I am trying to transfer some old family film from a vhs-c camcorder tape over to DVD. The problem that i am having is that the tracking
is "out" and I get left with a serious line/noise problem at the bottom of the screen. I have tried using a vhs-c adapter, playing it from my video
and capturing into my PC. I have also tried an old pannasonic camcorder but the results are the same. I happen to know the original tape was recorded on a JVC camcorder which was bought in about 1989 or there abouts. Can anyone tell me.........

Do each individual camcorders have their own tracking setup? Ie JVC or pannasonic. Is it worth trying to purchase an old JVC camcorder to transfer my video to fix this problem?

[MarkE19]

Each individual camcorder will have its own tracking setup, not just each make and/or model.
It is always adviseable to fast forward the tape to the end and then rewind to align the tape with the heads of a new/different player. If doing it once doesn't help too much then try a couple of times. It may not cure the noise lines, but it should help a fair bit.

Mark.

[GaryB]

All VHS VCRs, whatever the brand, should be aligned to a standard reference tape called the MH-2. It sounds like the tape path was set incorrectly when the recordings were made on your camcorder. The fact that the line is at the bottom of the screen indicates that it was probably the right hand tape guide that was out. This tends to happen with camcorders as the guides can work loose due to the vibration that they suffer. The best way to get the material copied is to get a decent engineer to temporarily align the tape path on a VCR to the recordings that you have so you can copy them. Then he/she can realign it correctly afterwards. This will require a copy of an alignment tape and an oscilloscope (and the skill to do it).

Thanks guys
I did speak to a technician at JVC yesterday who confirmed that it was probably down to mis-alignment on the origianl camcorcorder. Unfortunatley as it was stolen i cannot re-use it now. The messing with the video heads on my VCR sound expensive so I think I will tell my mother in law to suffer the tracking lines.

[LV426]

Depends on exactly the extent of the "problem". You should always expect the bottom few lines of an image off analog tape to contain severe distortion/disturbance. They all do. Not normally visible on direct playback to a TV due to overscanning, but can be seen when captured onto PC (which doesn't overscan).

[GaryB]

Originally Posted by nigel

Depends on exactly the extent of the "problem". You should always expect the bottom few lines of an image off analog tape to contain severe distortion/disturbance. They all do. Not normally visible on direct playback to a TV due to overscanning, but can be seen when captured onto PC (which doesn't overscan).

What you are seeing there is the head switching point. On a correctly aligned VCR this should be exactly 6.5 lines before vertical sync, and, as you say, this is normally hidden by overscan. It can sometimes be seen as a little horizontally twitching dot at the very bottom of the picture. The effect of guide misalignment is diffferent and is normally shows as noise or, in extreme cases, vertical twitching as the TV loses vertical sync.