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  #21  
05-28-2013, 07:42 PM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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Well I'm picking up the Beta winder that MisterBetamax makes (not the Sony one) so that I can put the tapes in that first, and ff/rw about 3 times before putting them into my machine. Hopefully any shedding will occur in the winder, instead of the actual Beta.
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  #22  
05-28-2013, 07:59 PM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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the winder is a good idea
but a junky vcr might even do a better job though
you can play the tape though-passing the tape over the heads/capstan etc
also gives you a chance to view the tapes before putting them in your expensive deck.
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  #23  
06-04-2013, 05:35 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tomswift View Post
Even just watching stuff on VHS, I always preferred how the old black and white movies looked a lot crisper than the colored VHS tapes
Sadly that applied to very few VHS tapes. Most were cruddy for other reasons. I'm a B&W movie/TV fan myself.

Quote:
Originally Posted by msgohan View Post
Here is a practical example of 240 px being insufficient for plain old VHS. Even 352 loses brightness in the finest details if you really zoom in, thanks to the averaging of the scaler.
On my screen (which is calibrated), those appears virtually identical. And resolution would not cause brightness issues, as that's all in the luma. That's unrelated to resolution. I'd say your test actually proves that 240x480 is quite adequate!

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomswift View Post
This is more of an update, but I have managed to do a comparison of some stuff that I shot around town on Mini-DV... I just don't see how people can say that regular Betamax and VHS are in the same league in terms of resolution.
The DV looked good because it was shot, not converted.
Betamax and VHS are nearly identical in many ways. If one is worse, then the VCR comes into question.

Quote:
Originally Posted by volksjager View Post
cleaning tapes generally suck - they just smear dirt around
I just felt like quoting this because it's important! Never use a cleaning tape! It doesn't clean anything!

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  #24  
06-04-2013, 10:38 AM
NJRoadfan NJRoadfan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
I just felt like quoting this because it's important! Never use a cleaning tape! It doesn't clean anything!
If this is the case, why do manufacturers continue to push them? JVC pushes them in all their manuals, I even have one of their cleaning tapes (came with the DVHS deck sealed). Heck the WVHS decks came with one. I also notice Sony likes pushing cleaning tapes with all their 8mm and MiniDV camcorders. I think they even made MicroMV cleaning tapes.
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  #25  
06-04-2013, 10:47 AM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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to sell them of course.
they dont do a good job and some are downright abrasive to the heads.

open it up and use a chamois stick and alcohol
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  #26  
06-04-2013, 03:48 PM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
Sadly that applied to very few VHS tapes. Most were cruddy for other reasons. I'm a B&W movie/TV fan myself.
I know what you mean. Most of those Public Domain movies were either in LP or SLP (only once did I find a PD movie, "Dick Tracy Detective", recorded in SP), plus the prints they came from seemed to be the worst prints out there.

Quote:
The DV looked good because it was shot, not converted.
Betamax and VHS are nearly identical in many ways. If one is worse, then the VCR comes into question.
I'd disagree, because even though I was going right from a DVCPRO deck with the tape, I also did a recording to a AG-1970 with just a regular VHS tape inserted and the S turned off, so I'm not even talking S-VHS here. Compared to the Betamax the VHS just looked undefined and nowhere near as sharp, and the Colors weren't as stable. Of course this is a new recording compared to a 30 year old recording.
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  #27  
06-04-2013, 06:12 PM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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i think Beta is a bit better than VHS apples to apples.
but again it really depends on the machine.

the SL-HF900 is one of the better Beta decks.
the AG-1970 is an OK deck - nothing to write home about(most of them are beat to death/ worn out too)
i would like to see a comparo tape between the beta and a HR-S9600U, HS-HD2000U or SR-W5U

Video8 and HI8 are way better than either VHS or Beta IMO
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  #28  
06-04-2013, 07:39 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by volksjager View Post
i think Beta is a bit better than VHS apples to apples.
but again it really depends on the machine.
the SL-HF900 is one of the better Beta decks.
the AG-1970 is an OK deck - nothing to write home about(most of them are beat to death/ worn out too)
i would like to see a comparo tape between the beta and a HR-S9600U, HS-HD2000U or SR-W5U
Video8 and HI8 are way better than either VHS or Beta IMO
AG-1980 and JVC 9600/9800 here too. I'd like to see better VCRs tested for this. (The SR-W5U is good ONLY if the model is good. And good luck with that.)

And ditto on 8mm/Hi8 outdoing VHS/S-VHS/Betamax/Betawhatever. The 8mm/Hi8 did not suffer from chroma noise! I should have picked 8mm and then upgraded Hi8 all those year ago, and NOT VHS and S-VHS-C. Oops.

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  #29  
06-05-2013, 11:11 AM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
On my screen (which is calibrated), those appears virtually identical.
Save them, flip back and forth, and look at her hair, eyes, and to a lesser extent teeth. I can show some more obvious examples using animation if you'd like.

Quote:
And resolution would not cause brightness issues, as that's all in the luma. That's unrelated to resolution.
Not sure what you're saying here. A change in the brightness values of the pixels is being caused by the averaging done by scaling down: i.e. bright and dark pixels next to each other become grey.
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  #30  
06-05-2013, 05:26 PM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
AG-1980 and JVC 9600/9800 here too. I'd like to see better VCRs tested for this. (The SR-W5U is good ONLY if the model is good. And good luck with that.)

And ditto on 8mm/Hi8 outdoing VHS/S-VHS/Betamax/Betawhatever. The 8mm/Hi8 did not suffer from chroma noise! I should have picked 8mm and then upgraded Hi8 all those year ago, and NOT VHS and S-VHS-C. Oops.
I went with the 70 because I was trying to look at two machines that were close in age. As I recall the 1980 wasn't released till the extreme late-1980's (I.e. 1989) or extreme early-1990's. My test was to see, if it was 1985 (and yes I realize that Mini-DV/DVCPRO weren't around in 85), what would be the better storage format for your average home shooter who maybe wanted to reuse their camcorder tapes instead of buying new tapes for their camcorders, but would buy new tapes for a set top VCR.

If you look at my post up top (#22) I noted that in the VCR book it was noted that Betamax stored the Chroma at 688 kHz while Video/Hi-8 stored the Chroma at 743khz (VHS/S-VHS stored chroma at a very weak 629khz). Of course Super Betamax outperformed Video8 on the Luminance front with a 5.6 MHZ signal (of course on a few models, such as the SL-HF2100 and the ED Beta's the luminance maxes out at 6.0 MHZ), compared to 5.4 for the V8.

Of course you've got to wonder, on the consumer front, if Betamax had won the war, what future advances we might've seen with the technology (probably something that even surpassed the Hi8 system, maybe even with better chroma, but still backwards compatible with legacy formats, similar to Digital-Beta and Betacam SP in the pro world).
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  #31  
06-05-2013, 05:33 PM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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the AG-1980 came out in late 1995 and was built until late 2001.
the Ag-1970 is from the early 90's

just about any VHS deck made before the 90's is crapola

a great comparo would the best vs the best - SL-HF2100 vs SR-W5U
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  #32  
06-06-2013, 11:54 AM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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So you're suggesting that a standard-def VCR go up against a High-Definition VCR (I recognize that the W5U is a W-VHS). If I was doing that I'd compare an EDV-9300/9500 against a W-VHS. But at this point I wouldn't even touch a W-VHS machine considering the parts are scarce. D-VHS, maybe, but not W-VHS.
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  #33  
06-06-2013, 01:07 PM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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the W-VHS deck can record VHS and S-VHS as well as HD.
my thought was to compare a SR-W5U in SD mode to a 2100 or Beta-ED

W-VHS is HD and therefore light-years better than even Beta-ED

when properly working you wont find a better deck than a W5U/W7U
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  #34  
06-06-2013, 10:27 PM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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But the test was to see what would be the better format for the era (mid-80's to early-90's, say 85-91) , so even a W-VHS deck wouldn't qualify for the test, since W-VHS didn't come ou til 1994. And it wasn't a test to see how good they tested on a professional level, but on a hobbyist level, with pro-sumer level equipment as the ceiling.
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  #35  
06-07-2013, 06:56 AM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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Beta is a tad better, but it was dead by the 90's

the best Beta decks where made in the late 80's early 90's
the best VHS decks where made late 90's early 2000's
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  #36  
06-13-2013, 03:34 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tomswift View Post
But the test was to see what would be the better format for the era (mid-80's to early-90's, say 85-91) , so even a W-VHS deck wouldn't qualify for the test, since W-VHS didn't come ou til 1994. And it wasn't a test to see how good they tested on a professional level, but on a hobbyist level, with pro-sumer level equipment as the ceiling.
You use a W-VHS deck for the S-VHS mode (TBC, etc), period. Nobody cares about the others. You get it for excellent VHS playback.
That's all it's good for.

And it's a prosumer deck, meaning serious hobby!

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  #37  
06-14-2013, 03:33 PM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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As I mentioned earlier, here is an example of practical VHS resolution with an animated logo. The lines can't be stuffed into 240 pixels.

Code:
V1 = last
Interleave(V1.Subtitle("720x480"),V1.Subtitle("360x480 (Spline36)").Spline36Resize(360,480).Spline36Resize(720,480),V1.Subtitle("240x480 (Spline36)").Spline36Resize(240,480).Spline36Resize(720,480))
AssumeFPS(2)


Attached Images
File Type: png HannaBarbera-Full.png (444.1 KB, 22 downloads)
File Type: png HannaBarbera-Third.png (365.6 KB, 21 downloads)
File Type: png HannaBarbera-Half.png (401.6 KB, 21 downloads)
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  #38  
06-15-2013, 02:28 PM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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I was just looking on Mister Betamax's website, and I found something of interest when we are comparing the Betamax line to the VHS line (in both cases this includes their successors). But on a home front, especially when it comes to ED Beta vs. S-VHS, Beta blows away it's competition, and ED even blows away S-VHS on a pro level with a luminance value of between 6.8 and 9.3 MHZ (S-VHS maxes out at 7.0 MHZ, and even Betacam SP maxes out at 8.8 MHZ).

If I had been shooting wedding and corporate videos back in the late-80's, early 90's era and I was deciding about whether to go with S-VHS or ED Betamax, I would've picked ED Betamax over S-VHS, just on the specs alone. Sure the Chroma wasn't as good as Betacam SP's Chroma, and I couldn't afford SP, I would've gone with ED Beta.
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  #39  
06-15-2013, 02:35 PM
volksjager volksjager is offline
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there is no doubt that Beta ED is better than S-VHS, but only a couple decks can use it and it needs special metal tapes.
i would have picked Hi8 over Beta-ED or S-VHS
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  #40  
06-19-2013, 07:10 PM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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The "special metal tapes" that ED Beta's need are the same as your average Betacam SP tape.
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