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it seems as if the detail and outline knobs on this Vidicraft unit tend to do more harm than good in many cases on many of my tapes.
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It really depends on the content of your tapes. As per other posts in this forum, from Site Staff and long-time video hobbyists alike, the detailers are best used on high quality analog sources like S-VHS in SP mode, VHS in SP mode, or Laserdiscs. Even then, a grainy video may look worse, "crunchy" as some have described it in the past, and not sharper. It's all about content.
It also helps to be gentle. Don't crank the knobs up like a heavy metal garage band turning on speakers. Be very nuanced about it, like a maestro perfecting his equipment before a wind ensemble recording session.
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I have heard many people swear to the benefit of a detailer on most VHS tapes.
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It comes down to two issues:
1. They just don't know any better, victims of their own poor video playback/preview situation. Or even their own eyesight.
2. They've not learned yet. Too many people overdo restoration. For example, overdoing NR so badly that the image looks plastic.
I've not used a detailer here in probably 2 months. Nothing has been helped by it, though it's been tested several times. In each case, the video's grain was simply amplified, rather than the in-image detail. However, earlier this year, a detailer was most valuable in a project involving 100+ tapes.