Question / Help 8mm tapes to digital video incorrect colour recording

[mdhl97]

Hi all,
I need help with OBS. I am converting 8mm cassette tapes (on a Sony Hand Camera) to digital video, and some bits of the video appear in colour then most of the time it changes to black and white. Anybody know how to fix it?

I am using an ASUS Laptop F550LB and my capture card device is a DIGITNOW! USB Audio Video Capture Card (https://www.amazon.com.au/DIGITNOW-...ocphy=9070567&hvtargid=pla-784993557106&psc=1 ) that's connected to a composite cable on the Sony Hand Camera.

 

[koala]

This is a capture issue, no OBS issue. As you see, the b/w image actually contains color, the whole image is distorted with red and green stripes. This is a sign of the analog recorder or the analog-to-digital capture process not handling colors correctly. OBS is only displaying what it's getting from the capture card.
It may be that the tape recorder device has wrongly adjusted reading heads, so it isn't able to always get the color info from the tapes correct. As far as I remember from the old days, reading heads becoming misaligned is a common issue, especially if the tapes were recorded on a different device than the playback device. In addition, a "real" playback device is often better quality than the playback from a recorder.

 

[mdhl97]

Okay thank you for the reply. I don't understand what you mean in the second sentance. Can you please elaborate it?
Also should I buy a different capture card device? If so, which one is the best for converting 8mm cassette tapes to digital video

 

[koala]

The b/w image is overlaid by faint red and green stripes, this means there is color information coming with the image data from the capture device. This rules the possibility out that there is no color information with the digital signal at all - it's a sign that there is something wrong on the analog side. So OBS isn't the cause of the issue, but the capture device or the tape playback device or the cabling between them.

 

[mdhl97]

Ahh gotcha. Thank you. I forgot to add I did connect the Sony Hand Camera to a TV via composite cable to play a tape on the big screen and it plays fine with colour. But connecting it to the laptop via the capture card device shows the overlaid faint red and green stripes, like you mentioned before, which doesn't display the correct colour information.

Also I tested 2 different tapes to record on the laptop. One tape plays in colour and sometimes plays in the overlaid faint red and green stripes. The other tape plays in the overlaid faint red and green stripes for the whole duration.

Is there a capture card device that you can recommend me that has a composite end and the other end is a USB please?

 

[koala]

I'm sorry, I don't know specific capture card for this. I captured my analog video probably 10-15 years ago with then-current PCI TV/frame grabber cards :)
If your TV is displaying the signal fine and the capture card not, then not all is lost - it seems the signal is ok in general, but slightly out of spec for the capture card. May be only some setting on the capture card. You can probably play with switching between PAL and NTSC, 25 and 29.9 fps, and a large variety of resolutions I guess. Play with combinations of them. Missing color is often a sign of PAL/NTSC mismatch.

A different cable between the camera and the capture card might help as well. The capture card has a "S-Video" connector, as well as a RCA connector or whatever it is called - if I look on Amazon, there are a large amount of connectors, converters and cables for all these.

 

[mdhl97]

Most likely it'll be a signal mismatch between PAL/NTSC. On the device I selected from 'Video Capture Device' my hand camera is shown as 'AV to USB2.0'. But in some tutorial videos on YouTube it shows as OEM Device in the device selection. How do I get OEM Device?