Quote: I captured an old VHS tape that has bad audio tracking. The audio narrative on the tape can be heard, but there is a steady buzzing background noise as well throughout the entire recording. I imagine I can somehow isolate the buzzing and delete it, but I'm an audio editing neophyte.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Thank you,

Sailor Guy

Have you tried the Tracking Adjustment on the video tape machine?

If you can adjust the Tracking to where the audio and video is clear, you can capture the tape again.

Mis-tracking often happens if the Video tape was recoded on a different machine than the one used for playback.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Also... does the video have noise (flickers/speckles)?
That's a sure sign of tracking gone wrong.

If you can't go back to the original tape and the video looks good but it's just the sound, I'm wondering if it could be that the source was too loud, causing distortion at high pitch? If this is on a DVD which came from a tape (or a tape from a tape) you might have difficulty since this noise is now part of the sound.

Good suggestion, unfortunately, my VCR is bare-bones and doesn't have any tracking adjustment options. I suppose I could search online for a more feature-rich VCR with tracking controls. Anyone have any recommendations for a particular make/model? PD 16 Ulimate 64-bit 16.0.2313.0; PhotoDir 7 Ultra; Win 10 Home 64-bit; Intel i5-2500K @3.3hGhz; 8 GB; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (4GB); Pinnacle Studio MovieBox HD 510-USB; Canopus ADVC-300; Sony Optiarc AD-7260S DVD; LG BE14 Blu-Ray

The source VCR tape is a very old (1995) original retail tape of a children's video we bought for my young (now teenage) kids. I'm converting it to digital MPG4 for them to keep for my grandchildren. PD 16 Ulimate 64-bit 16.0.2313.0; PhotoDir 7 Ultra; Win 10 Home 64-bit; Intel i5-2500K @3.3hGhz; 8 GB; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (4GB); Pinnacle Studio MovieBox HD 510-USB; Canopus ADVC-300; Sony Optiarc AD-7260S DVD; LG BE14 Blu-Ray

May not relate to your situation, but worth a gander...

There are two methods of recording - HI-FI (encoded) and analog audio - that were used on some VCRs.

If yours has spigots for each, try them both. There may be a switch on the unit to direct that output.

Also verify that the plugs from your audio wires are well seated in the machine's jacks.

"I imagine I can somehow isolate the buzzing and delete it"

Yes.

You can remove a constant background noise like hum or hiss from an audio track. In my situation I had an audio recording marred by a Super-8 film projector mechanical noise in the background, and I was able to completely remove the sound of the projector.

I'll condense a few steps here...Export your audio from your captured VHS into a wave file. Download and install the freeware open source audio editor Audacity. Import your audio into Audacity. Select a section of the audio where the buzzing (and nothing else) occurs. You are creating a noise profile. Then select Noise Removal and Audacity will use the noise profile to identify the bad noise and go through your audio file and remove the noise. Then bring that file back into PowerDirector.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Noise_Removal

You can get more information by Googling "using audacity to remove background noise"

Audacity is not the only audio editor capable of noise profile and noise removal, but Audacity is popular, and free.

Quote: The source VCR tape is a very old (1995) original retail tape of a children's video we bought for my young (now teenage) kids. I'm converting it to digital MPG4 for them to keep for my grandchildren.

The Tracking control is usually on the remote control. I have not seen any VCRs that don't have tracking on the remote.

If you do not have the remote, that is a problem. There are universal remotes you can buy, but where and if a universal remote has all of the functions, is another question.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.