Intensity Shuttle and capture flickering with VHS content

Product: Intensity Shuttle USB
Driver: 10.9.12
Computer: Lenovo E560 + Windows 10 x64

Dear Forum Members,

I bought the Intensity Shuttle for transferring old VHS material. When using a VCR or a VHS camcorder as the source, the video flashes/flickers with black frames. Tried with Black Magic Media Express, VirtualDub and OBS Studio.

Where should I start trouble-shooting this issue?

PS. Tested also with a borrowed cheap $20 USB capturing device and no flashing/flickering with that.

VHS tape has very poor timecode encoding when the tapes were new. As they age, it gets worse with tape drop out and image stabilization issues. CRT TVs which were used to watch VHS was very forgiving with broken TC, and would continue to play the tapes. Digital systems are much more picky and you need to use a good Broadcast type Time Base Corrector to repair the broken TC segments on the tape. The TCC goes between the type deck and the video capture device..

Do a search here, and in the Kivd Production Forum for VHS type Time Code issues for more details.
Cheers

VHS tape has very poor timecode encoding when the tapes were new. As they age, it gets worse with tape drop out and image stabilization issues. CRT TVs which were used to watch VHS was very forgiving with broken TC, and would continue to play the tapes. Digital systems are much more picky and you need to use a good Broadcast type Time Base Corrector to repair it... The TCC goes between the type deck and the video capture device..

Do a search here, and in the Kivd Production Forum for VHS type Time Code issues for more details.
Cheers

Actually, the TBC does not repair unstable time code. Instead, such devices' generated timecode replacesincoming timecode being sent to it, from, say -- within the old videotape's video signal.

Resolve Studio 14.3...014 | MiniMonitor | DTV 10.9.7

Yes Peter, better explaination, that is what I should have said. A TBC does not repair the tape itself, just regenerates a new TC on the TBC output to re-sync the tape signal for a stable playback. Thanks.

For more info on TBC for VHS recording, see: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=62609&hilit=+VHS and other posts by Collin Barrett.
Cheers

I had exactly the same issue when I bought my Intensity Pro PCI Express card in February to transfer VHS tapes, bursts of black frames and strobing from picture to black, and the sound slowly going further out of sync as I transferred. The condition of the tape made a difference, a home recorded tape strobed much more than a retail tape. Anyway after a post on here, someone said I'd needed a Time Base Corrector.

I had no idea what a TBC was, but after reading up online, and waiting a month or so for one to come up on eBay, I opted for a DataVideo TBC-1000 for £160 buy-it-now. Time Base Correctors can be really hit and miss quality-wise, and it's not even like you get what you pay for since they're all expensive, even the crappy ones. I borrowed a fairly new CYP CTB-100G Multi-System Time Base Corrector from a friend just to test out that not having a TBC was the issue, and the quality difference between the two TBCs is massive. The CYP was more expensive than my TBC-1000 unit the quality on mine is so much better. There is a good guide to TBC buying on the digitalfaq forum, I can't post the URL, but if you google "digitalfaq time base corrector guide", it's the first thing that comes up

I have used to use an Asus My Cinema ES2-750 Hybrid PCI-E TV Tuner Card to capture, and that never gave me any issues with black frames, but it also only captured a 25fps analogue PAL signal. The Intensity card captures both PAL and NTSC, even PAL-60 (although the colours are not as accurate when played with a fully NTSC VCR). I think it's down to the Intensity pro card expecting a very exact signal, and between the older VCR and older tape, the fine sync isn't 100% perfect and a TBC fixes that, but someone may correct me on that.



My current setup is a UK PAL JVC HR-S7600 S-VHS VCR (for PAL tapes) and a US NTSC JVC HR-S9500U S-VHS VCR (powered by a Goldsource ST-1500 1500w 240v/110v voltage converter, for NTSC tapes), through a DataVideo TBC-1000 Time Base Corrector using S-Video cables, to a PC with an Intensity Pro PCIe Capture Card. This rig allows capture of both NTSC & PAL S-VHS/VHS tapes, and has transferred NTSC & PAL BetaCam, BetaCamSP & Digibeta tapes in the past (matching players & TBC/Genlock units were borrowed through a friend).

Using the Thunderbolt version of Intensity Shuttle with my 13'Macbookpro(2015) and a VHS/DVD recorder gives no dropped frames at all, my guess the used laptop/PC isn't having enough speed through USB3.
Have a try-out on a stronger pc before buying too expensive hardware, or upgrade internal RAM.
I have VHS tapes that are older than 25 years, and give no problems with my setup.

@eric-jan, Then your VHS playout device has a good TBC inside.. Because most problems related to VHS in this forum has all to do with the lack of a TBC.. BMD hardware from itself is not able to recover a good sync on VHS..

This VHS/DVD recorder does make good vhs transfers to dvd, i guess the quality also comes out of the composite RCA output, i will also try the S-video output it has, next time, there are also component connections, but both vhs and dvd give only black and white capture results, but i'll try some other settings with this, these component connections might need the sync of the composite output which is not supported for the Intensity Shuttle box, in this day and age

update: I now also managed to make a good video capture from the component output of a VHS tape, it works fine ! I'm very happy with the Intensity Shuttle ! the VHS/DVD recorder is the Panasonic DMR-ES35V
it has Component, S-Video, Composite video out, two SCART connectors, and also optical audio out, i bought this one new, after the VHS "time age" online, just lucky i guess, because i had not any choice but this one.
I now do notice, that Media Express is slightly less responsive when i click on it's functions like tab page and capture button.

Update: since i discovered that the component also outputs the VHS output, i use no other connections, component just gives the best results.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

I just bought an Intensity Shuttle USB to transfer VHS tapes and got into the same flicker problem. I bought the VHS for $20 so I didn't want to spend another $100 on a Time Code thingy.

I got from Amazon a Scart to HDMI converter for $8 and it works like magic. You plug the scart or composite into one end and use a HDMI cable to connect it to the Intensity and the flicker stops. I know the intensity inputs become kind of useless but it's a cheap solution.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

I just bought an Intensity Shuttle USB to transfer VHS tapes and got into the same flicker problem. I bought the VHS for $20 so I didn't want to spend another $100 on a Time Code thingy.

I got from Amazon a Scart to HDMI converter for $8 and it works like magic. You plug the scart or composite into one end and use a HDMI cable to connect it to the Intensity and the flicker stops. I know the intensity inputs become kind of useless but it's a cheap solution.

That's good to hear ! could you give the the details of the converter that you use ?
Most of the time it's more a miss then a hit with these devices, you surely have a hit here ! nice ! it somehow manages to clean-up the video signal, because the Intensity Shuttle needs a clean video signal, if you had known this at an earlier stage, you could have used the UltraStudio Mini Recorder, from BMD, this one is even cheaper than the USB version of Intensity Shuttle, and runs also from the port it's power, and is compact in format.

btw: do you still have interlaced at the HDMI output of the converter ? or is it also converted to progressive ?