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  #1  
05-28-2015, 01:39 PM
avinatbezeq avinatbezeq is offline
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Hi all,

I own the Panasonic DMR-EX98V which I've specifically bought (O.M.G. Six years ago!) to transfer VCR to digital video (and have only converted about 20 tapes, and forgot all about it till now )

So, anyhow, searching for info to see whether there's some new equipment ( which would hopefully transfer the converted videos to my NAS using WiFi or memory cards and free me from the need to burn the videos to darn DVDs just so I can move it to my computer) I came upon this article here which discusses the wonders of the TBCs.

So my question is: Considering that the Panasonic is a closed solution - VCR to HDD to DVD - do I need an external time base controller?

I'm asking because some of the tapes have white noise strips at the lower part, unless played on the original camera on which they were taken, which I fear no longer works, and I'm hoping a TBC will correct that...

Regards, and apologies for such a long question

Avi
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  #2  
05-28-2015, 03:22 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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After your tapes are captured as DVD, neither a line tbc nor a frame-level tbc will do anything. Too late for that. TBC's don't remove head-switching noise from the bottom of frames anyway. That's done in post-processing on a PC.

DVD isn't transferred to a PC via Firewire. They're copied to a PC with something like vobtompg. "Recording" them to other media will lower quality, besides being a complete waste of time. Firewire is for DV-AVI, which is playable only on a computer and is a different format than DVD. Once DVD's are transferred, you lose menus and chapters, and will have a single MPEG file instead of the VOB's that are now in your VIDEO_TS folders on disc. Most media servers can play MPEG's, and so can many set top players from external USB hard drives.

NOTE: You cannot "copy" the recordings from your recorder's hard drive. That drive uses a file format and operating system that makes them unreadable on PC's. Directly recording VHS to DVD isn't the best way to do it anyway. If you want to clean up the noise, you have to transfer the VOB's to a computer, clean them up, and re-encode them -- again, that's another quality hit. "Copying" via FireWire is unfeasible and won't remove the noise.

You can always copy the entire VIDEO_TS folder contents to an external hard drive from a DVD disc and keep the DVD features. Some modern BluRay players will play a complete DVD copied that way to an external drive, some will not. Someone familiar with external servers can advise as to whether or not the server will do it from a VIDEO_TS folder -- I don't use them, as many don't have playback processing qualities that can match a good DVD or BluRay player.
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05-28-2015, 05:18 PM
avinatbezeq avinatbezeq is offline
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Sorry, English is not my first language. I'll try to be clearer:

The process I'm currently employing is as follows:

1. I use the Panasonic to import my VCR tapes to its internal hard disk.
2. I use the Panasonic to write the video from its hard disk to a DVD.
3. I put the DVD in my PC's DVD tray.
4. I use any number of software tools such as Nero Video or DVD Fab to import the DVD as video files.
5. I use the LAN to copy the video files to the NAS.

Given this, what I'm asking is about phase 1 only: I think I could tell the Panasonic to route the video signal through an external TBC and back again to the HDD, so the route would be Internal-VCR -> TBC -> Internal-HDD and not Internal-VCR -> Internal-HDD. The question is - Should I bother?
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05-28-2015, 08:50 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Thanks for clarifying.

Won't work. Your Panasonic can't see 2 inputs at the same time. Should be:
VCR -> TBC -> Panasonic

You might not be aware of this, but your Panny has elementary line-tbc and basic frame-sync circuitry built into the Line 1 input. You might also be unaware that the circuit "VCR -> TBC -> Panasonic" will defeat the line and frame sync circuitry in your Panny, which won't see anything to correct after your signal passes thru the first TBC - but the Panasonic will get rebuilt/scrubbed frame-level timing corrections to begin with, but not the line-level timing cleanup. If you use the TBC as you describe with the TBC connected after going thru the Panny's input and its output, the external TBC won't see anything to correct after going thru the Panny's built-in circuitry -- besides, that method won't work anyway.

Either way, it won't remove the head-switching noise at the bottom of the frames, nor will it resolve the problems already present in the DVD's with compression artifacts that result from recording VHS directly to DVD.
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  #5  
05-29-2015, 05:35 AM
avinatbezeq avinatbezeq is offline
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- Just work with the panny.

Thank you for taking the time and answering!

Avi
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  #6  
06-02-2015, 12:50 PM
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I'm not sure if this model had passthrough. Doubt it.

Anyway, as stated, it's too late for a TBC. The video is already digitized.

The only way to remove overscan noise (head switching, closed captions, etc) is to mask/matte (DO NOT CROP!) and re-encode.

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06-03-2015, 03:52 AM
avinatbezeq avinatbezeq is offline
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Sorry, what but does "mask/matte (DO NOT CROP!) and re-encode" mean?

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06-03-2015, 12:36 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Basically it means that a mask of black border pixels can be overlaid onto the image to hide head switching noise at the bottom of the frame. Many mpeg editing software apps can do this, all using different buttons/controls/filters, etc. A decent software editor (NLE) would bne the inexpensive Sony Movie Studio Platinum. If you have something like Cyberlink/Pinnacle already installed, I'd recommend that the best thing you can do with it to uninstall it (junkware, with a poor encoder and buggy interface). After masking, the video must re-encoded and re-authored for DVD, which the Sony app can do. Keep in mind that re-encoding lossy MPEG2 redordings involves a quality loss, so keep the output bitrate fairly high.

It can also be done in VirtualDub, but VirtualDub doesn't re-encode. It can output a lossless, decoded video at about 25GB/hour if you use lossless YV12 compression such as huffyuv. But you still need an encoder and authoring app. I doubt you'd want to take that route. Use an NLE like Movie Studio Platinum, and you won't have to learn how to do all that, other than getting into the program's user guide to find out how it works.

I think you know what it means to crop an image. Changing image dimensions thru cropping destroys the aspect ratio and gives a frame size that isn't valid for DVD.
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06-03-2015, 01:19 PM
avinatbezeq avinatbezeq is offline
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10x

I went through (some of) the samples here and since, as I mentioned, problem looks like have white noise strips at the lower part of the video, I think it's more like tracking error. As mentioned it occurs mainly when the tape is played on my living-room VCR, but is less pronounced when the tape is run on the original video camera (anyhow, last time I checked, years ago, when it was still working

If a software solution is available, it should be something like "photoshop correction", i.e. identify frames with noise and "import" correct pixels from neighbouring no-noise frames to replace the corrupted pixels. I hope something like this is available for the PC.
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06-03-2015, 01:53 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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The noise is your sample isn't head switching noise. Anyway, you can't correct the kind of noise shown by using photo apps. That kind of noise usually indicates damaged tape, dirty tape, or dirty video heads.

Rather than work with someone else's sample, how about posting a sample image from your own video? If you play your video in VLC player you can pause on a noisy frame and capture an image directly from the video to your clipboard.
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06-03-2015, 02:02 PM
avinatbezeq avinatbezeq is offline
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That's a GREAT idea. It'll take time - the setup hasn't been active for years, the tapes are packed and I have no indication where the ones from the bad period are - but I'll definitely post here! Thanks!!
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06-03-2015, 02:48 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Thank goodness you still have the tapes.

If you already have a DVD version with that noise on it, you can make an image from the DVD in VLC player. I'm curious, because the noise in that internet demo doesn't match your description of a small white area at the bottom of the image. It's best that we're all discussing the same thing.
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  #13  
06-03-2015, 04:25 PM
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Cropping also screw up interlace. That's worse than messing up the aspect.

I prefer to use VirtualDub for masking.
TMPGEnc can do it as well.
In Premiere, it's called the "clip" filter.

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06-17-2015, 06:58 PM
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Goldwingfahrer Goldwingfahrer is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
I'm not sure if this model had passthrough. Doubt it.
passthrough = yes

Output quality is not so good ...
HDMI out to Blackmagic Studio. 2 [HDMI-in]
whether with Edius, VDub or Blackmagic Software
see article 235
http://forum.gleitz.info/showthread....ight=dmr+ex98v
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  #15  
06-20-2015, 08:07 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Goldwingfahrer View Post
passthrough = yes

Output quality is not so good ...
HDMI out to Blackmagic Studio. 2 [HDMI-in]
whether with Edius, VDub or Blackmagic Software
see article 235
http://forum.gleitz.info/showthread....ight=dmr+ex98v
Good to know. Appreciate the update.

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