Capturing from VHS -- Loss of Sound, Choppy Export

[M***@adobeforums.com]

After two unsuccessful attempts, I am stuck with a big problem on a low-budget job:

To capture some 1982-vintage footage that was transferred to VHS sometime in the mid 1980s.

Using my JVC DVS3U Fire Wire DV/S-VHS deck with TBC, I captured the 45-minute tape without incident.

The resulting AVI file has audio all the way to the end and plays on the computer without dropping frames or 'freezing' periodically. However, in Premier Pro 1.5, I can't even play it from the bin. The audio on this 45-min clip drops out at 15:19 on both capture attempts. There is no edit or camera stop/start event where this occurs--it's during the middle of a musical performance where the camera is running continuously.

Having never suspected this, I burned two DVDs that were found defective during a spot check. The video was "jumping ahead" every couple of seconds (sort of like a frame would freeze, then unstick and jump ahead by 20-30 frames suddenly and the process would occur every couple of seconds). And of course the audio would just cut off at 15:19 into the DVD too.

So why doesn't Premiere respect the audio all the way through the clip? I have vast amounts of free space on all of the temp drives, so it's not a case of running out of disk space. There's almost a terrabyte of space available and a 45-minute video is nowhere near using that much space!

I was very observant to make sure that the second capture had 0 dropped frames--it was flawless, according to the capture window at the end of the capture. No errors about dropped frames, either. So why is the video on both captures suffering from 'slagging' in the exact same places on both captures?

I guess what I am driving at is does Premiere have issue with captures from less than 'synch-perfect' sources? I have captured thousands of hours of DV footage and NEVER ran into this problem on any of it.

I've spent3 hours capturing, 6 hours rendering to MPEG and 2 hours burning discs so far and I still haven't got a product I can deliver. I may have to tell this client that I can't convert their video to a DVD.

[R***@adobeforums.com]

I don't understand your description:
"I captured the 45-minute tape without incident" and
"drops out at 15:19 on both capture attempts" ...

Why are there multiple captures? Did it capture or not? Is the problem in playback, export ... or capture?

And what is this mention of 'sync'? Are you describing a sync problem, or a total audio failure?

GB

[M***@adobeforums.com]

I thought I described it clearly:

There were no errors on capture.

The captured file plays perfectly in Media Player with sound all the way to the end of it's 45-min length.

I recaptured because in all frustration, I could not figure out why Premiere Pro would only play and display audio waveforms for the first 15 minutes of the clip. I thought maybe there was some peculiar hidden problem with the capture that didn't affect WMP, but did affect Premiere.

Yes, it did capture, according to the playback in WMP. But Premiere only sees the first 15 minutes of audio.

Export is affected, in that:

There is no sound after 15 minutes, and, the video has a sort of "freeze-skip ahead" lack of smoothness to the motion.

I noted that the problem never occured with sync-perfect sources like DV. VHS, particularly nth-generation VHS copy, has synch jitter, and I am wondering if this is what's causing Premiere to drop audio rendering after processing the first 15 minutes of the clip.

[R***@adobeforums.com]

1) Sync generally is used to describe audio/video syncronization, though I don't understand that to be the usage you are using here;

2) There are potentially file size limits you could be hitting, including file size limits for the conformed audio files -- instead of capturing your entire tape in one pass, capture it in 3 or 4 shorter passes so that no single chunck exceeds 4GB in file size -- see if that fixes it for you. Just rebuild on the timeline using the four chuncks instead of one single file ...

Alternatively, try another MPEG encoder, if that is what I understand you are trying to do, like TMPGEnc -- it is free, and you could try going directly from the DV.avi file you have captured.

GB

[M***@adobeforums.com]

The synch problem I'm describing is not A/V synch but scanline synch and vertical interval synch. This ancient VHS tape that the client provided is tripping up Premiere's capture ability. I don't have these issues when capturing quality VHS tapes or DV tapes.

Since we're using this on a NTFS partition, file size limitations are not an issue. Remember, we normally capture 93-minute DV tapes. This is only a 45-min VHS. The conform files are about 1GB each.

I did manage to fix the audio problem by deleting the entire conformed files directory and letting it rebuild. But the problem of stuttering video remains. The AVI clip itself is stuttered, but Premiere claims no frames were dropped on capture. Doesn't make sense.

We're using CinemaCraft as our encoder and have been for years with reliable results.

[R***@adobeforums.com]

Make a dub from the VHS to DV, then capture the DV -- this will 'fix' any vertical interval issues.

GB

[J***@adobeforums.com]

Does your JVC firewire deck convert to DV on the fly, or to some other codec? Use GSpot on the 45-minute captured file that plays in WMP and see what codec is in use. If the JVC deck converts A/D using it's own proprietary codec (even if it's a proprietary DV codec), then that could cause the issue you are seeing in Premiere.

Jeff

[M***@adobeforums.com]

I had a chance to analyze the captured footage and see what actually was happening: A frame is "held" for three frames' duration, every dozen or so frames (interval varies, but the number of frames held for is always three.

I recently captured a VHS tape of some wedding footage made in the early 1990s and did not encounter any of these anomalies.

Even with the TBC, this particular tape won't capture properly. I'm trying some other combinations (TBC off, video stabilizer ON), but the picture won't display (tears at the top) on my Sony PVM1261Q, connected to the output of the DVS3U.

The deck is doing A/D conversion and then sending it out the IEEE1394 jack. But this tape is just too bad to play on an analog monitor (synch pulses are either missing or buried in noise) without a TBC.

I'll try a transfer to DV first, although if the same mechanism is in use, I would think the problem would be the same but with the added artifacts of DV dropouts every few minutes.

I'm watching this on the analog monitor as I copy to DV now.. and I'm noticing a sort of flicker, during pans and zooms, almost like the even-odd order is reversed.. the motion is certainly smoother than the capture files (no freezing frames) but at times there is that odd flicker. This was shot with an ancient tube type video camera over 20 years ago, then probably transferred to VHS. I don't know if that camera has a field order reversal issue. Or maybe this is vertical jitter.. on a low motion scene, I'm noticing the whole frame is jittering vertically by one scanline. That's what's making the flicker effect.

This is taking way too long. I'm supposed to copy and transfer to DVD for $25. Should have been a two hour automated background process. But now I've three days and multiple record/capture attempts, 3 unusable DVDs burned.. profit is out the window on this...

[J***@adobeforums.com]

What you may be experiencing is stiction of the tape layers due to the age of the tape...refered to as "archival shed syndrome", this problem affects all audio and video tapes with standard iron oxide formulations. This would cause the studering you are experiencing...There is a process where you can temporarily reverse the effects, long enough to make dubs, but it requires that you dissassemble the cassette and bake the tape in a convection oven at a specific temperature for a specific amount of time...I have the recipie, but am hesitant to post it here as someone might try to do it with a regular oven, and ruin their tape.

[M***@adobeforums.com]

I don't think it's a stiction problem, else the playback would lose synch altogether semi-periodically. And the VHS tape, when viewed on an analog monitor, is not stuttering.

The tape has smooth motion when played by itself, but I just finished making a VHS->DV cassette dub, and the DV cassette playback now suffers from this stuttering effect. The VHS doesn't have the stutter problem in itself when played back to analog monitor. But when played into a digital system, or transferred directly to digital tape, the stuttering appears.

I'm going to make one more try, turning off the TBC and turning on the video stabilizer and make a dub.

The only sure alternative to this problem is to shoot the monitor (in underscan mode) image with a video camera and capture that way. The synch signal on this tape is virtually nonexistent.

UPDATE: So much for turning of the TBC and using the Vertical Stabilizer instead. The DV copy is ten times worse than it was with the TBC and no vertical stabilizer. Maybe the hardware CODEC is working so hard to encode this noisy picture that it's dropping/holding frames?

[J***@adobeforums.com]

Can you play it in a regular VCR and run the analog outs of the VCR into your DV camcorder, thereby giving the A/D converter in the camera a crack at it?

What about the analog outs of the DV/SVHS deck to the analog in of the DV camcorder - same objective?

Jeff

[M***@adobeforums.com]

Interesting suggestion, Jeff.
I'm trying it right now through a Sony VX2000 in VCR mode.

The frame freezing/holding has stopped, but I notice the cause now:

With the TBC turned on in the DVS3U, the picture is jumping up and down several times a second, making it look as if the camera were on a dolly riding over a gravel road, almost.

With the vertical stabilizer on (TBC turns off when this is on), the vertical jitter stops, and is replaced by two artifacts:

A drastic increase in chroma noise in the shadow parts of the picture
and
Tearing or bending starting near the bottom third and getting progressively worse toward the top of frame.

Both artifacts are annoying to watch, but I think the vertical jitter may be even worse than just a noisy picture with chroma noise all over the darker areas of the frame. The flagging/bending is only noticable when a straight vertical edge is in the picture, such as a wall corner, or in this case, a radio tower under construction.

I'm only watching this in the 2" flipout viewfinder on the VX2000. I can only imagine how bad this noise would look on my 36" video screen.

So it boils down to tolerating either of these:

Vertical jitter
or
Lots of chroma noise
Picture "roll" at beginning of clip

I did not expect a whopping increase in the latter, but there it is when the TBC is OFF. And the top quarter of the screen of the analog monitor (Sony PVM-1261Q) is completely bent, the synch is so poor. But switching the monitor to Fast AFC fixes that problem.

I would have told the client that I can't do this job, as my fee is long out the window of loss, but I am tackling this more out of a challenge to figure out what the problem is and whether it can be solved.

[J***@adobeforums.com]

Based on the further info you've provide, stiction may not be the issue, but format alignment on the original recorder...Do you have access to an old machine you can intentionally screw-up the alignment on? If so, you might be able to adjust the format dropout position so that it is further into vertical sync region enough for the tape to play back.

[c***@adobeforums.com]

Or borrow a few VCRs. I had tearing of VHS footage on my old JVC deck. I moved the tape to a Panasonic deck (super cheap) and it played just fine.

[M***@adobeforums.com]

I reached a reasonable compromise by capturing the tape to my Sony VX2000 in VCR mode, using the vertical image stabilizer on the JVC playback deck. The chroma noise looks worse on the 2" LCD on the VX2000, but when I review it on the larger Sony CRT, it doesn't look unacceptably noisy. I then played this DV copy back in the JVC deck and captured that. Results are about as good as one can hope for this nth generation VHS copy off what may have been a betamax camera or perhaps a component camera hooked to an early beta deck, the recording from which was later transferred to VHS.
The camera was unbelievably bad to begin with (dynamic focus out of adjustment, causing a magenta color cast in the upper 1/4 of frame, and a greenish cast to highlights on the lower left. Green streaks from highlights as the camera pans--all the nasties of late 1970s consumer vido cameras! Take that down a few generations on to VHS and you have the recipe for a headache. But the footage is historic to the client and it is the only tape in existence and was hand-delivered to the studio. Much of the video looks like a bad impressionist painting, with a facet/crystalize filter applied, plus copious amounts of chroma noise, color casts, psuedo color rendering of the images and horrible audio to boot. The client DID warn me is was going to be bad, and it lived up to his prediction. :-)

[J***@adobeforums.com]

Glad you got it sorted out! Your client should feel blessed to have an editor that would go to the extremes you did to satuisfy their needs...Kudos to you!

[J***@adobeforums.com]

Ditto what Jay said Mark - good job!

Jeff

[M***@adobeforums.com]

I made a promise, effectively, that I'd do the job for X amount of dollars. I consider these issues to be 'not the customer's fault' but the fault of the various hardware/software interfaces, so hence, my problem, to be corrected at my expense. I try to minimize these loss leaders, but when they do happen, hopefully they do so at a less than frenetic period in the editing suite's schedule!