Hi everyone.
I have had a few pieces of gear arrive in the past week and believe I am finally ready to get my VHS tapes digitised to a high standard. My set up is as follows:
JVC HR-DVS2 > Cypress CYP100G TBC > Tevion USB >
VirtualDub
I am using S-Video at each step and the Tevion has come directly from Lord Smurf (thank you!).
My test captures are looking good, but I want to be sure they're not suffering from any problems before I get started on my tapes. My main concern is from the on screen displays, which maybe is not the best thing to judge by but I've got some questions. Of course these would all be turned off for capture, but I've left them on for now while getting set up.
1. The JVC menu. It looks acceptable at 100%, but if I play back full screen the edge artifacts and background pattern are noticeable. Is this just inherit in the JVC's OSD, or are these being introduced somewhere along my capture chain? I have tried with multiple S Video cables to no avail. I've also tried bypassing my external TBC and it still seems to be present (although harder to spot due to the other signal problems). Two screenshots attached. I should note that this has been present across three different JVC VCRs.
2. JVC OSD via ES10/15. I've been trying to experiment various connection methods for using the Panasonic ES10 or ES15 as a pass-through for problem tapes. What I've noticed is that the 'Play' triangle from the JVC gets passed through the Panasonic with no problem at first, but when the tape playback begins the triangle exhibits vertical jitter. Is this because the Panasonic's semi-TBC is correcting the
video's picture, and as a consequence the OSD is jittering? I've attached three videos of this. #1 is straight from the JVC, no jitter. #2 and #3 are from the ES15 and ES10. Both are using the front input but the same thing happened across front and rear S Video inputs as well as SCART >S Video through an adaptor. #3 highlights the pre/post jitter triangle.
3. General picture quality. Lastly, if anyone has any feedback on the general picture quality from those samples, it would be appreciated. I've also attached a fourth, non-cartoon clip if that's a better indication. None of these are the standard type of video content I digitise, but they were within reach and all commercial tapes, so I thought they'd be good tests.
Thanks in advance!