Imovie video NTSC to PAL from VHS captures only in Black & White, HELP!

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alaner1950 Author

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Imovie video NTSC to PAL from VHS captures only in Black & White, HELP!

I'm trying to capture video via a Pinnacle Moviebox to Imovie. PAL VHS through the box is fine, no problem. As soon as I switch to NTSC setting and run an NTSC VHS tape the picture reverts to Black and White. Changed the cable, changed the VHS player, talked to Pinnacle, no advice offered. I am getting deperate! Need to transfer tapes urgently for a show-reel. All advice gratefully accepted.

iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jun 18, 2006 11:20 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 18, 2006 1:47 PM in response to alaner1950

Check your settings and cables: feeding composite video through a s-video cable yields B&W image.

So set the (S)VHS deck to either composite-out/s-video-out and use a corresponding composite/s-video cable and feed that into composite-in/s-video-in.

Also remember that a SCART connector can use either composite or s-video.

...there are quite many permutations that can go wrong there! 😉

Also older PAL TVs play NTSC as B&W.

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Answer 2

Jun 18, 2006 11:14 PM in response to alaner1950

When a PAL player plays an NTSC tape, the signal is 30fps (just like NTSC). BUT, the color is sent the PAL way. So it's not pure NTSC (and not pure PAL), so probably the converter can't handle that.

You probably need a native NTSC VHS player that sends a pure NTSC signal.

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Answer 3

alaner1950 Author

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Jun 19, 2006 12:40 PM in response to alaner1950

Thanks for your advice. It seems from both your comments and advice from Pinnacle that the source needs to be a true NTSC one from an American standard machine.

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