Should the TBC be in chain by default?
 

I’ve been trying to figure out, and had many discussions with my business partner, whether we should be keeping the external TBC in the chain by default or not.
We run a business importing and selling old commercial Japanese music VHSs from late-80s/early-2000s, and we offer free digitization with purchase. We are really passionate about preserving this history, but we also don’t have the absurd amounts of time to capture each VHS both ways and compare. We’ll certainly switch the TBC in/out of the chain if we spot a problem, but what is going to be a net positive more often than not? If not, what % of the time is without the TBC going to be better?
My gear is
JVC HR-S9911U, Panasonic AG-1970 > Cypress CDM-1200 TBC (green AVT-8710 clone) > ATI All-in-Wonder 7700

Hello. Thanks for being a premium member! Good to hear from somebody who's found this forum and is passionate about preserving video with high standards.

I have a Datavideo TBC, and I use it in the chain for all captures. I believe the TBC you have is well regarded, and I do not recall any criticisms of it being detrimental to the video output (assuming it's in good working order).

Without it, I believe one of the most common symptoms you would experience is a loss of audio/video sync. For any video, let alone music video, audio/video sync is a pretty noticeable issue.

You are not likely to be able to predict when you would encounter issues that would require a frame TBC. I don't think it's as simple as the age of the tape. The amount of wear or the storage conditions may have the biggest impact on tape playback degradation. But even that is rather difficult to determine. Even if you do an experiment to see how often the video benefits from the TBC, those results still would not help you predict when you would need it, as every tape is different. It only takes one bad spot on a tape, regardless of age or wear to cause something like a loss of audio/video sync.

I guess what I'm saying is you have a reputable TBC, which should only be doing good things for you. Therefore, you should use it all the time.

Having said that, I suppose there may be advice on this site about not overusing the gear, i.e. running it 100% for many hours at a time, as it may increase the odds of overheating and hardware failure. I suppose the same could be said for the VCRs. If you are transferring video several hours a day, every day, then you increase your odds of the gear failing sooner. VCRs may be easier to get than TBCs. So, if you really wanted to be conservative, you would ultimately have to spend many more hours reviewing every video you captured without the TBC, and then only redo things when you find an issue. That is a trade off of your time vs equipment time, and only you could determine whether you can afford that. You may find the TBC isn't needed much, or you may find the TBC is needed often enough that it is just best if you use it all the time to avoid capturing twice. Such an experiment will take a while for you to find out whether you can afford to use it only for recaptures or whether you need to use it by default.

I suppose there is also the possibility of having video that has too much vertical jitter as a result of a TBC not being able to lock on the signal properly. That is an issue that should be fairly pronounced early on, and so it wouldn't take long to decide to redo things either without the external TBC or turn off the VCR's internal TBC.

Best wishes!

Yes, always.

Only exception is rare unusual times that TBC makes the signal worse, usually only seen with nth gen tapes.

Thanks for your hard work and passion. The Japanese people are pretty diligent about obeying copyright law, and so a lot of their popular media will be lost to time without the efforts of people like you.

There's also some odd outside-Japan rules that screws with the availability of Japanese media outside Japan.

The one that pisses off most anime fans (me included) is Macross and Harmony Gold. After 30+ years, it may finally be getting resolved. But who knows. HG are just money-grubbing mismanaging SOBs, and have done almost nothing (literally 1 thing, 1 disappointing movie) in that 30 years. I liked Robotech in the 80s, far less so now, want the original episodes dubbed, as well as all the 90s/00s/10s Macross. HG essentially placed an embargo on import for ALL Macross of any kind (toys, VHS/DVDs/BDs, T-shirts, anything!), and was allowed to do so (even after court battles). So for 30 years, all we can get is fansubs, and the rare official release from Amazon.co.jp