My Betamax, VHS, 8mm, LD digitizing project?
 

Hello, a little introduction, and my digitizing project...

Hi! I am new here. I've held a job in TV for over 30 years as primarily a tape/master control guy. I always loved tape formats. I have far too many, and this lockdown situation has afforded me the time to go through a bunch of tapes and begin digitizing them. At work, I do a lot of encoding from tape to computer, but I'm new at having a home setup. I kept seeing this forum come up in searches and I can see that there is a lot of useful information here.

Right now, I have mostly Betamax, VHS, 8mm, and a few Laser Discs to encode, but I also have a handful of Hi8 and MiniDV tapes. For some reason in the 90s, I didn't think HD was going to catch on, so I also amassed a few 3/4", Beta SP, 1"(yes one-inch C!), and even a few DigiBeta tapes. I even have 2 or 3 JVC Digital-S(D9) tapes...how's that for obscure?

I'll be leaning on this forum for pretty much everything from recommendations for video capture cards as well as source decks.

My current situation: My old Panasonic PV-4020, which I was using strictly for logging purposes, just died. I have an AG-7750, but I lose the ability to playback LP speed there(I believe), so the quandary is how to proceed. Do I find another 4020 or something like it? I need a real time counter at least. Or, do I invest in something professional that has a sturdier tape path for playback? (I know that LP is the unwanted child of tape speeds and is not common on pro decks).

To conclude, thanks in advance for your help. I hope it won't be frowned upon if I jump into threads where there's a question I can answer. This looks like a great place and I'm looking forward to my stay here!

Thanks,
Dan

There is a similar thread here, it will give you some ideas,

I too work on a wide range of tapes consumer and pro, PAL and NTSC for specific local customers, here is my players:

- For all SD Betacam analog and digital small and large cassettes PAL/NTSC I have the Sony J3-SDI.
- For VHS, S-VHS and compact tape PAL/NTSC, I have the JVC HR-S7600AM a great consumer machine.
- For Betamax I, II, SuperBeta and ED Beta I have the Sony EDV-7500, Will get a PAL machine when I need it.
- For DV, miniDV, DVCAM, miniDVCAM, HDV miniHDV PAL/NTSC I have the Sony HVR-M15AU, this deck plays progressive tapes made by some consumer and pro camcorders.
- For Video8, Hi8 and Digital8 NTSC I have the Sony DCR-TRV720 and the Sony CCD-TRV66 NTSC (Hi8/8mm only for XR tapes), will get a PAL camcorder when I need it.

Thanks for your recommendations! For Beta SP. I have a BVW-60, but it needs work, so I was looking at a Sony J. Glad to hear it yields good results. Back in the days when we made DVDs through stand-alone machines at work, the J machines were our bread and butter.


Dan

The good thing about the J3-SDI and the sister model J30-SDI is that they are built in ADC for analog tapes so all what you need is a PCI SDI card installed on your PC and just transfer 1:1 like DV. The only difference is for analog tapes DV is lossy but SDI is lossless.

nosticker, how do you digitize your 1" type C tapes? I am working on a 1" machine right now (VPR-2B) and once I get it working am hoping to digitize some tapes. I am betting since it is a professional format you capture it straight to SDI and work from there?

latreche34 do you think the Brighteye 75 would work well for it? I was browsing a video archival document by the IASA and it mentioned that for 1" Type C you should convert the composite output to analog component and THEN capture the analog component to SDI 10-bit 4:2:2. Not sure if that is correct/makes sense or not. Maybe SDI capture works better when coming analog component vs composite? I know next to nothing about SDI.

I suppose I could use one of the XP/AIW setups, but I'd like to reserve those for VHS stuff and build a new workflow for 1" Type C. Plus it would be fun to setup a new, completely different workflow.

Yes the BE75 is the perfect capture device for all obsolete composite formats such as 1", 1/2", u-Matic, SelectaVision, LaserDisc just to name few. It has a pretty good comb filter and built in TBC and some other advanced settings if hooked up to the computer with a USB cable and use its control app (USB for control only), You will have to have a SDI input on your computer, It is SDI out only device.
It also does input Y/C (S-Video), component (SD/HD) and a 2ch stereo audio.

If composite is your main focus you can use the BE25 and the BE26. They are composite only devices.

Interesting. The comb filter was the thing I was forgetting when I was reading about the IASA suggestion to send the 1 inch Type C output to a device that converts it to analog component. I am just so used to only dealing with Y/C that I forget comb filters are a thing.

If the BE75 has a good comb filter as you suggest and as suggested in this doom9 thread, then I can just send the 1 inch output to the BE75. Actually I bet there is a way to alter the Demod board on the VPR-2B so I can capture from the Y/C signal before they are added back together. Depends on if the head amp separates the FM Y and C signals for separate demodulation- it might not, maybe that's just a color under thing.

I wonder how the comb filter in the BE25/26 compares to the BE75? Maybe it is the same.