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06-20-2020, 06:52 PM
kingbean kingbean is offline
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Hi all.

I've dabbled in VHS capture over the past 15 years, with varying levels of technical competence. At first I HAD no idea what I was doing but the final output was just a dial-up web-ready WMV file so it didn't really matter. These days I most capture videos of bands playing live, which for a time I was putting to DVD but now I archive as untouched captured files. These can vary from a '1st gen' tape, to something that has been dubbed and re-dubbed multiple times across who-knows what kind of equipment. Occasionally I'll do a commercial VHS but mostly they are just home-copied tapes. I'm in Australia so it's mostly PAL but I have had, and do have now, some NTSC tapes to capture.

My set up for the past five or so years has been:

JVC HR-S5500AM > S-Video > Cypress CYP 100G > S-Video > Canopus ADVC110 > Firewire > Premiere Pro or WinDV

I've always been satisfied with the results I got from this. I knew this wasn't one of the higher-end JVC decks, but I was happy with it. From time to time there would be a rough patch or two in my captures, but I put this down to the footage having been copied half a dozen times previously.

Recently I was capturing a new batch of tapes which were received from the person who filmed them. They are first-gen copies from the master. They captured well with the exception of two bands, which were displaying an on-and-off horizontal distortion:



I've attached a short clip of this also (HorizontalDistortion.avi).

You can see that it's not constant, but it's annoying to watch. I figured this was a sign to finally upgrade my VCR. I managed to find a JVC HR-S7600AM on eBay. The seller was not local so I had to have it shipped. I'm hoping this wasn't a mistake.

In the meantime, I was reading more and more posts on the DigitalFAQ forums and discovered my Canopus unit was not ideal either. I'm running Windows 10 (unfortunately) so my options were limited. The ATI USB units sounded appealing but I couldn't find any locally, and with international postage as it is currently, I explored other options and eventually found a Diamond VC500 that I could get within Australia. There seems to be mixed reports on these but it was cheap enough I'd give it a go.

I had another tape a friend had just dropped off which he said had a lot of rolling when he tried to watch it at home. We gave it a quick test on my older unit, via the TBC, and it was playing back (mostly) smoothly. I was excited to see how the new VCR would improve it further.

Both the VCR and the VC500 have now arrived and I excitedly got everything hooked up yesterday. I thought it would be a good idea to use this known-troublesome tape to get some sample clips of various set-ups and compare the differences. These clips are attached to this post. I've compressed them to MP4 (H.264, 25Mbps CBR, other settings 'Match Source') but that is fine for what I'm showing. All clips are using S-Video.

01 JVC HR-S5500AM - ADVC110 - Premiere
VCR signal straight into the Canopus unit, into Premiere. JVC blue-screen stuttered. Footage was rough and rolling. Settles down about 18 seconds into sample clip.

02 JVC HR-S5500AM - CYP100G - ADVC110 - Premiere
As per Example 01 but adding the TBC into the chain. JVC blue screen now stable. Footage still rolling but seems a slight improvement to severity? As above, settles down at about 18 sec. Looks like some repeated/skipped frames as the singer brings his arm down from the mic, around 00:05:04. Example 01 doesn't do this, but the footage rolls. The TBC is doing its job, but the ADVC is struggling?

03 JVC HR-S5500AM - CYP100G - VC500 - VirtualDub
Same playback as example 02 but capturing via the Diamond VC500 into VirtualDub. Almost identical to Example 02 except slightly sharper due to lossless capture. Does not duplicate frame. INTerlacing more visible but likely due to being 'hidden' in DV format of 01 and 02?

04 JVC HR-S7600AM - CYP100G - VC500 - VirtualDub
As per Example 03 but with my new VCR for playback. I was excited to see how clean this would come through - unfortunately it's a complete mess. Constant rolling. Turning the JVC's NR/TBC off seems to 'hold' the roll a litle, before it shifts again. Turning it back on sets the rolling off. I tried al sorts of JVC settings (B.E.S.T. on/off, Digital 3R, various Picture Control options) but none of it helps.

I tried other dubbed tapes in the 7600, and had the same experience: tapes that previously played back fine in the 5500 are now rolling all over the place in the 7600. A commercial VHS that plays just fine on my other VCRs, doesn't roll on the 7600 but has about the top fifth of the screen tearing throughout. I tried capturing back through the ADVC110 and it's no change.

Long post, sorry, but in summary I've got two main questions and one general query:

1. Did I get ripped off with my new VCR or can I do something to salvage this?? Please break it to me gently

2. If the 7600 was operating as it should - would this help for the horizontal distortion presenting in the initial clip?

3. If the horizontal distortion was introduced during a previous tape>tape copy - is there [I}anything[/I] I can do now to overcome it? I'm not clear on how something like this copies from tape to tape. Is it in the image signal (which would copy onto the new tape) or is it on the physical tape itself, therefore the tape I am playing back, according to the VCR, is 'fine'?

Thanks in advance!!


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  #2  
06-21-2020, 12:56 AM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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Did you clean the VCR heads and tape path when it arrived? I don't know how it handles normal tapes but possibly has a jammed DD system due to cracked gears. Troubleshooting a VCR over forum posts is just not possible unfortunately.
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  #3  
06-21-2020, 08:26 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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On the clip you have it looks like there's a tracking issue (quite possible that the recording VCR was a bit misaligned) the top of the video track is being distorted/cut off leading to the TBC/capture device after it in the chain struggling to know where the frame starts. The VCR TBC doesn't usually help much in this case, it should normally help with the horizontal distortion you are showing though if the tape is fine otherwise. Does manually adjusting tracking help any?

Other than the digital TBC circuit, the two VCR aren't massively different (the 7600 a higher-end model from the next year, slightly updated ICs + it has the dynamic drum system.) The x600 series also let you fine-tune the picture a bit more, rather than just having edit on/off. If the tapes you are capturing were recorded on a slightly misadjusted VCR, it may be that the tape alignment in the 5500 is slightly closer to the recording VCR.

As for the new VCR, does it play commercial tapes normally other than screen tearing? usually such tapes you have to play with the VCR TBC off, and instead use a DVR or similar for image stabilization.
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  #4  
06-21-2020, 02:06 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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The 7600AM has manual tracking adjustment by pressing PR+/PR- while playing back a tape, But from experience I learned that if the vertical distance between black bars is not the exact height of a frame then it is not tracking issue it's rather alignment problem, Check the P guides if they are loose, if not then it's highly likely the DD system is jammed in the wrong position, This can be temporarily fixed. Keep in mind that a slightly miss aligned VCR can playback pre recorded SP tapes perfectly but struggles with low speed or problematic tapes, There is a reason why alignment tapes existed back in the day.
Whatever you do, do not try to attempt to re-align the VCR without knowing 100% sure it is miss aligned AND have the knowledge to do such task.
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  #5  
06-21-2020, 02:18 PM
themaster1 themaster1 is offline
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I know for a fact i had these "horizontal distortions" with an old secam home tape that had many wrinkles throughout.
So yeah you might want to disable the vcr's TBC for this one, because it check the tension of the tape periodically and it most likely is off.

Does the tape shell look unsual to you compared to others ? (soft plastic) If yes you might want to swap it for a regular or even better s-vhs (with the hole trick). Long story short, i have a couple of these (ntsc commercial music videos) and they insert bad (not much 1-3mm maybe), thus: misaligned from the get go and horizontal distortion on the menu...

I'm back to my regular program now ciao
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  #6  
06-21-2020, 08:54 PM
kingbean kingbean is offline
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Thanks everyone for the input. I'll play around with it a bit more today and see if I can narrow it down. Will report back!
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  #7  
07-02-2020, 01:11 AM
kingbean kingbean is offline
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Well, I gave this another batch of testing with all sorts of different VHS tapes (commercial, ex-rental, dubbed) and every combination of settings I could muster. Different cables. Different chains. Different displays. Nothing helped. Luckily for me the seller accepted that it was not functioning as described and I returned the machine. Phew. Now the search begins anew!
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