Importing OLD black and white videotape - please help!

Question

Hello!
I have imported many VHS tapes with a setup that includes iMovie HD '06 and a sony miniDV camera set to pass-through video. Quality of course limited by VHS tape source but problem importing a black and white VHS tape has me stumped. The black and white tape was actually dubbed years ago from reel-to-reel sony videotape, though I don't think that should matter:
Tape is a high-contrast outdoor scene and occasionally when less contrasted imported picture is watchable but mostly plagued by bands of light and dark. The really weird thing is that simultaneously with importing footage with the contrast bands the TV hooked up to the VCR shows a good, watchable picture! Something in the conversion must be astray - though same setup works fine for color (and in fact imports TV channel that VCR is set to when tape is not playing). I have a feeling that this is problem with some compensatory mechanism in camera that attempts to dampen the contrast and overcompensates - sort of like Macrovision works (my limited understanding of it, anyway!). Importantly, the picture on the camcorder shows the same artifacts. Anyone with any ideas? Would getting an S-Video player help (I couldn't find one a while back when I bought this VCR for dubbing purposes)? Any help appreciated! -Bob

Answer 1

It may be that your "black and white" tape is a copy of a tape of another TV system, e.g; it's a PAL recording of a French SECAM tape, or it's a US NTSC tape.
In other words, because it's a copy of an original of a different system, the colour information isn't reproducible.
iMovie may thus be confused about what it's supposed to be importing.
This is suggested because you say that "..the TV hooked up to the VCR shows a good, watchable picture!.." ..If it's a multi-standard TV which can display PAL, SECAM and NTSC, and it's a multi-standard VCR, then it may be showing you a reasonable copy of the original, but iMovie isn't automatically multi-standard (..you have to choose PAL or NTSC when starting a project..) and so it's caught between two systems. Why not see if you get any better result by changing the default standard (PAL or NTSC; 25fps or 30fps) and then starting a new project?
If you're in Euro-PAL land, and you can manage to find and borrow an NTSC player, and import through an NTSC camcorder (..or the other way round, depending on where you are..) you might see if that can play the tape correctly.