No color in video output VCR to ADVC-100

[moumiaq]

When i try to capture from my VCR thru my ADVC-100 card i get no color.I have a scart on my VCR with S-VIDEO to S-VIDEO to my ADVC-100.What do u think?I have captured video with no problems from my analog camcorder.The program that i use is Pinnacle Studio SE 8.6 and i'm downloading the latest update that may fix my problem ???:confused: Also when i try to select source in Pinnacle Studio i have only the option of DV Camcorder even if i'm capturing from my analog camcorder.

[trevlac]

I am far from an expert on this, seeing that I live in the US and have never see a SCART plug.

But, I believe all scart plugs are not created equal. On a s-video plug, there is 1 pin for color and 1 for B&W. If the scart does not output anything on the color pin, you will only have B&W.

Can you output non-B&W thru your scart s-video out to anything else?

[Arachnotron]

Most PAL VHS-VCR's only produce a composite signal. They have only the composite pin and sound connected in their scart. All other pin's are not used (apart from some pins to do with status)

As Trevlac explained, with such an adapter you get the composite signal on the Y pin of the s-video, and nothing on the C pin. So, grey it is.

For a s-video signal, you will most likely need an s-VHS recorder. There may be some VHS VCR's around that produce an s-video signal (technically this is possible), but I have never seen one.

[mustardman]

Yep - it is possible. S-video is Luminance & Chrominance on two separate wires, with each having a ground wire as well. To record colour on a VCR, the luma & chroma are separated. Colour is re-modulated to a lower frequency (a process called "colour under"), the luma is FM modulated (I'm pretty sure on this) and both are recorded separately (well, they are mixed in the signal that goes to tape, but they occupy different parts of the frequency spectrum).

On playback, the luma is de-modulated, and the chroma re-modulated to the correct colour sub-carrier frequeny. The S-video output is just this. The signals are then combined and output as composite video.

I have actually had better results from the 'composite' output of a VCR than the 's-video' output on some capture cards. It seems these capture cards have a very poor colour sub-carrier (comb) filter, that can make some B/W signals appear as colour!