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11-27-2018, 08:54 PM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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Warning: long post ahead

I wanted to make this post for a while, hoping it could better illustrate the use of a TBC or TBCish device can have. It took some more time than I hoped as the VCR I was using decided to develop some mechanical issue and wrinkle the tape halfway through, so I ended up having to restart with another one. I'm not particularly satisfied with the captures, but hopefully they can be of some help at least. I would also encourage others to post some comparisons if they are able.

The tape I used is some off-air recording of the movie "Reisen til julestjernen" (don't think it has an english title). It's telecined PAL (24 fps (presumably) movie sped up to 25fps), so not much combing. The telecine process doesn't seem to have been great and the video is also quite noisy.

Virtualsettings were mostly the same as in the guide, I'll write them down later.

Clips are HEVC/h265 to keep file size down (and with 4:2:2 subsampling to preserve chroma). Can provide lossless or single frame pngs if there is interest.

Caveats:
This is just one tape, and there are way worse tapes out there, though this one is at least dodgy enough to give the capture cards some trouble. It doesn't demonstrate horizontal jitter all that well, but enough to show some difference at least.

I didn't do a lot of level tweaking so the levels are not going to be equal on all tapes and there could at worst be some clipping in some clips.

I used a Samsung SV-261X, which is a very basic 2-head VHS deck from the early 2000s. I wanted to use something basic, and I needed something that wasn't too heavy so I ended up with this. As it's a plain VHS deck, the capture is done using composite video, which also gives some idea of how capable the comb filters in the devices are, though it's not really a very good test of them. Didn't have any portable working S-VHS deck and the tape is a full-size VHS tape, so couldn't use a camera.

The tape seemed to get a bit worn after a few plays, and the start of the tape is a bit crinkled so the video isn't going to be entirely the same on all the recordings, especially in the beginning, which can throws off the comparison a little bit.

Also note that dealing with bad signals well does not imply good image quality (which this comparison isn't focused on), and vice versa.

A longer capture would better illustrate audio sync problems, as that usually adds up over time.

---

Samples were captured with Virtualdub, except stuff captured using the blackmagic card where amarectv was used as I have had some issues with Vdub on the specific computer I used it on after an update. Used VC500 to capture from pass-through/TBCs using S-Video besides the previously mentioned. Linux samples were captured with ffmpeg.

Capture cards:

Note that USB dongles bearing the same name and casing can have hardware inside.
  • Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle USB
    A/D converter: Analog devices ADV7180 (not sure about sound chip)

    Seems to struggle quite hard, reported lots of frame drops/duplicates. Did seem to keep audio in sync, granted I don't know if that's due to amarectv doing things differently than virtualdub or if it's due to the device/drivers itself.
    Blackmagic intensity raw.mp4

  • Diamond VC500
    A/D converter: Conexant CX78921-11z (single chip)

    This one illustrates that driver/cip settings can have an impact.
    I've included a linux capture as there is a significant difference between the image from the one captured on windows.
    Notably, the Y/C separation seems to be really bad for whatever reason on windows, but seems normal on linux.
    Horizontal jitter also seems to behave differently.

    Audio sync seems ok in both versions, but seems to struggle with the video signal.

    (noticed later that sharpness was at the default, midpoint, not sure exactly where the neutral setting would be)
    VC500 raw.mp4
    VC500 raw linux.mp4

  • Diamond VC500 Mac
    A/D converter: Trident SAA7113H (video), Empia EM202 (audio)

    The most stable video on raw captures of the cards I tested. Audio is a bit off sync, will have to check if it's the card or if it was something with the recording.

    (sharpness was on 0, seemed to be most neutral)

    Also got another VC500 mac here that looks outwardly identical, but seems to use the same (EM2980) chip as the magix card. Seems like it's pretty common for manufactures to change the internals of the USB dongles, while keeping the same name and appearance. Also haven't gotten this one to work anywhere, not even on macos which it was sold for, but I presume it would be similar to the magix one.
    VC500 mac raw B.mp4

  • Magix video saver
    A/D converter: Empia EM2980 (single chip)

    Has a weird freakout at the end, seems to lose audio sync. Somewhat jittery.
    magix raw B.mp4

  • New Pro / Ezcap clone card
    A/D converter: usbtv007 (single chip)

    Looks like an ezcap card (e.g like this), though labeled "New Pro"

    I honestly expected it to be less stable than it was. Has some noticeable horizontal "judder/jumping" every quite often. Audio has some high-frequency beeping sound though. The image quality also seems quite iffy.
    New pro raw.mp4

  • Terratec Grabby
    A/D converter: gm7113c (Philips/NXP/Trident SAA7113H compatible/knock-off)
    Yes, the first clip really is how far the recording got before it freaked out and stopped recording video. Didn't work again until reboot.
    Didn't completely bug out on linux, so I've appended a sample from there. I couldn't get the sound from the card to work there. Very unstable in general.

    Terratec Grabby raw.mp4
    Terratec Grabby raw linux.mp4
---

As you can see, the raw signal from the VCR gives the capture cards trouble to varying degrees.

Will add more posts with TBCs and DVRs tomorrow, which may be the more interesting bit. Also got two older pci cards that I haven't made samples for yet.


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  #2  
11-27-2018, 09:12 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Mp4 lossy encoding makes these tests dubious, IMO. But if this is a test of lossy capture and encoding using different capture software, the tests are still inconclusive. The mpo4 encoder adeds another layer to consider. Still, congrats on getting this work done. Something to think about.

The BlackMagic cap looks somewhat denuded and then oversharpened, relatively plastick-y, like DV and not like film source. The VC500 looks more like the original film source, which I would consider relatively more "accurate".

I've had experience with 4 different copies of the VC500 using VirtualDub on different Windows systems, for just over 4 years. They all had Conexant chips. I didn't see any dot crawl problems (because I was always using s-video?).

I agree, the EZCap does look rather odd, sort of nervous and "buzzy". Color is a bit gauche.

Terratec looks really noisy, especially in shadows. Reminds me of cheap late-model SONY VCRs.

So far, all else being equal, I'd go for the VC500.

What is meant by "raw"' mp4 ?

Last edited by sanlyn; 11-27-2018 at 09:48 PM.
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11-28-2018, 05:15 AM
Bogilein Bogilein is offline
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Interesting topic Hodgey.
Captures with an ATi All in Wonder, Canopus NX, Canopus ADVC 300 & Pinnacle Movie Box,TV card with Philips 7134 and Booktree 878 would more complete the testing.

But maybe we should think about what we expect from a capture card (jitter correction, full resolution 720x576/480, full range 0-255, correctly colours, adjustable AGC,real proc amp,chroma/noise reduction and ... and don't forget the audio part and is the video/audio in sync.

What would be important for capture cards?

With the Blackmagic capture you have demonstrate how the Blackmagic Card capture on all analog inputs. Without a stable signal the card is useless. That's why a tbc/dvd recorder in the capture chain is necessary (for all of your tested hardware). But one thing you could see too, that the Blackmagic has some light jitter correction.

Last edited by Bogilein; 11-28-2018 at 05:40 AM.
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11-28-2018, 11:00 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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So the plan with this thread was really more to illustrate some different TBC and TBCis devices, the raw capture card examples were mostly to show how that differs from capturing directly from the VCR. So starting the thread with them may have been a bit misleading.

As noted it's not a great comparison of the image quality of the cards, there is an older thread somewhere that has a much better comparison of image quality with test cards etc. Though, I don't think it has any of the newer Analog Devices based cards like the blackmagic or magewell. I don't have any ATI capture cards (or any of the other ones bogilein mentions other than a BT878, conexant version) at the moment, so I don't feel I can make a good comparison of that as of now. Also one would want to use S-Video rather than composite for that.

Faithful image reproduction is oviously the main thing to worry about when capturing with a TBC or similar in the chain that gives out a stable signal, as stabilizing the signal is the job of the TBC.

The samples were all captured to lossless, either huffyuv or utvideo, and subsequently encoded to hevc with ffmpeg. "Raw" was simply how I named the samples that were captured directly from the VCR to distinguish the samples from the ones that were captured with a pass-through device. And yeah being lossily compressed is not ideal, for comparing image quality it would probably be better with some lossless test images. I wanted to have samples of some length for demonstrating instability, so that was a trade-off. I can of course post shorter lossless samples or images if anyone wants.

As for the Y/C stuff on the VC500, it doesn't act like that with S-Video, it's just with composite, on windows, that there is some weirdness. As shown, the comb filter does it's job when using it on linux. Maybe it's different with an older driver (was using the newest one from the website).
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11-28-2018, 11:32 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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TBCs
I believe all these would qualify as proper TBCs as per LS' definition.
All captured with a Diamond VC500 using the S-Video output on the TBC.
These all gave a stable output signal,

  • Datavideo TBC-3000
    A/D Converter: No idea, chips are sanded down.

    One of the solid Datavideo TBCs. Very good at dealing with bad signals, though doesn't do much with horizontal jitter.
    Mine also seems to cut a little bit of the right side of the image, but as far as I know this isn't something universal with Datavideo TBCs.

    Datavideo TBC-3000.mp4

  • Sony PVW-2800P Betacam deck
    A/D Converter: Some Sony thing presumably.

    Not something I would ever suggest getting, though this is an interesting one. I used a Panasonic AG7350 VCR (with S-Video) with this one as it only seems to work if the VCR is using external sync signal, and that's only something that's present on broadcast decks. As such may be a bit of a bad comparison, but I didn't feel like lugging this massive VCR around to test on other devices. If used without a synced VCR, the image will slowly roll vertically.

    It acts a bit differently to the other TBCs and DVRs when encountering bad signals, not very well illustrated here though. There is also some sort of horizontal jitter correction but it doesn't stabilize it very well. It's really designed for betacam tapes after all. It also ended up getting the fields out of phase after the bad section at the start on the first pass for some reason.

    It does blank the vertical sync area, which lines are blanked are even configurable.

    It can also pass through audio, though as it used XLR connectors I didn't bother with stacking a bunch of adapters for it, so the audio is input directly from the VCR.

    Sony PVW-2800P Panasonic AG7350.mp4

  • TVOne 1-TBC (newer flawed model), similar to the AVT8710
    A/D Converter: Philips/NXP/Trident SAA7114H

    Ideally I would have one of the older non-faulty ones to show, but at least this illustrates the problems with it.

    It has some effect on horizontal jitter, though freaks out on the bad sections, which the older models presumably didn't.

    TVOne 1-TBC.mp4



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  #6  
11-28-2018, 12:15 PM
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DVD-Recorders

These all gave a stable output with no dropped/inserted frames.
All except the philips seem to output a remade macrovision signal when playing a macrovision protected tape, which some cards don't like. The VC500 doesn't mind it though.

All except JVC and Sony 750 captured with VC500, the two others with the blackmagic intensity. Noise reduction was turned off when possible.

I have not noticed any difference between the different inputs and outputs as with the US ES10, but I haven't tested exhaustively.

  • JVC DR-MH300

    This one was captured using the HDMI out rather than S-Video, though the result would probably be about the same with a good capture card.

    This is one of the LSI Logic based DVD recorders. I don't know whether LSI made the A/D converter itself, or just the system and mpeg + DV encoders. Don't think there is much noise reduction active on the input, but I'm not sure. There is no adjustment options for this or image levels, though the AGC seems to work reasonably well. The digital output levels are from 16 to 255.

    Gives HDCP warning after a few seconds if trying to capture something with Macrovision over HDMI, otherwise works fine without a HDMI stripper.

    It does some mild correction of horizontal jitter, and seems to keep the audio in sync.

    JVC DR-MH300.mp4

  • Philips DVDR70 / 021
    A/D Converter: Philips/NXP SAA7118H

    A quite early and pretty basic dvd-recorder. The image looks a bit blurred, don't know if there's any actual noise reduction or if it's simly set to capture a narrow luma range. Doesn't seem to lose frames, but it does roll a bit when the signal is bad at one point.

    Reacts somewhat badly to macrovision tapes, image goes bright and flashy.

    Like the JVC, this has no image level or noise reduction settings. There is a NTSC black level setting, and left/right shift adjustment for whatever reason.

    May be hackable giving some direct i2c access to the A/D chips over RS232 judging by the service manual and this.

    Philips DVDR70.mp4

  • Pioneer DVR-440H

    This one seems to freeze for a frame or two if the signal is very bad, like at the end with the two guys jumping. On the other hand it does a decent job at correcting horizontal jitter, most notably on the first WB logo.

    Noise reduction, brightness, chroma, contrast, sharpness, and agc are all configurable.

    Pioneer DVR-440H.mp4

  • Sony RDR-HX750

    Captured with Blackmagic intensity using component out. (The occasional audio crackles comes from that.) Has HDMI out but demands HDCP compatible hardware, and I don't have a HDCP stripper at the moment.

    This one is very similar to the previous pioneer one with nearly the same settings. From these models on, Pioneer and Sony DVRs mostly shared components from what I've read. This particular one would be almost identical with the Pioneer DVR-550H.

    Sony RDR-HX750.mp4

  • Sony RDR-HX910
    A/D Converter: Sony CXD3805R

    An older sony model from before the sony/pioneer collaboration. This one doesn't do much correction of horizontal jitter, but on the other hand it doesn't freeze on the bad signal either.

    There is some image settings but they didn't seem to do anything on pass-through.

    Sony RDR-HX910.mp4

  • Toshiba RD-XS24

    Somewhat similar behaviour to the pioneer/sony. Good horizontal jitter correction, but freezes for a frame or two on bad signals, maybe a bit more than the pioneer/sony. The contrast is also very low by default, I should have adjusted for it a bit more when capturing, and there is some high-frequency noise which is probably a fault and not inherent to the unit.

    Has brightness, contrast, gamma, saturation, sharpness and 3 on/off noise reduction types.

    Toshiba RD-XS24.mp4



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  #7  
12-01-2018, 07:31 AM
Bogilein Bogilein is offline
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Can you upload the best capture you can do with the tape and a capture with an Panasonic DMR to compare and see the differnece. I would like to see what the Panasonic DMR do with the snow (clipping?) in the video.
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  #8  
12-01-2018, 08:14 AM
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Definitely long thread , replying as I read...

Thank you for attaching all clips to the forum.

For testing, the quality of the capture doesn't necessarily have to matter. I have some pretty lousy tapes for test uses, and the contact doesn't matter. Errors do, and seeing how the hardware responds to it. However, I do try to avoid retail sources, anything that isn't format native. Those can add unforeseen variables.

Blackmagic, known issues, no surprise.

Drivers can affect performance, yes. I've seen this with ATI for many years. There are a lot of reported weirdness with VC500, and I've seen some unsatisfactory color levels myself. This may explain it. I've seen too many decent VC500 captures to dismiss the card outright.

eMPIA is not a capture chip. It's merely the bridge used by most USB capture cards. So you have to look deeper to see what that Magix cards actually is. And in all likelihood, especially given the craptastic performance, just another Easycap clone.

EasyCap aka EZcap really screws with the image quality in every way, from luma to chroma to gamma to IRE. Comparing a solid ATI capture to an EZcap capture is like sometimes comparing VHS to HD. The issues are many, but very obviously overall damaged.

@sanlyn: I don't have an issue with quality MP4 encoding. Not every sample needs to be lossless.

@Bogelein: I actually have ATI AIW, USB 600, Canopus ADVC, Pinnacle, and many more. But I lack time. It's good to see hodgey make some clips to illustrate known issue, rather than us just talk about it. I am sitting on lots of research, and hope to release it in the coming year, on a new section of this site currently in development. Some are actually detailed sample clips comparing hardware.

Yes, accuracy/transparency to the best version of the video signal is the goal. Removing all errors, yet don't add more. It's not an easy thing to attain when using cheap VCRs, cheap capture cards, bad TBCs, and other not-ideal devices.

Everybody here needs to remember that PAL vs. NTSC makes differences in hardware and captures.

External frame sync TBCs are really not made to reduce jitter. However, in the case of DataVideo's classic TBCs, it can merely be a byproduct at times, on some tape sources. The inverse situations is actually more true, meaning that the DataVideo prevents more jitters/vibrations from happening. That one is usually far easier to see with the TBC removed.

I've never liked Sony TBCs.

Black AVT-8710 is no more, new stock seems exhausted everywhere. It's a shame those are in use out there, the owners not aware of the issues, or simply accept it as "that must be how it works".

LSI only made the record/playback chipset. You have find more specs on the DMN-86xx online. I forget which one is used by the JVC, but I know the DR-M10/30 and DR-M100/300 are different (with 100/300 being newer). I've not read the specs sheets in many years, but I've attached on to this thread. I know I have more docs archived. JVC made some of the other DNR, "Super" something.

Philips recorders were always terrible, even models using the LSI.

Pioneer made both really good and really bad recorders. I believe it was bad 1st, then good, then more bad last, then lines ended.

Sony was never great, and had several chipsets over the years, some of which (I believe) were indeed shared with Pioneer models as well. Again, it's been 10+ years since I heavily researched DVD recorders, made much of it public (at VH and this site), going from memory.

Toshiba also had not-great, then nice, then more not-great (as the last batch was just rebadged Funai). The 1st generation had IRE issues, while the 2nd had IRE fixed with step levels options. I had actually tried to buy a Toshiba at least 5 times over the years, but never could get one. Most of my research came from agreed-upon sources and workflows, with many samples discs, from VH member gshelley (a retired broadcast engineer). We collaborated quite a bit in the mid-2000s, on various video hardware that may have otherwise been forgotten (Vidicraft, SignVideo, Elite, etc).

@Bogilein, most Panasonic have pretty rotten recording quality, lots of mosquito noise, but a few had that useful passthrough. Had it not been for passthrough, nobody would have ever talked about Panasonics. Those would have been doomed to the ash heap like non-LSI LG, Sony, Cyberhome, and many more. Unwanted, value-less.


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File Type: pdf LSI Logic DMN-8600 chipset 73132.pdf (179.3 KB, 14 downloads)

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  #9  
12-01-2018, 09:08 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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Thanks for the reply.

I'm hoping the examples at least show the advantage of using a TBC or TBCis device are, and I guess also why most of the ezcap cards are not all that great. Maybe we can get some more detailed comparisons of the gear that is the most usable later. It may be especially useful now that the good Datavideo and Cypress-based TBCs are getting rarer and rarer.

I use the Pioneer and the newer Sony RDR-HX750 quite a bit these days, as they do a decent job as Line-TBCs and help fix tearing issues. The Toshiba also works for this if the video levels are adjusted for, but mine has some issue with one of the audio channels, so I'm not using it at the moment. They do as noted have their limitations so I guess one could see them as a maybe not quite as strong alternative to the ES10/15. These Pioneer/Sony dvrs are are way easier to find for sale used in my country than panasonics and toshibas, don't know if it's the same elsewhere. The other thing I find useful with them as an European is that they are NTSC/PAL switchable and can handle PAL-60/NTSC-4.43, which gives me a lot more playback options for NTSC tapes without having to have a lot of native NTSC VCRs around.

The JVC works as an A/D converter and okayish as a frame sync, though it's not very usable as Line-TBC.

The older Sony DVR likes to gray screen when the signal is too bad, and I also noticed that it seems to process in 4:2:0 chroma internally based on a test capture, so it's not all that usable.

The Philips has the blurred image/lack of high frequencies, haven't checked whether it's noticeable on a VHS source, but it is on S-VHS or Hi8 at least, so it's not usable for that. It might otherwise have had some use as a frame sync.

Quote:
eMPIA is not a capture chip.
Yeah most commonly these devices have an empia sound chip + usb bridge compiled with some A/D converter chip from some other manufacturer. They A/D converter can be decent, as with the SAA7113H or Texas Instruments based (e.g ATI 600 USB) cards, but it seems they often use crappier ones like in the Terratec or the Magix.

On the magix one there is only a single IC, it seems they combined everything into one, including the capture part. I guess they may have bundled one of the crappier A/D converters used on the earlier designs but I could be wrong.
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  #10  
12-01-2018, 09:53 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bogilein View Post
Can you upload the best capture you can do with the tape and a capture with an Panasonic DMR to compare and see the differnece. I would like to see what the Panasonic DMR do with the snow (clipping?) in the video.
Unfortunately I don't have any Panasonic DVRs currently. If I had one I would have made a clip. Though, I did just now stumble upon a used ES10 for sale in my country which I might pick up. If I do I'll make a clip with that one as well. Haven't seen a lot of panasonic for sale around here in general, and if they were they were priced very high, and importing stuff quickly gets expensive due to VAT, shipping and import fees, not to mention risk of transport damage so I haven't picked up any so far.

The tape is rather noisy in the first place. Guessing it's rf noise either from reception or the VCR that was used to record.

It does look a little cleaner on our Philips VR1100 SVHS deck (smart picture: distinct(edit), tbc/dnr on, 3R off):

JVC DR-MH300 and Philips VR1100.mp4


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12-01-2018, 05:11 PM
Bogilein Bogilein is offline
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Thanks Hodgey for the new clip with the VR1100 (JVC 9600 clone I think). Looks not so bad but it get worse when the man jump from the wagon. The capture card was the Diamond 500?
Is it useful to use a DVD Recorder after the Philips with TBC on setting? I thought it would be better to use a real tbc like the Davideo-1000 after a vcr with tbc.
It's interesting how the TV One 1-TBC and the Davideo-1000 TBC perform because I haven't one. Another feature I haven't known is that the TV One use a the philips 7114 chipset. This one you can find in various graphic cards with video in & video out (for example: Leadtek Winfast A180 TDH GF4 MX440 MyViVo).

Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
@Bogelein: I actually have ATI AIW, USB 600, Canopus ADVC, Pinnacle, and many more. But I lack time. It's good to see hodgey make some clips to illustrate known issue, rather than us just talk about it. I am sitting on lots of research, and hope to release it in the coming year, on a new section of this site currently in development. Some are actually detailed sample clips comparing hardware.

@Bogilein, most Panasonic have pretty rotten recording quality, lots of mosquito noise, but a few had that useful passthrough. Had it not been for passthrough, nobody would have ever talked about Panasonics. Those would have been doomed to the ash heap like non-LSI LG, Sony, Cyberhome, and many more. Unwanted, value-less.
@Lord Smurf:
I don't use the DVD-Recorders to record, I only use them in passthrough mode. But my experience is that the panasonics dmrs clip the white level. I have testet this with 4 of them the ES10,ES15,EH65 & EH495. If you know what you have looking for you'll notice this. I have made this comparision on a german video board. Watch the picture and look at the white font on grey backgroud "WTA-Tour". You can't read it and there is no way in postproduction to make it visible again.

SuperweissVergleich.jpg

Another intersting point is that Hodgey use different hardware as I use and none of them are have been popular in Germany.

For example I have AIW 7200&9000, TV-cards with Philips7134, Booktree 878, Canopus ADVC300, Canopus NX, Pinnacle USB 500, Viewcast Osprey 240e, Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle and a cheap USB Stick with Empia 28284 chipset and 13 different DVD-Recorders.
I found it very interesting how other hardware work (I couldn' buy all) and I always hope to learn something new about video capturing.

I'm looking forward for your new section.

Do you have any samples of bad tapes to make a comparision from capture cards,TBC/DVD Recorders?
I compare them with a tape where the picture rolling from up to down, which have bad jitter/flagging (2nd,3rd generation copy and longplay tapes), tape where the picture jumps from the right to the left, poor tape with drop outs, the tennis match from the picture for the white levels and a dvd with test pattern.

Any suggestions what content I should use, as the ones I do.


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  #12  
12-01-2018, 06:12 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bogilein View Post
But my experience is that the panasonics dmrs clip the white level.
That must be a PAL issue, as it's not present in the NTSC.

I actually have a PAL unit, but no way to plug it in right now. The PSU doesn't state 110-240, but many do not, yet accept 110. The bigger issue is the plug shape is odd, the end going into the recorder, and I've not yet tracked down one with North American socket prongs on the other end. Worst case is it won't power on with 110.

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  #13  
12-01-2018, 06:15 PM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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The VR1100 clip was captured from the HDMI out on the JVC DVD recorder. In this case it's more to get stable audio sync and avoid dropping frames. TBC on on the VCR stops any later correction of horizontal jitter. The TBC-3000 would deal with the jump a little better yeah, but on most tapes the JVC is sufficient. If the TBC on the Philips has trouble dealing with the tape I would use the sony or pioneer instead, or a different VCR. I use the VC500 with the other recorders though, it's nice as it doesn't mind macrovision.

Quote:
It's interesting how the TV One 1-TBC and the Davideo-1000 TBC perform because I haven't one.
In case you're not familiar with them, the TV One and the more common AVT8710 has mostly the same hardware, though the TVOne has a more fancy FPGA and much more ram. the TVOne is kind of like the "pro" version of it. The older versions of both of these are well regarded, but the manufacturers managed to screw something up in the newer revisions which resulted in the issues you can see on the clip.

I also got an ES10 coming, so I'll do a comparison once that arrives provided it works.
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12-12-2018, 11:15 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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So my TBC-3000 has the chips sanded, but looking at some images of the TBC-100, and TBC-1000, could it be right that the datavideo TBCs use a Broktree BT878 / Conexant 878 A/D chip? Most images seem to show a conexant chip, but I've seen a few with the Bt logo as well, which would suggest the 878 since it was later made by conexant. I think they had some kind of programmable firmware, so it would make sense.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...8710-vs-3.html


Attached Images
File Type: jpg TBC-100_super.jpg (42.7 KB, 14 downloads)
File Type: jpg 1232685232000_242149.jpg (53.3 KB, 11 downloads)
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  #15  
12-12-2018, 04:40 PM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
So my TBC-3000 has the chips sanded,
I've never seen any DataVideo gear with sanded chips.
But Cypress did that one quite a few of their TBCs. Did you mean the AVT-8710?

Quote:
but looking at some images of the TBC-100, and TBC-1000, could it be right that the datavideo TBCs use a Broktree BT878 / Conexant 878 A/D chip?
No.

The TBC-1000 is the TBC-100 married to a VP-299.
The TBC-3000 uses a single VP301 board, and the TBC-4000 uses 2x stacked 301s.
I've never seen the guts of the 7000, but it likely has a single 301 with a separate genlock board.

I can take images of all those, but not now, busy, PM me a reminder in Jan. There's not any BT/CX anywhere that I remember. Same for Cypress.

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  #16  
12-13-2018, 11:41 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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No, I mean the TBC-3000 Don't have a pic of mine at the moment, but you can see the sanded chips on this persons TBC-3000. The one I got off you looks the same inside with the markings on those chips removed.

You can spot the conexant logo on the largest chip in the TBC-1000 in the thread I linked to, and on one of the attached images, and a Bt logo on the other attached image. Granted, it could be a D/A converter too I guess. Just curious about what hardware they use.
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  #17  
12-13-2018, 03:54 PM
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Ah, that's one of the 90s 1st gen jumper boards.
I kept the 3rd gen DIP boards for myself, as the 3rd gen looks best (nitpicking only) for NTSC.

As with other items, perhaps there was variance of components over time.

I'll need to open all of mine and look again.
I actually have some photos already, but on my Mac, which is still disconnected for surgery/upgrades.

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01-04-2019, 08:56 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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So I finally got my ES10, the postal service managed to screw up and return it for some unknown reason a few hours before I went to pick it up, so it was send to a return center and back again in the middle of Christmas traffic.

Thankfully it seems to be fully functional, so I'll do a comparison capture this weekend. Based on a quick test on a different VCR it seems to act as expected: more stable than the Pioneer/Sony/Toshiba dvrs - i.e didn't freeze the image when the signal dropped out, and also seemed to have some noise reduction or posterization going on.

I also noticed it does not output a signal other than the first few seconds of switching inputs if it's set to a channel there is nothing connected to, or if the VCR connected to it was off. None of the other DVRs did this, they always output frames. Don't know how this affects it when capturing, but I can see why that may be one reason to use DVK or other TBC after it in the chain.

Lastly, it had a input system setting that could be set to NTSC. I didn't test it yet so I don't know whether it will swap to proper ntsc, or if it will do some PAL-60 or NTSC 4.43 stuff with that set.
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