iMovie import from VHS gives flashing thin horizontal line at bottom of clip

[mandrews]

my method for importing from vhs to iMovie is to first record from my VHS player to my digital mini-DV camcorder. i then import from my digital camcorder into iMovie via firewire. the problem is that in iMovie the clips have a flashing thin horizontal line at the bottom - actually looks like a bit of the video is duplicated.

when i film original DV using my camcorder, it imports into iMovie just fine - no horizontal line.

In all cases, everything looks fine on my camcorder's screen.

any thoughts? it's driving me crazy and the clips are unusable.

thanks,
mike.

 

[localghost]

I think it’s the overscan area of the signal (VHS is made for TV-sets, they don’t show the area near the screen-border) – a lot of camcorders display less then they are recording, so you would not recognize it until it’s on your Mac screen.

It might be some old copy protection too (macrovision?).

Anyways, you just have to crop it - not sure if iMovie can do, you might need some plugins (google, versiontracker) or think about moving to FCP.