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03-26-2021, 09:11 PM
adultlunchables adultlunchables is offline
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I'm working on samples right now. I'm recording VHS tapes using the ES10 as passthrough and then recording with just my VCR and comparing the footage side by side. So far, I can't tell any discernible difference between the two. I've captured tapes with and without and ES10 and they look identical to me. If anything, the ES10 might have just the slightest more "noise" but it's so slight I could be imagining it. So far I've tried retail movies, a couple SP recordings from television. And right now I'm recording an EP that strikes me as low quality.

Am I missing something? Shouldn't I be able to tell the difference between any tape that gets passed throught he ES10?

I'm using S-Video in all examples. Still trying more tapes as we speak.
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  #2  
03-27-2021, 02:56 AM
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What VCR, what settings?

Samples needed, attach small clips to a post. H264 or MPEG fine, no need to upload large lossless AVI right now.

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  #3  
03-27-2021, 08:12 AM
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It's a Sony RDR-VX555 VCR > s-video into the ES10 > s-video into a Hauppauge WinTV HVR 1800 PCI card.

I've used both the largest MPEG2 settings in the WinTV software and lossless avi in VirtualDub (but to be honest I've never been able to tell the difference in quality between the MPEG2 and the avi even before the ES10 entered the mix). If you're not familiar with WinTV MPEG2 the compression seems to be about equivalent to using a dual layer DVD in SP mode (so about 8GB or so of MPEG2 per 2 hours of footage).

As for the ES10 settings, I've experimented with both turning noise reduction on and off. That's about the only setting I seem to have available to me. I have the remote, but haven't discovered any useful settings.
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  #4  
03-27-2021, 08:24 AM
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I used WinTV 15+ years ago for Hauppauge PVR cards, and it's never really changed in all that time. It's a very dated feeling software. Hauappauge MPEG encodes were always a bit soft, not the best, but not bad.

ES10 really has no settings.
- black level
- NR "on/off", which is more like low/high because it's always on

What are you expecting it to do for you?

Samples needed.

The main aspect of the ES10/15 is the line TBC, aka wiggle removal, tearing removal. For a non-TBC VCR, it's a must. But the better option is to just get the better VCR, as the ES10/15 has side effects to quality.

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  #5  
03-27-2021, 08:45 AM
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I get that the WinTV is average in performance, I'm not married to it. I've been hunting for other cards to try. Same story with my VCR. However, my main concern here is that since I just spend $140 USD getting as ES10 shipped to me from eBay, I really want to confirm if it's doing what it's supposed to or not. I'm wondering if I should send it back or keep it. I figured I would at least notice some kind of difference in the stability of the picture on tapes (not exactly quality).

I've uploaded a capture of a jumpy tape. File 01 is recorded with the ES10 in passthrough with noise reduction turned off. File 02 is recorded with only my VCR and no ES10.


Attached Files
File Type: mpg 01-with-es10.mpg (38.60 MB, 55 downloads)
File Type: mpg 02-without-es10.mpg (39.71 MB, 43 downloads)
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  #6  
03-27-2021, 08:50 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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The Sony you have is one of the dvd-recorder combos where the output goes through the internal digitizer before being output. Whatever it outputs is going to be a stable signal already, with any potential timing errors the internal video decoding chip didn't handle baked in so there is nothing the ES10 can do to improve things further. These use a philips/NXP video decoder that's pretty decent, and does a way better job than most capture cards, but it doesn't correct horizontal wiggle nearly as well as the ES10 does (unless they somehow did somethign special with it in this vcr). If you were using a normal vcr the capture card would probably be freaking out pretty bad from this tape.

On a normal VCR (without build-in TBC) the difference between a raw capture card and ES10 in the middle will be quite noticeable, see e.g this example.
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  #7  
03-27-2021, 09:34 AM
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Okay I think you're on to something. I pulled out my Sony SLV-D380p (which has no s-video and is NOT a DVD recorder). I put it into the ES10 and I can immediately tell a difference in stability of the picture. However, I'm going to say it's not conclusive as of this moment because I can't plug my SLV-D380p directly into my capture card for a direct comparison. My capture card only accepts coax and s-video. However, to my eye, I think I can finally see the ES10 doing its magic. I'm going to try another capture card or some kind of combo that will let me make a direct comparison, but I'm less worried than I was when I started this thread.

Thanks for coming in with that incredibly helpful answer. I really appreciate it.

I guess now the question is whether I like the ES10 line TBC more than I like the digital magic of the Sony RDR-VX555. Any opinions on that?
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  #8  
03-27-2021, 09:46 AM
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That source tape looks terrible, nth gen (copy of copy of copy,etc), with baked-in errors.

That HVR-1800 was never known as a quality card. MPEG shouldn't be used for something this damaged anyway, you need lossless to restore back to something more watchable.

That Sony has no digital magic. It's a low-end craptastic unit.

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  #9  
03-27-2021, 10:22 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
That source tape looks terrible, nth gen (copy of copy of copy,etc), with baked-in errors.
I'm purposefully using the worst tape I can find to try to determine some kind of difference between using the ES10 and not using it. Like I said earlier, I started out by testing SP tapes both commercially released and home recorded. However, not seeing any differences I started looking for crappier tapes on purpose for testing purposes. The tape in question (from the samples) is a retail copy of Future Shock (1993) recorded in what I believe is LP mode.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
That HVR-1800 was never known as a quality card. MPEG shouldn't be used for something this damaged anyway, you need lossless to restore back to something more watchable.
I understand the limitations of the HVR 1800 recording in MPEG but on my end I'm testing in both lossless avi through VirtualDub and on the WinTV software using MPEG. The reason the samples are in MPEG is because the file upload limit seems to be 99MB so I had to record 2 clips lower than 50Mb each so I could show you guys the files. I would have eaten 99MB in lossless in no time.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
That Sony has no digital magic. It's a low-end craptastic unit.
I don't have an explanation but my initial testings seems to confirm what the other commenter was saying about the Sony digitally stabilizing the signal and thus not allowing the ES10 to work. As soon as I used another VCR I could immediately see the effects of the ES10 in a way that was undeniable. I don't have a concrete explanation for the difference, but his comment allowed me to see the work of the ES10 for the first time. But the first effect was that the video shown in the samples routed through another VCR with the ES10 no longer rolls the image and it's infinitely more stable. Exactly what I was hoping for from the ES10.

I'm still working on more experimentation. But I'm making progress. The next step is to get a direct comparison between the other VCR and the other VCR + ES10. I'll share the sample clips with you as soon as I have them available. I'm going to have to set up another capture card to accomplish it because my capture card doesn't have composite inputs and my other VCR only has composite inputs. I do have another capture device, I'm just going through the steps of getting it set up.
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  #10  
03-28-2021, 02:03 PM
EmielBoss EmielBoss is offline
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Piggybacking this thread to say that I don't notice any difference either:

Capture.jpg

What could be the cause in my case? (Another sample here.)


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  #11  
03-28-2021, 03:31 PM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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What's the source? If it's 8mm tapes that are played in a camcorder with tbc enabled there won't be a lot of difference other than maybe some less lost frames on transitions between recordings. It should be quite noticeable if the camcorder tbc is off though.
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  #12  
03-28-2021, 04:06 PM
EmielBoss EmielBoss is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
If it's 8mm tapes that are played in a camcorder with tbc enabled there won't be a lot of difference
Yes, they're 8mm, so that would explain it. But since I read that the ES15 can have negative side effects, I expected a larger difference, I guess.
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  #13  
03-28-2021, 05:24 PM
scharfis_brain scharfis_brain is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
ES10 really has no settings.
- black level
- NR "on/off", which is more like low/high because it's always on

What are you expecting it to do for you?

Samples needed.

The main aspect of the ES10/15 is the line TBC, aka wiggle removal, tearing removal. For a non-TBC VCR, it's a must. But the better option is to just get the better VCR, as the ES10/15 has side effects to quality.
Even if I might repeat myself here:
The PAL-Version of the ES-10 does no denoising, when NR is set to "off". I did thorough tests. No temporal or spatial smearing at all.
If the ES-10 would have done the denoising anyways, any of my deshaking attempts would have failed due to smeared video. It didn't.
Also the PAL-Version of the ES-10 does not introduce banding or other artifacts.

This is the exact reason, why I stay away from JVC VCRs equipped with TBC and 3DNR: 3DNR cannot be switched off in JVC VCRs. This made my previous attemts to do deshaking impossible due to severe smear.

Also a big plus of the ES-10 its YPrPb output: This circumvents additional (vertical) chroma-loss due PAL-encoding-decoding (S-Video or Composite).
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  #14  
03-28-2021, 05:30 PM
EmielBoss EmielBoss is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scharfis_brain View Post
The PAL-Version of the ES-10 does no denoising, when NR is set to "off".
At risk of sounding stupid, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
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  #15  
03-29-2021, 05:20 PM
scharfis_brain scharfis_brain is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EmielBoss View Post
At risk of sounding stupid, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
This is a good thing.

Nearly all digital noise reduction circuits built into consumer electronics are much worse than you can do nowadays in software.

Thus the NR from a VCR or DVD-Recorder will most likely destroy fine details resulting into smeared textures of your video.
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  #16  
03-29-2021, 06:38 PM
EmielBoss EmielBoss is offline
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Is it possible that the PAL ES15 also has no NR, since I'm not noticing any difference between captures with and without the ES15?

Quote:
Nearly all digital noise reduction circuits built into consumer electronics are much worse than you can do nowadays in software.
Then why is it generally recommended on this site to turn the camcorder's DNR on?
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  #17  
03-29-2021, 10:59 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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The line TBC is tight to DNR in camcorders and VCR's, You cannot turn them on and off individually.
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  #18  
03-30-2021, 09:03 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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The Sony 8mm camcorders with TBC/DNR have a DNR setting that can be turned off independently I've usually left it on though, as it's pretty mild and doesn't seem to have much noticeable negative image quality impact. Looking at the output compared to other playback devices it does look like there is some always on digital chroma NR going on though. It looks way to clean for being raw or just analog NR.

On JVC VHS VCRs the DNR function is tied to the TBC setting, the setting enables both the TBC and digital noise reduction (there is analog NR separately which is impacted by the EDIT or picture setting depending on model, which is also in the non-SVHS ones.), Judging by the techincal manual/sheets the SVHS/Digital board may do a bit of NR even with the TBC turned off and in non-TBC SVHS models, though much less than with the TBC active and may or may not be affected by EDIT mode juding by some threads.

Some of the later panasonic SVHS VCRs there were separate DNR and TBC settings (and some models with DNR only). I don't remember what the NTSC AG1980P does. The older PAL NV-HS1000 and NV-FS200 (hardware-wise equivalent to the NTSC AG1970P) models do not have any digital noise reduction, only analog, as far as I know, which isn't affected by the TBC setting but controlled by the picture setting switch/knobs at the front.

The very late-model JVC SVHS/VHS camcorders with TBC have DNR active (especially noticeable on chroma) even with TBC off from what I remember when testing the ones I got.

Quote:
Originally Posted by EmielBoss View Post
Is it possible that the PAL ES15 also has no NR, since I'm not noticing any difference between captures with and without the ES15?
As far as I know NR on the PAL Panasonics is only active when the NR function is activated. There is also a "comb filter" setting, that one should probably be left on if the input is composite, but not sure what's preferable with s-video input. I don't think the settings and basic setup changed much from the ES10/EH50 and newer until the very late model blu-ray ones. The earlier (DMR-Exx) models have quite different menus and internals so not sure about those.
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  #19  
03-30-2021, 12:10 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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Yes I meant the chroma DNR is tight to TBC, Sorry for not being specific.
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