🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1909@ur-tut.UUCP>, giaccone@ur-tut (Tony Giaccone) writes:
> I'm not sure that this is the right newsgroup to post this to, but I couldn't
> find anyother that seemed more appropriate. A friend of mine recently took a
> trip to Greece to visit family. While there an uncle took several hours of
> Video tape of the family together for my friend to take home (to the US) with
> her.
> 
> When she got back to this country, she tried to play the tape on her VCR, and
> the picture was mostly snow. The voices were still audible, though they were
> speaking at a higher pitch, and faster then they should have been. She tried
> playing with the tracking, but that didn't solve the problem.
> 
> So the question is what's causing the problem (my guess is that it's because
> Greece operates on 50 cycles rather than our 60)? Second does anyone know of
> a service in this country that can copy/duplicate this tape so that it's
> viewable on a US VCR??

Spot on, yes, the field frequency will make it difficult to view the
tape in the US, however, in spite of this you might still be able to
get a watchable picture from some VCRs, depending on how much the drum
servo is willing to Adjust the speed for you. The TV set will also
matter, since you are going to try to make it scan at 50Hz, some sets
will do this, but it depends on the amount of automatic adjustment their
timebase is willing to perform. Line frequency isn't a problem since
525x30=15750 ~ 625x25=15625, and most sets will cope with this.

What I am saying is, try several VCRs, I think newish toshibas might be
able to do it, and certainly there is a pin on the servo chip which you
can tweak to force the thing to sync at the different frequency. If you
get the sound right, you'll need to experiment with TVs to get a decent
picture - possibly adjust the vertical/horizontal holds?

Finally, don't expect colour unless you've got a multistandard set,
since Greece (I think) uses PAL, and the US NTSC. Probably, you'll get
best results on a monchrome set. For further detail on standrds
conversion why not ring your local TV station?


Hope this is of help/interest

Al.
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