Are JVC VCRs overhyped?

[ItIsAScience]

After what can only be described as a herculean effort in stick-to-it-iveness (for the Simpsons fans), I've finally digitised my tapes, following all the advice of all the esteemed members of this forum too numerous to name. The only slight deviation from the established path, was that because I only had relatively few VHS tapes, instead of buying a recommended VCR I used my old Panasonic S-VHS VCR without TBC/DNR that I already had. But having come this far on my journey, I decided to see it through properly and bought a JVC HR-S7722 to redo the VHS tapes. Well I'm afraid that after walking through a short clip frame by frame, in all manner of settings pairings on both VCRs, the Panasonic wins hands down. Full disclosure though, despite the lack of TBC on the Panasonic, I ran both VCRs through an ES-10. I just thought I would post my experience in case others are in a similar position, wondering whether to go for a JVC if they already have semi-decent equipment.

I should also mention that the images have bee deinterlaced using QTGMC interpolation.

[lordsmurf]

Overhyped? Not at all.

The biggest gains will be from in-motion video, not stills.

Another huge difference is in sharpness. No, not that JVC is softer, but rather than Panasonic oversharpens. The false sharpening halos are obvious.

The non-TBC has ghastly chroma (color) noise in the stills.

[latreche34]

Yes line TBC works in the time domain not in frame by frame stills, Watch the two VCR's raw clips without the es15 and before de-interlacing and observe the vertical edges for wiggle, It can also be observed in de-interlaced non line TBCed contents as weird de-interlacing effects in a form of coarse grain.

[timtape]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

It can also be observed in de-interlaced non line TBCed contents as weird de-interlacing effects in a form of coarse grain.

Isnt interlaced best presented as interlaced?

[latreche34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by timtape

Isnt interlaced best presented as interlaced?

Are you asking the OP? My comment was about line TBC not de-interlacing.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by timtape

Isnt interlaced best presented as interlaced?

"Presented", not always.
For example, to stream online (Youtube, etc), you must deinterlace.
Do not deinterlace the master, deinterlace the down-converted lossy copy needed.

"Archived as" aka "captured as", yes.

latrech was referring to how deinterlace can slightly obscure wiggly timing (timebase) noise, but results in even fuglier deinterlace artifacts that normal. Various long-GOP encoding can result in large whole-block movements due to bad timing, deinterlace, and encoding bitrates. You can really screw up video by blindly hatchet-job converting tapes.

If you ever want to "remove" timing wiggles, you can beat the video to death with temporal NR. But then you have a wiggle-less mouse trail of a video. Again, proper TBC, and proper NR as needed, gets good video.

[timtape]

I understand and agree. Just a shame that original interlaced footage cant (now) always be presented interlaced.

[latreche34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by timtape

I understand and agree. Just a shame that original interlaced footage cant (now) always be presented interlaced.

It can but those machines are long gone, They are called CRT TVs. Those TVs had analog line delay circuits that can make an interlaced source look the way it looked 3 decades ago. Some of the later CRT TV's, early plasma and LCD TV's did have good digital processing circuits for analog sources such as VCR's, camcorders and DVD players but soon when manufacturers started cutting down on costs all those fancy stuff are taken away.

Having said that, If you have a well preserved captured footage with line TBC applied during the capture, there are still some TV's that can playback interlaced materials pretty well, as well as some media upscalers and computer player apps, There isn't a guide for that you just have to experiment and see unfortunately.

What I was trying to say earlier is that de-interlacing non line timed footage will look worse than de-interlacing line timed footage, There is nothing said about which is better interlaced or de-interlaced.

[keaton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ItIsAScience

Well I'm afraid that after walking through a short clip frame by frame, in all manner of settings pairings on both VCRs, the Panasonic wins hands down. Full disclosure though, despite the lack of TBC on the Panasonic, I ran both VCRs through an ES-10.

I have had a similar experience as you. I started with S-VHS JVC, then tried a run-of-the-mill mid-90s Panasonic PV-45XX (composite only) and PV-S46XX (S-VHS) with an ES-10, then sprung for the Panasonic AG-1980. AG-1980 was clearly the best to me. But I noticed that the lesser Panasonic models came in 2nd place for me. This was a surprise to me. It was then I realized that I should follow the recommendations of those on the forum for what to try, but also remember to do my own experimenting and find out what I prefer. I was capturing a video with someone wearing a pin-striped suit. I was surprised when I noticed the JVC didn't show these pin-stripes at all, while the regular Panasonic model showed it quite clearly. This was the moment I actually saw for myself the difference in sharpness between JVC and Panasonic. Whether that is considered noise or detail is the subject of eternal debate. In my case, I found detail that most certainly was not noise. Perhaps there is also some noise that came from the higher level of sharpening. But the compromise for me was that I didn't lose details. That is my preference. I felt I got more good than bad. Plus, some noise I could diminish with avisynth. And the chroma noise from the non-1980 Panasonics (due to the lack of TBC/DNR) can be greatly diminished with the wonderful Camcorder Color Denoise (CCD) plugin for Virtualdub. For the 1980, you can also adjust the sharpness to what you prefer.

I am not one to argue about what's better. There is an art to this, and is therefore somewhat subjective to the viewer. That's why I feel the term "better" or "best" is also subjective in some ways. I see the greatness in each of them, and understand each of us has different sensibilities or sensitivities to certain aspects of video. I do think it's good for members to share their experiences so that different views can be expressed. You are not the first to post that they preferred the Panasonic's results over JVC. There are many of us out there.

There are things I like about JVC. For the SP tapes I had transferred with it prior to using Panasonic, the result is still quite good. Perhaps I wouldn't get much more out of it redoing them with a Panasonic. It depends on what's being transferred. If it's animation, then you may not be dealing with the same kind of fine details as you would from live action. You may not see much difference in those cases with JVC vs Panasonic. But when I tried slower speed tapes on the JVC, the difference became much more apparent to me. I think it's been said before that many JVCs are not great at EP tapes. Panasonics are obviously designed differently, and I find a benefit of that to be they preserve more detail regardless of the tape's playback speed.

[latreche34]

Keep in mind you are comparing hardware that are over 3 decades old, Mechanisms worn and out of alignment, electronic components drifted and faded. To be able to do a faithful comparison you would actually have to restore the machines to their original state, Meaning full service, cleaning, lubrication, alignment, full electronic calibration of all electronics and replace the out of range components. Unfortunately such task requires special tools, gauges, special test tapes, special remote controls ...etc, that are no longer available or out of calibration themselves.

JVC has the leadership in VCR technology and they have proven it over the years, SoC (system on a chip) is one of the greatest achievement JVC made in VCR technology back then, while other manufacturers continued to use physical analog circuit boards for video processing and stabilization stages, This is the reason you see me favoring JVC, not because I've done side by side comparison using my aging VCR's.