screen TV!

[Bobby]

Hey Bob, some folks have lots of time on their hands. Activities at city hall must be slow these days. (This is an attempt at humor.)

Seems that you could whack away a little more from the bottom........., then a little from the top......, and then you would end up with the proper aspect ratio for your wide screen TV!

I assume you mean me, Ken. Well I am actually very busy at town hall - it isn't easy getting the entire town to hate you. Wait until the local businesspersons get a hold of the new parking regulations I am proposing tomorrow with the Mayor and our Planning Director

I have played around with cropping to get a widescreen ratio and finally decided that I didn't like it - too much lost. I am comfortable with the technique I use now, and I do fill in the sides with text or small photos or similar, or zoom in when I want to. But I do want to check to confirm whether I would see the overscan area or not. Stay tuned...

[Ken Jarstad]

Glad to hear you are still "mixing it up" downtown.

Here is an interesting result, at least for me. My normal video these days is shot from an HV20 in HDV and downloaded into my project as widescreen DV. Since most of the folks I create DVDs for have SDTVs I create a 4:3 project and burn that. In other words, I place 16:9 DV video into a 4:3 DV project. When I play the DVDs on my sony and Toshiba upconverting DVD players into an HDTV some of the the extra width is viewable rather than being cut off. It's not full 16:9 width but it does seem to be a bonus to me. Probably not useful to the OP and perhaps just a curiosity.

[jackfalbey]

A bit off-topic here, but Ken brings up a good trick. One advantage to using 16:9 source in a 4:3 project is it gives you some room to pan-&-scan across the clip, so you can highlight the action on either the left or right side of the screen. Even better, if your computer can handle it, is to use the full 16:9 HDV source in a 4:3 DV project (just make sure "Scale to frame size" is unchecked). Then you can move the 1440x1080 clip around within the 720x480 frame to really focus the viewer's attention on a particular area.