Panasonic NV-HS950 digital artifacting on some tapes

[herregaarden]

Hello

I recently happened upon a large number of VHS tapes with off air recordings that i would like to transfer, so after a bit of reading i went ahead and got a Panasonic NV-HS950 S-VHS desk and a Hauppauge USB Live 2 to begin the process.
I have however encountered a bit of a problem concerning my Panasonic deck.
I have attached a small clip(uncompressed) to, hopefully, illustrate the problem I’m having a bit better then i can explain it. The TBC was turned on and 3D-DNR turned off.
As can be seen over top of the subtitles, there is what seems to be some kind of digital artifacting, my reason for thinking this a digital artifact is because when i play the tape on a deck without all the digital bells and whistles of the Panasonic model, this “error” does not occur.
And whats weirder is that is does not happen on every tape i have tried to play in it,
it seems to be rather random. I can, on some tapes, get rid of it by turning on 3D-DNR, and sometimes not. I’m wondering if this a normal thing or if there is something wrong with my deck.
I have tried cleaning the drum and transport, but with no change.

My own theory is that this is capacitor related, but that's just a guess on my part.
I hope someone with more experience than me can help.

Thank you in advance

[latreche34]

If it doesn't happen on every tape then how is it the VCR's fault or capacitors?

[herregaarden]

Because it does not happen on any other VCR

[hodgey]

Judging by the clip does look like the tape path alignment may be a bit off (likely the exit guide) either on this VCR, or the recording deck. You can see the image is very noisy at the bottom, so the artifacting may be the dropout compensator trying to compensate for the drop in video signal strength when going off the edge of the video track on the tape. One way to check if that's the issue is to manually adjust the tracking control to see if the noise/dropout part moves up/down depending on tracking.

This model does have the fancy digital cirtuitry similar to the NTSC AG1980P, so it's not impossible that the SMD capacitors develop issues like on that one, though this looks more like an alignment issue to me.

[herregaarden]

When adjusting the tracking on the remote control it, unfortunately, does not go away or move.
I forgot to mention that the position of the lines varies from tape to tape, sometimes they are at the top of the screen, sometimes in the middle. It seems to be ramdom

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by herregaarden

When adjusting the tracking on the remote control it, unfortunately, does not go away or move.
I forgot to mention that the position of the lines varies from tape to tape, sometimes they are at the top of the screen, sometimes in the middle. It seems to be ramdom

This makes deck misalignment even more likely.

[herregaarden]

Thanks for the replies
My experience with VHS repair is fairly limited, where would be a good place to start?