Ploblems connecting a VCR to a capture card using s-video

I have been copying video tapes, things I recorded, and burning them to DVD, but, I know the results could be better. I have a fairly expensive Panasonic VCR connected to my TV card with coaxial cable for video and an audio cable connected to my Soundblaster card for audio. My pc has a TV Expert 350 capture/tuner card, and I have TV Expert 350 DVD Decoder software and Power VCR II software, and both allow me to watch TV on my pc while web surfing, and I can record TV or VHS and burn it to DVD. Anyway, my tv card has an s-video input, but my VCR has no s-video output. I just recently found a cable with s-video plug on one end and a s-video plug on the other. Using this instead of coaxial should give be the best picture ever, but all i get is a blank screen. Each TV application I try is set to s-video. When I disconnect the s-video and reconnect the coaxial, I get a picture. I've looked all over for the answer, does anyone know what's wrong? Mark.

 

"I just recently found a cable with s-video plug on one end and a s-video plug on the other."

If your VCR doesn't have an s-video out, then this is a typo, yes? Do you mean a cable with an s-video plug on one end and an rca plug on the other?

The coax out from your VCR will contain both the video and audio. So you don't want the coax out from your VCR connected to the coax in on your 350 capture card and at the same time have an additional audio connection from your VCR to PC. If you use the coax connection from your VCR to your capture card then use only that.

Best to use separate audio and video connections, and if possible send the audio out from your VCR to the audio in on your capture card rather than your sound card. You can capture the audio through the sound card but most TV capture cards will handle the audio on board.

If your VCR doesn't have an s-video out then whatever converter or cable you use to feed the video from your VCR to the s-video in of your capture card won't be true s-video quality. You can't upgrade the video signal from your VCR, so the s-video quality advantage is lost anyway. I'm not sure why you're getting a blank screen but if your cable isn't doing a decent job of converting the video to s-video standards then that could be it.

If your VCR has a composite video out and your 350 capture card has a compositve video in then use that for the video. If your VCR and 350 capture card don't have matching video connectors then use the converter cable (RCA to S-video) for the video and then connect the audio out from your VCR to the audio in to your capture card.

The last resort, quality wise, would be coax out from the VCR to coax in on the capture card.

 

Yes, s-video plug on one end and rca video on the other. I am trying for anything better than the coaxial connection between my VCR and TV card. The coaxial connection that delivers Comcast cable to the VCR can't be helped. I was hoping that connecting ny TV card and VCR with the new RCA to s-video cord would give me a much better picture, but, I get no picture at all. And, no, I have no RCA video in or composite in on my TV card, just coaxial and s-video. My VCR only has RCA video out and coaxial. Mark.

 

Well, you could double check to make sure your rca to s-video cable is good. If your TV has an S-video in then connect the VCR to the TV using the cable. If you can get a picture that at least that rules out a bad cable.

Also, if you have a regular s-video cable, and any other piece of video equipment that will output s-video, you'd want to connect that to your capture card just to make sure that works as well.

If that all checks out then I'm not sure what the problem is. The last thing I'd probably try is a different rca to s-video converter.

Even if you get this working, I don't think the video quality is going to be that impressive anyway. Your VCR is outputting composite video. The external conversion to s-video isn't going to improve that signal, and may even degrade it a little. It's worth checking out though, so I hope you get it working.