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Well guys, I may have to take a break from this project. I don't have the money to afford hundreds of dollars worth of equipment. I tried iuVCR, but that doesn't help with my situation. There was an option in the program to change the muxer. I tried VHWriter, because I thought it would help drop frames that it detected, but it didn't do a good job getting rid of the garbage frames.
I can't use iuVCS because I installed it once before and the trial ran. Re-installing it work. If there was a program that could detect the frame drops from the card and discard them in real time, then I would probably go with that. I have yet to see one that can do this. I also need assistance in figuring out what kind of TBC I'd need (type and make/model), because there are many available from what it seems, but I don't know where to begin when it comes to getting one. |
If I was able to feed the VCR to the DVD recorder and then to the MX-1 and use the mixer to brighten up the picture, that would suffice. But the Videonics can't seem to brighten the image. I guess it makes sense why it can't, because it thinks the image coming from the DVD recorder is a clean, accurate signal.
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You need a proc amp to adjust analog signal levels (e.g., black, gain, saturation, and hue). Some TBCs include a basic proc amp capability, others don't.
The MX Pro mixer included the ability to make some adjustment to color and brightness, but the original MX-1 did not. |
Sorry to bug you guys again, but I'm going to write a want ad in the Marketplace forum and I need some guidance on what kind of TBC device I should be looking for.
Once again, here is a sample video of the issue. |
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I tried uploading a video here and when it reaches 100%, the upload window seems to refresh and tries to upload again. All of my videos are less than 99 MBs. I also prefer uploading to external websites, because than I can use that link in other places. My internet here is terribly slow. My upload speed varies around 1 to 1.5 Mb/s (or 125-187 KB/s). |
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So it's a bit hard to tell from the video since it's a filmed screen, but it looks like there is some tearing issue at the top of the image. In that case it may work better with a panasonic DMR-ES10 or ES15 dvd-recorder to pass the signal through rather than a TBC as it's better at dealing with that specific thing. Not going to say anything for sure though, I'll let others chime in.
Also, given that it seems to be TV recordings, have you checked if the source material may be available elsewhere? |
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In this video, there is also tearing at the top of the footage as well as color lines protruding a little bit from the right side. Quote:
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The only key to the ES15 is getting a complete and fully tested unit in good condition. And preferably clean. The remote is required, and the power cord is not attached, so both are often missing. Unlike external TBCs, the DVD recorders were mostly used by consumers. That means kids putting Lego into unit, using the DVD tray as a cup holders, puffing cigarette smoke into it, etc. I'm not joking. And since DVD has been falling out of favor for years, you'll also find where the units were stored in the attic or garage, and that's not good for the components.
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I went to the garage today and opened a box full of VHS tapes. They're somewhat newer (between the '90s and early '00s). I did notice some frame jumps here and there when running directly from the VCR (with Video Stabilization on). However, with the DVD recorder, it resolves 99% of the frame jumps. For these kind of tapes, I'm going to use the DVD recorder I have now, because it's the only way to get the best footage possible. The only issue I have is that the videos are blurry, because the DVD recorder is working to keep the image stabilized. Due to the recorder trying to keep the image from going haywire, the image shakes ever-so-slightly, making the text at the bottom a little blurry at times. It doesn't look bad directly from the VCR, but even with Video Stabilization on, that isn't the best way because I still get the frame issues. I haven't tried the MX-1 yet, but I will in a moment.
As for the tapes that need more help (i.e. the older tapes), I'm kind of stuck right now. I don't know what device I need. Today I was checked up on the Video Hardware Suggestions page and I've been getting a little confused with the wording. Below, where TBCs are mentioned, there appears to be 4 categories of TBCs. I'm getting stuck on the difference between a line and full-frame TBC. According to what's written on the page, a line TBC is great at removing visual errors, but does almost nothing for signal purity. I'm confused. What do they mean by signal purity? If the machine is removing visual errors, isn't that by definition purifying the signal? It also mentions that line TBCs sometimes make a signal look worse. I don't know if my MX-1 has a line TBC, but that would make sense, given that when I run the old tapes through the MX-1, it makes the image look worse by adding these weird scan lines next to the moving objects that was never there before. Also, when I read up on the full-frame TBC, I noticed that it has the potential to correct vertical bouncing or jittering in the image. I realize that it was referenced to the DataVideo TBC-1000, but I assume that the same type of corrections apply to other full-frame TBCs. In the sample videos I provided here, you can see see two different problems occur. In the video where I'm recording the monitor, you can see the frames jump vertically. There's a lot of jitter. In the other video, you can see that every few seconds, a random frame from a second or-so prior will flash. I believe that's because the USB capture card doesn't know how to handle the corrupt signal. I'm confused because I don't know which TBC I need. They sound very similar to me, if not the same (just different wording). On one hand, I do have visual errors, being frames jumping and/or flickering during playback. So in that case, I guess I would need a line TBC. On the other hand, a full-frame TBC is supposed to correct vertical bouncing or jittering in the image.. There's jitter going on in several of these tapes as well as frames jumping and/or flickering; So I guess I need a full-frame TBC? I apologize if I come off harsh. I'm just impatient because I've been on this project since February and I feel stuck. The DVD recorder can only archive the easy tapes and the MX-1 causes more video issues than not. Plus if I want to order the replacement AC adapter, I have to wait 2 months to get it, or pay an additional $130 CAD to get it by the first week of June. I don't fully know what I should buy and I don't want to just buy anything because it's suggested. I want to know the why. I want to know what separates different TBCs from one-and-other, so that I understand things better. I'm really hoping that you guys can assist me to figure out what kind of device I'll need. If any of you need a sample video or picture to help you determine things, I'm fine with providing that. Whether it's with only the VCR, with the DVD recorder and/or the MX-1. |
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Attached is a short silent mpg movie made a few years ago that explains how tape problems occur and describes the two kinds of tbc used to correct playback errors. The 4-minute movie was originally made as a DVD. It's titled "How Video Tape Gets Messed Up". It's focused on NTSC tape but the same principles apply to PAL. The numbers and graphics are greatly simplified. There is no audio. YouTube has many very misleading videos about VHS capture, most of which are full of errors and/or bad advice about capture equipment. But there is an old one in Japanese that compares a bad tape captured with and without both types of TBC. The tbc's used were in a pass-thru unit which many people use and which would have been a legacy DVD-R with powerful line-level and frame-level tbc's built-in. The two most powerful consumer tbc pass-thru units widely used to date are the Panasonic DMR-ES10 and DMR-ES15, as lordsmurf mentioned. Either would suffice, although I prefer the ES10. The drawback to pass-thru units is that they don't fix copy protection/MacroVision errors, but home videos don't use copy protection. The ES10 and ES15 have been shown to stabilize very bad tapes where other pass-thru devices failed. A Japanese video comparing results with and without a pass-thru tbc: VHS Video Tape Capture with TBC ( Time Base Correction Example ). Your DVD recorder works better than your capture card in one respect: Like most DVD recorders it apparently has built-in line-level and frame-level tbc's, although like most such units it's not all that powerful and can't be used for pass-thru. Unfortunately recording directly to DVD isn't suitable for restoration or further correction without serious quality degradation. It's odd that you can post a movie you made of your monitor showing software playing a video but you don't know how to use an editor to cut a short sample of the source video itself and post it to a forum. Besides other problems, that video has really bad macroblocks, chroma noise, and pretty horrible color. Even with a tbc, that video would still need a lot of cleanup. But we've seen many similar examples. |
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From the video you posted I would say try with a panasonic dmr-es10 / es 15 first. The "tearing" error at the top of the image is something the likes of the Datavideo and AVT-8710 TBCs don't usually correct.
That said it's a rather messy tape, and there is some strange thing happening with the chroma at the rightmost edge of the image. It's the sort of tape that is hard to give a good answer on without having it in my hands to test on different setups myself. |
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I was looking up on a few other forum posts from a while ago (some of them with you in it) and I was trying to make sense of the difference between a frame TBC and a Frame synchronizer. I wish I could understand it all easily. |
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I can't edit my post to fix the image missing (though it was there before). So here's the attached GIF..
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