Capturing from VHS tapes to PC

The VHS format can only render 350 tv lines, whereas broadcast tv is 525 lines in the US (625 lines in Europe). SVHS is capable of perhape 420 lines. It may be that your capture card needs a setting for VCR capture as opposed to TV capture. Most Video for Windows format cards (Miro, Pinnacle, FAST, Dazzle) have this setting as a checkbox in the video source menu. This allows the card to interpolate the missing lines from VHS.

Many NTSC capture systems are configured as 640x480 whereas PAL settings are 768x576. The additional missing lines in the TV formats are non displayed lines which carry serial teletext data. VHS ignores these teletext lines and does not display them on a tv but capture systems often capture this as a blank area if not properly configured.

Digital video captures from PAL always look much better than from NTSC because the resolution, quality and colour balance is that much better.

You don't mention how you are performing the conversion from VHS to digital. I would assume that you also have the ability to record input from a digital camcorder through a firewire port. Hopefully you also own a digital camcorder. If so, then Iwould suggest that you connect the VHS player to the inputs of your digital camcorder (where it works like a videotape deck) and record either directly into your PC or, if the camcorder won't permit that, then record on the digital tape and then transfer from the digital tape to your PC. You may be experiencing problems with your current input card. Using the camcorder to perform the conversion should not give you those problems.