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  #81  
07-02-2016, 03:04 PM
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Yes, split capture is needed for some tapes. Merging is easy. (If you need help with it, start a new thread.)

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  #82  
07-11-2016, 02:34 AM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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So the Panasonic arrived today, and the tape door thing is stuck. Seems like the right hinge is okay, but on the left it won't open enough to get a tape in. Anything I can do?
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  #83  
07-11-2016, 08:04 AM
Quasipal Quasipal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by koberulz View Post
So the Panasonic arrived today, and the tape door thing is stuck. Seems like the right hinge is okay, but on the left it won't open enough to get a tape in. Anything I can do?
Sounds like the door has gone the wrong side of the 'door opening' lever operated by the mechanism. If this has happened you will need to pull the front of the VCR away by popping the clip tabs then pushing it back whilst holding the tape door fully open. Its a white flat plastic part. Also the tape load drive coupling may be split (sits under the mechanism), but you will only find that out when the door works and you come to load a tape. I'm working on a lot of these Panasonic recorders these days and they are good, once the mechanical problems are resolved.
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  #84  
07-11-2016, 08:16 AM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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Managed to damage both S-Video cables, so I've only been able to run one more capture. The JVC running through the AVT produced results almost entirely indistinguishable from the Philips running through the AVT. Chroma seems shifted slightly left on the Philips, but that's all I can see.

Managed to get the Panasonic's door open. There was a little white plastic thing, that seemed to be on some sort of a hinge, that was running into the metal tab shown in the attached photos. So I pushed it down manually while pushing the door open, and it slid right under that tab and the door was open. But the door is now stuck open. Which I guess isn't a huge deal with that particular machine, as the entire front has to be opened up before you can get to the tape slot anyway, so as long as the front stays closed there shouldn't be any dust issues.

I guess that plastic thing is supposed to be on some sort of spring or something, and that's what closes the door automatically when a tape is inserted? It seemed like it was facing the wrong way for that, though: the bit in contact with the metal tab was vertical, and then it sloped down towards the front of the machine.

EDIT: Why is the AVT cropping so much off the top of the picture?

See attached images.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Quasipal View Post
Sounds like the door has gone the wrong side of the 'door opening' lever operated by the mechanism. If this has happened you will need to pull the front of the VCR away by popping the clip tabs then pushing it back whilst holding the tape door fully open. Its a white flat plastic part. Also the tape load drive coupling may be split (sits under the mechanism), but you will only find that out when the door works and you come to load a tape. I'm working on a lot of these Panasonic recorders these days and they are good, once the mechanical problems are resolved.
I somehow missed this post, it must have been made while I was typing my previous post. I don't really follow this? Some of it seems similar to things I saw and fiddled with to get the door to open, but I'm not entirely sure. Can you point things out on the photos I attached earlier?

Also with regards to the Panasonic, it has a soft->sharp image adjustment slider and an AI mode that disables the slider...what's the best route to take here? I tried fiddling with it but it's a bit hard to tell when you're two feet from a 55-inch TV, and I'm not entirely sure what I should necessarily be aiming for anyway, particularly at that stage of the process (ie is it better to oversharpen in hardware and fix in software, or undersharpen in hardware and fix in software?).


Attached Images
File Type: jpg 2016-07-11 20.50.17.jpg (119.5 KB, 5 downloads)
File Type: jpg 2016-07-11 20.50.26.jpg (162.1 KB, 5 downloads)
File Type: jpg 2016-07-11 20.50.45.jpg (130.6 KB, 4 downloads)
File Type: jpg 2016-07-11 20.50.54.jpg (149.2 KB, 5 downloads)
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  #85  
07-14-2016, 02:45 AM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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Got the S-Video cables today, so, samples!

No AVT

Philips
PhilNoAVT.png

Panasonic
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AVT

Philips
NewPanNoAVT.png

Panasonic
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The AVT is necessary, though; this happened when I went without it:
PhilAVT.png


Looks to me like this whole exercise was a waste of time and money (at least with regard to this tape), as the Panasonic is ghosting like crazy. Not even worth fiddling with the picture settings, is it?

Still waiting on the TBC-1000, which will give me the final variable I can change up.


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  #86  
07-14-2016, 06:13 AM
Quasipal Quasipal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by koberulz View Post
I somehow missed this post, it must have been made while I was typing my previous post. I don't really follow this? Some of it seems similar to things I saw and fiddled with to get the door to open, but I'm not entirely sure. Can you point things out on the photos I attached earlier?

Also with regards to the Panasonic, it has a soft->sharp image adjustment slider and an AI mode that disables the slider...what's the best route to take here? I tried fiddling with it but it's a bit hard to tell when you're two feet from a 55-inch TV, and I'm not entirely sure what I should necessarily be aiming for anyway, particularly at that stage of the process (ie is it better to oversharpen in hardware and fix in software, or undersharpen in hardware and fix in software?).
Well that white lever is supposed to be 'underneath' a protruding part on the inside of the cassette flap (not visible from your photos). What I do is to pull the front off and then push it back on whilst holding the flap fully open. It just pops off with clips - no screws. The white lever is connected to the loading mech and pulls the flap open as the tape approaches it during eject.

As to the sharpness slider I set mine to about one third of the way between soft and middle with Ai off. Some grainy tapes work well with sharpness completely to the left (softest). Ai analyses the signal on the tape to work out how much sharpness to apply. Sometimes it can really apply a lot, sometimes only a little - its meant for direct TV viewing, not for editing or copying. Always turn it off, use the sharpness slider.
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  #87  
07-14-2016, 07:30 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by koberulz View Post
Looks to me like this whole exercise was a waste of time and money (at least with regard to this tape)
Not a waste if you get concrete results from which you can draw useful conclusions. I've run similar tests countless times with many tapes and different VCRs.

Don't oversharpen "in hardware" during capture and expect to clean it up later. It's far more difficult if not impossible. There are better sharpeners for software processing. Quasipal posted some useful notes.
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  #88  
07-14-2016, 11:51 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Not a waste if you get concrete results from which you can draw useful conclusions. I've run similar tests countless times with many tapes and different VCRs.
Testing sometimes takes me months. In the end, it's always useful -- even when results are "don't do that, won't work".

Quote:
Don't oversharpen "in hardware" during capture and expect to clean it up later. It's far more difficult if not impossible. There are better sharpeners for software processing. Quasipal posted some useful notes.
There are times where analog sharpening in a detailer exceed what can be done in software. And that's why I own one. Granted, I don't use detailers often, but it's valuable when needed. But I honestly don't sharpen much in software either. Sharpening is not a generally-suggested technique, and is best saved for restoration situations.

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  #89  
07-14-2016, 02:47 PM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Quasipal View Post
Well that white lever is supposed to be 'underneath' a protruding part on the inside of the cassette flap (not visible from your photos). What I do is to pull the front off and then push it back on whilst holding the flap fully open. It just pops off with clips - no screws. The white lever is connected to the loading mech and pulls the flap open as the tape approaches it during eject.
I can't see any obvious way of getting the front of the machine off.

Quote:
Don't oversharpen "in hardware" during capture and expect to clean it up later. It's far more difficult if not impossible. There are better sharpeners for software processing.
Well, I wasn't intending on overdoing it one way or the other, just trying to figure out what's likely to do the least damage if I have it slightly further one way or the other than it should be.

Quote:
Testing sometimes takes me months. In the end, it's always useful -- even when results are "don't do that, won't work".
In fairness I'd probably feel better about it if I hadn't spent six months trying to find a power supply, or already had a successful capture or two under my belt. But all these starting hurdles...ugh. That spare power supply I have had damn sure better fit the TBC!

Quote:
But I honestly don't sharpen much in software either. Sharpening is not a generally-suggested technique, and is best saved for restoration situations.
I'm confused as to how you could use sharpening without it being a restoration situation.
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  #90  
07-15-2016, 12:52 AM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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The spare AVT power supply does fit the TBC-1000! Finally, a win!

AVT:
PhilAVT.png

TBC-1000:
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The TBC-1000 looks better to me. Not as washed-out, there's a bit more detail, and it's not cropping a chunk off the top. Thoughts?


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  #91  
07-15-2016, 03:30 AM
Quasipal Quasipal is offline
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To get the front of the machine off take the top metal cover off and then using a flat bladed screwdriver pop all of the black plastic tabs connecting the front of the machine to the chassis. There are two on each side and three on the bottom and four on the top. When they are pulled up, separate the whole front of the machine including the flap - they are connected by push-in socket type connectors. When you put it back, just hold the front flap up and push the front on, making sure the tabs are correctly positioned - you should get a click for each one.
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  #92  
07-18-2016, 12:37 AM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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Ah, gotcha. I'd already replaced the top. Popped one tab on the front, and the door immediately dropped closed. Not sure if it's fully fixed yet though; I'm running a capture with the Philips so I can't plug the Panasonic in.

When using the ColorTools wave form monitor, should I be aiming to stretch everything all the way from the top to the bottom, or just between the dotted line?

-- merged --

Quote:
Originally Posted by koberulz View Post
Ah, gotcha. I'd already replaced the top. Popped one tab on the front, and the door immediately dropped closed. Not sure if it's fully fixed yet though; I'm running a capture with the Philips so I can't plug the Panasonic in.
Got it plugged in, and it's all good. Can insert and eject tapes perfectly. Thanks for the help.

Quote:
When using the ColorTools wave form monitor, should I be aiming to stretch everything all the way from the top to the bottom, or just between the dotted line?
Can anyone answer this? I'm assuming the dotted lines are 16 and 235?

-- merged --

Okay, so I rendered my restoration - separate versions with different filters for the game and for the highlights clip I posted earlier - dropped them into a Premiere sequence, combined them, edited out the commercials, and dropped in some linear audio as well as a second HiFi capture to patch up the stats section.

Then, just for the hell of it, synced up the DVD-recorder version, then cropped it 50% so I could watch the whole game through and compare them.

Which is when I noticed the attached issue, after which the two versions are suddenly out of sync; my version repeats a frame. What is that and can I fix it?

Additionally, when making that second HiFi capture the 'bzzzt' noise didn't occur at all when watching it through my TV (RCA out to the capture device, SCART-to-RCA to the TV). Which means there could be other instances of it elsewhere through the game I'm not aware of. Why is this?


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File Type: mp4 VlahovGlitch.mp4 (3.35 MB, 1 downloads)
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  #93  
07-18-2016, 08:22 AM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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Had the time to re-capture that part of the footage to see if that worked, and it did. The issue present in the original capture isn't present in the second capture.

But I can't just drop the shot in, because compared to what it looked like the first time...
VlahovOriginalCapture.png
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...what's going on here?


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  #94  
07-18-2016, 12:21 PM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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Probably the Automatic Gain Control of one of your pieces of equipment deciding to make that shot brighter this time. It may be impossible to avoid an AGC somewhere in your chain.
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  #95  
07-23-2016, 12:20 PM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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I checked the re-capture of the stats clip, and that's brighter than the original too. Is there any chance it's getting less bright over the course of the capture somehow?

Not sure if it's actually less bright, or simply more yellow.

The audio also isn't in sync. I moved it ten frames to the right in Premiere, and that seemed to work the whole way through, but when I moved the audio of the stats re-capture ten frames to the right and lined up the video, the two audio clips weren't in sync with each other.

-- merged --

Another problem I'm having...
Cropping.png

Luckily it's only affecting the intro clip, at least at the moment. There's a null transform in VirtualDub taking six pixels off the top and 12 off the bottom, then a resize that adds borders to return it to 720x576.

Which shouldn't result in that giant area at the top being cropped off, and yet it does. When I preview in VDub, it's only an issue on some frames, and on other frames that black area will show information from a different frame. But it changes, constantly. As in, I can be on a black frame, click 'next frame' and get a good frame, and then click 'previous frame' and the first frame will suddenly be good.

But when I save the AVI, it's just a black area up top. Which doesn't look great. The first time I encoded
it, it worked fine. I wasn't happy with the levels adjustment, so I went back in and now I'm getting this
black bar up top that won't go away.

-- merged --

When I'm re-capturing to fix audio errors, is there a better codec to use? I don't really need the video at all, except to help sync the two captures, so it seems a waste of space to have them sitting there as Lagarith files.


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  #96  
07-24-2016, 06:31 AM
dpalomaki dpalomaki is offline
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An approach is to recapture as audio only using a good sound card (or demux the existing capture to extract the audio if the existing AVI and a good representation of what audio can be captured), sweeten the resulting audio file, resync using the audio waveform as a guide, then mute the original audio when I do the final export/save.

If you need to capture both audio and uncritical video, the DV AVI file is an option that compresses the video while providing 48 kHz uncompressed 16-bit audio.
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  #97  
09-05-2016, 10:48 PM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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Ugh. Must have forgotten to test out the ES10 when I received it, because I just got it out to use and it doesn't even power on. There's not some trick or hidden switch or something I'm missing, is there?

Is PAL/NTSC a relevant concern with an ES10 or does it not matter if I'm just using it as a TBC?
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  #98  
09-05-2016, 11:13 PM
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NTSC only.

Not powering up is probably bad caps.
Yes, the ES10 can have bad caps, too! It's just like the JVC DR-M10/100 in this way.

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  #99  
09-05-2016, 11:17 PM
koberulz koberulz is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
NTSC only.
Sorry?

Quote:
Not powering up is probably bad caps.
Yes, the ES10 can have bad caps, too! It's just like the JVC DR-M10/100 in this way.
I like how you think I'm skeptical of an ES10 having bad caps, when in actual fact I'm sitting here thinking "WTF are caps?"

EDIT: The Panasonic VCR doesn't have the same issue the Philips had (four-inch chroma shift and the top couple of inches of the picture being angled 45 degrees), thankfully, so I can still at least get a capture. And it justifies buying that VCR, which did worse[ with the earlier tape.
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  #100  
09-05-2016, 11:24 PM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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NTSC ES10 = NTSC only
PAL ES10 = PAL only
TBCs are usually not like that, but this a DVD recorder with TBC/TBC-like abilities.

"caps" = capacitors. The Panasonic AG-1980P VCRs have infamous caps issues, too. Caps infect many devices, not just video. Bad caps can screw up DVD recorders, VCRs, TBCs, cameras, etc.

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