Best VHS tape - Media Comparison (continued)

[tomswift]

This is in response to this thread ('Best VHS Tape - Media Comparison), and I'm new here, but I just wanted to add my support for the Maxell line of tapes and the BASF line as some of the finest tape stock's every made for VHS; I've even got some commercially-released tapes from around 1985 that were recorded on Scotch brand tapes that are still holding up very well and the quality is a lot better than many of the other commercially-released tapes that I have that were made in the 90's and early 2000's.

I'm a videographer that does weddings/event and industrial/commercial videos, as well as transferring people's home movies (don't touch the copyrighted stuff) over to DVD/digital file; any way in my business I only use Maxell Mini-DV and DVCPRO tapes for recording and storing (if BASF, or whatever their spun-off tape division is now called was available here in Canada and were in the tape field still, I'd probably say that it was a toss-up between both companies), because I used to tape some stuff in the 90's and early 2000's, before DVD-recorders were out, and I found that Maxell and BASF were the best for VHS, and later when I went to college, at first I used some JVC Mini-DV tapes, but I found they had a lot more drop-out than what I had seen in any Maxell/BASF tape, and even my college professors had told the class that Maxell was the top manufacturer of tapes (plus the college store only carried Maxell). My professors explanation was that with Sony, JVC and Fuji that they put all their money and energy into "making" the machines, but then the tapes were sort of a second thought: 'Okay,we've made the machine, let's sell it!...Oh, yeah, people need something to play and record in them, so let's just make up a tape.'

But in lordsmurf's last post in the other thread, he wrote:

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Lousy tapes are not just degraded image/audio quality, but there's playability issues. Generally speaking, the tape's internal transports wiggle and wobbly more than normal, so the signal isn't where it should be. You get meandering tracking and warbling audio. These tapes are problems more than 50% of the time-- EASILY!

Sure the internal transports may 'wiggle and wobble more than normal', but at the same time you can get real awful recordings and terrible tracking if you've made the recording on a cheap machine. I've transferred a couple of recordings where the tape stock was an excellent tape stock, but the recordings were made on 2-head, mono VCR's. My family and I have had a couple of 2-head, mono VCR's in the past, and I always found that on any speed, SP or SLP/EP, the tracking and color on those recordings was always the worst. Even now, if you find a stand-alone VHS VCR in a store, they always seem to be the 2-head, mono variety, which are the worst, even for just playback. I still have my old Memorex VHS VCR that I picked up back in 2001 (of course for my business, right now, I've got a Panasonic S-VHS AG-1970 for NTSC transfers, and a Panasonic S-VHS NV-FS100 for PAL transfers, but if my 1970 was out of service for a while, and I really needed to use my Memorex, I'd use it for regular VHS tape transfers, not VHS-C transfers---I'd wait till I got my 1970 back), and while I've had a few issues with it, requiring service on a couple of occassions, I'll never give it up, since it is a 4-head Hi-Fi HQ Quasi-SVHS deck. I've always found the 4-head Hi-Fi VHS VCR's to have had the best tracking and color on both recording and playback; I'm not an electronics engineer so I don't know the more finer details of the electronics side, but I always assumed that in order to record Hi-Fi the VCR's needed a better control track assembly than a mono VCR (something closer to the professional level control tracks), otherwise the Hi-Fi would sound like it was stretching or not playing back correctly.

And of course, while Maxell was still good with VHS-C tapes, the whole VHS-C format didn't hold up as well as the regular VHS tapes, and, from what I've seen, most people had 2-head mono VHS-C Camcorders, so most of the video from those tapes, I find, is below regular VHS video (and tends to have been recorded in SLP mode, since people wanted to be able to record their kids hockey games and such without having to switch out the tapes), especially when you are talking about tapes older than 5 years.

I still use the odd VHS tape for Weddings, since occasionally I'll get some asking for a copy of their video on VHS for their grandma who only has a VHS player, or sometimes to update a client on a project I'll just run off a VHS tape (and it doesn't matter whether it is in 4:3 or 16:9 just for an update---of course in 16:9 it'll be squished and I just explain to the client, when viewing on a 4:3 TV, that on the final DVD they'll be able to see it in it's non-squished format), but I'll use Maxell.

[kpmedia]

Welcome.

The biggest issue with Maxell is/was the formula change starting around 1999 or so. The tape went downhill, sadly. I took stats in 2012, on some of our multi-tape projects. I plan to write about tapes later this year -- both degradation, original shoddiness, and which brands hold up best.

I wonder if the Maxell DV is any better. I use Sony. DVCPro should be good from all. JVC DV is blah, agreed.
I don't agree with the professor regarding Sony. The tape comes from a different division entirely.

The control tracking can be lousy, and often is, on HiFi decks.

That Memorex VHS VCR probably spits out a ton a chroma errors, having no TBC.

The best way to deal with VHS-C is to re-spool it in a VHS clamshell. Those tiny tapes were/are rotten.

You can matte 16:9 to 4:3 for VHS. It doesn't take much effort.

Good stuff, nice to meet you.

[tomswift]

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Originally Posted by kpmedia

Welcome.

Thanks.

Quote:

The biggest issue with Maxell is/was the formula change starting around 1999 or so. The tape went downhill, sadly. I took stats in 2012, on some of our multi-tape projects. I plan to write about tapes later this year -- both degradation, original shoddiness, and which brands hold up best.

Well, where I am, here in Eastern Ontario, I find that (especially since I don't use VHS all that much anymore) the stores only stock the 5-pack of Memorex tapes, and even online ordering the most readily available tape stock is Maxell, and even with the formula change back in the late 90's, I still find that it's the best tape out there.

Quote:

I wonder if the Maxell DV is any better. I use Sony. DVCPro should be good from all. JVC DV is blah, agreed.
I don't agree with the professor regarding Sony. The tape comes from a different division entirely.

It may come from a different division, but did they put as much money into that division as the division that makes/made the machines. My professor was pointing out that with Maxell, since they don't make the machines, they can concentrate more on specializing/making better quality tape/media.

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The control tracking can be lousy, and often is, on HiFi decks.

I don't quite get what you mean by this in reference to Hi-Fi decks. Now then, obviously, compared to S-VHS and Professional level decks, consumer level VHS VCR's don't match up. But still, I find that a 2-head MONO VHS VCR has very little control tracking on the SP level all the way down to hardly any on the SLP mode, while a 4-head Hi-Fi VHS VCR has a lot better tracking on all the recording modes.

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That Memorex VHS VCR probably spits out a ton a chroma errors, having no TBC.

Check out this link. I used the Memorex for the 'Other Transfer Companies' video. Of course that's not showing how well it does with video recorded on 4-Head machines at SP mode, but that wasn't the purpose of the video in the first place.

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The best way to deal with VHS-C is to re-spool it in a VHS clamshell. Those tiny tapes were/are rotten.

That video that I linked to earlier I recorded before I went off to college, since I was applying to another college for their drama program and, because of the distance, they had requested a demo (if I had lived closer I would've just gone in an done the scene; also the video on the tape is actually a lot longer, because they had requested a soliloquy, if I remember correctly, of about 2-3 minutes in length, but I shot it in SLP mode because I didn't want to risk running out of tape), and my high school only had a 2 head Mono VHS-C camcorder, and even back then the tracking just wasn't there, since I remember trying it in a Samsung 4-head mono VHS VCR, and I could barely get it to stabilize, and then I used a Sylvania 4-head Hi-Fi VCR connected to my Memorex 4-head Hi-Fi VCR and I was able to get it stabilized some-what that way (of course there were still a few flips that got transferred, even though I redid the transfer a few times). But nowadays, even in my Memorex, the tracking is bad (but then when I transferred that video I found that I had recorded a program off of TV on the rest of the VHS-C tape, and that was recorded in SLP, Hi-Fi on a 4-head machine, and the tracking is improved by 200%; it barely moves, and, aside from a tear at the very bottom of the image that is cut-off on standard TV's, there are no tears elsewhere, but I'm not going to post that example due to copyright issues).

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You can matte 16:9 to 4:3 for VHS. It doesn't take much effort.

Yeah, I know. Take the AVI file and, instead of opening it in a 16:9 project, open it in a 4:3 project, downscale it so that the full image appears in the 4:3 box, and then play it out. That's good when you've got the final video, but when you are in the midst of a project and it's just an update, that doesn't work to well.