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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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I would *love* to help out with BattleBots video's for people, but I only have them on VHS tape and I have tried and tried and failed to convert them into a more digital-friendly format.
They are on 6-hour (3 hour long play) NTSC tapes with some form of Macrovision-like copy-protection on them which has baffled every
practical
capture method I have tried, and even most Video Players from playing them properly.
I have tried multiple video capture cards, running them through both Pro and Consumer Mini-DV's with analog-inputs, copying them from one video to another through the analog-outputs and even displaying them on the screen and aiming a camera with a "sync-lock" feature (to eliminate the herringbone when two scan videos look at each other). None of them have produced an acceptable result.
Of all the video machines I have tried to play them in, the only one that produces a good picture is a Radio-Parts cheapy I bought for about $150 years ago. Friends high end "NTSC capable" machines either produce a dark picture, no color or highly variable color.
Copying from my machine to another produces a very low quality picture with variable or no color.
Trying to capture them through any sort of digital device produces either no color, or the sync doesnt lock (vertical bands rolling or 1/3 of the picture missing at the bottom). One cheapy card would produce a lo-res picture, but only at 15 frames a second 320x240
Playing them on the TV and aiming the sync-lock camera at it produced a very grainy coarse banded picture. sort of like when you scan a scanned image and get moire patterns when the pixels dont line up.
I even tried running them through a "Dr Video" sync corrector, which did nothing - probably because it wasnt made for NTSC video
The only thing I havent tried yet is playing them from my machine on a big computer LCD display with analog inputs (rare as) and aiming a camera at that. hopefully the higher res pixels would produce a fine grained picture.
The other problem is, they have *hundreds* of intro's and outro's (several time each 1/2hr episode) that make them bloody frustrating to watch and fill up 2/3 of the time with crap and Comedy Central's embarrasingly unfunny sketches. If I have to hear their "dont construct or operate a battlebot without proper supervision" disclaimer one more time I will scream.
There is over 24 hours on non-stop footage that has to be gone through and could probably be distilled down to a couple of hours of actual interesing bits if someone had the patience to sit there with a technique that worked.
Having them on DVD with an index to each fight would make them infinitely more watchable I have spent hours trying to do this to make them more accessible.
If anyone can come up with a *creditable* way to convert them to DVD at a high-quality I will pay you a fair hourly wage to do so for the entire 5 series !
If you dont know what a "Vertical Retrace Interval" is though and arent experienced at american tape duplication though, dont bother thinking you'll just link up your whiz-bang video capture card and do it,
Believe me, I have tried and tried. If you are a video-duplication professional and have *experience* with copy-protected long play NTSC tapes, and can do it at a reasonable price, please get in touch
Also, they are the only full copies of the tapes that I know of in the country, and fairly irreplacable. I dont even know if the person who sent them to me from the USA would be willing to repat the favour, it took a lot of cajoling and assurances of anonymity to get them, so I dont want to let them out of my sight unless I have a reasonable good hope of getting them back in a more robust "backupable" format. Remember, tapes break and jam easily !
You would probably have to borrow my tape machine to play them as well from what I've seen so far. It is the only video that produces a perfect picture from them. I'm willing to loan it out as well if anyone out there reckons they've got the know-how to pull it off at a reasonable price and make a lot of builders very happy ? _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Thu Nov 24, 2005 11:06 pm |
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