Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt Video Stutter - Mac OSX

I have just purchased a Panasonic NV-HS1000 with the aim of digitising old VHS tapes and for this I went for the Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt.
I have the deck connected to the Intensity via S-Video and am using the supplied software (Media Express)
The video and audio stutters like a mad man in the preview pane and is just like that when it's recorded.

I have both the video format in the Media Express preferences and the Blackmagic preferences set to 'PAL'
I am using a 27" iMac (latest model) with OS X Maverics so there should not be any issues with performance from the machine or hard disk.

Can anyone shed any light on what may be wrong?


Thanks

I raised a ticket with Blackmagic Support and got this answer -

"t sounds as though the issue may be velocity errors that are being caused by the tape transport.
VHS tape output can be very unstable, velocity errors caused by the tape transport can cause a wide fluctuation in the quality of the output signal.
The tapes may well playback fine on a domestic TV set as they have a wide input tolerance.
I am afraid capture cards cannot cope with the same errors."

So basically this product can not & is not fit for digitising VHS tapes. Would have been nice to have been informed of this on the product website before I bound one.

Nearly £200 down the toilet - thanks !!

Did you try using a Timebase corrector? BM devices are quite strict about the input signal, so if you tapes are stretched or have dropouts you'll have issues when trying to capture and a TBC can usually fix this as long as the tapes aren't to badly degraded

Yes - the player has one built in and the Panasonic NV-HS1000 is regarded as one of the best

Thanks

Then that would imply your tapes are quite degraded. Did you try capturing from a clean source such as direct from a digital camera to eliminate it being an issue with the input?

No, don't have one - just a load of old tapes.

It's gone on eBay anyway now as it's not fit for purpose so back to the drawing board ...

Thanks for your input

@djwoody

The following setup seems to be working fine for me:

- Panasonic NV-HS 960 S-VHS Recorder

via SCART cable to

- Panasonic DMR-EH52 HDD/DVD Recorder

via Component cable + audio cable to

- Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt

via Thunderbolt cable to

- iMac 27" Late 2012 (i7 @ 3,4 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 3 TB SSD/HD Fusion Drive).

The internal TBC on the NV-HS 960 is switched to "OFF" (!) as the superior TBC on the DMR-EH52 handles time base correction in this configuration.

As a result I get a perfectly smooth and stable capture in Media Express.

Hopefully this works for you too.