VHS to digital, flickering, lack of video and good sound

Question

I'm trying to convert some VHS videos into digital. To do so, I got the VGB100 from August and connected it to the VHS player and to my computer.

I've used two applications to capture video:

• Arcsoft Showbiz
• VirtualDub

Both of them get the same input.

Most of the time the image doesn't even show but when it does, it is a very flickery image in general and from time to time you can see the image more or less good.

I've tried it with the most recent VHS cassettes I have (spiderman 1, Toy Story 1...) and I get the same result with all of them.

• Do you think the problem is in the VHS cassettes?
• Or in the VHS player?
• Or in the SCART cable / output / cable?
• Or even on the VGB100 device?

Answer 1

If you are using old VHS player, then its head can be dirty

Also VHS cassettes' tape can be dirty, but how I understand you using new cassettes.

So, try to connect your VHS player to TV. If signal will be the same, you need to locate that thing: And clean it and head (black thing on background to the left)

You can do it by yourself or maybe there still exist place in the world, where professionals can do it for you.

Answer 2

It's because these are commercially duplicated VHS tapes and have copy guard encoded in the video signal. It prevents copying as you have discovered.

The giveaway are the white bars in the vertical interval that I can see in your screen grab.

There's no way around it short of using a time base corrector or frame synchronizer.

They are on eBay though I am not encouraging you to copy the protected intellectual property.