VHS => MiniDV Cam => FCP pro not working fien

Hello,

I’ve been saving my old MiniDV tape to digital and it work alright.
I found also a few VHS tape and fortunately I got also an old TV with a VCR.
And it doesn’t go that smooth...

The tapes are SECAM, the VCR is multi-format and the screen show the tape quite alright.
The output is Peritel and I hooked the TV/VCR to the MiniDV and the MiniDV to the Mac.

When i look at the screen... black and white.
I guess the TV/VCR peritel is sending SECAM (as source) and my DVCam is PAL.
First disappointment as even if i’d like to ear it I think there is no way to get the colour back.

When I started to record right thru the Mac, it kept stopping arguing about end of tape.
So I decided to do a 2 step recording. I recorded first the VHS tape on a MiniDV tape. Then I would be able to record from the MiniDV to the Mac.

VHS to MiniDV work ok (but black and white)
MiniDV to Mac less ok.

Bad synchronisation between picture and sound after a few seconds and kind of high gain noise.

Anyone with knowledge or experience has advices to improve the situation ?

Bernard

Ahhhh SECAM I believe it stands for "Something Exceedingly Contrary to the American Method".

Even though SECAM and PAL are very similar, it records the colour information differently so unless you want to buy a little converter. (They're not very expensive as the conversion is fairly simple) you will always end up with Black and White.

As to why the deck isn't digitising properly that could be any number of things. No less the fact that it already has a dodgy signal with no colour information on it.

My recommendation would be to get a device that can convert the signal to PAL or at least some kind of digital stream.

Maybe something like this?

Got the message, ordered a cheap unit on ebay...

I’ll update the progress. Thanks for your comment !