I'm interested but just wanted to make sure you are blowing smoke, So where were we? Oh post #67.
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Well, decoding is vapourware that beats a 500USD conventional setup, attached is internal TBC vs Decode TBC the results are clear as day on a fully serviced NV-HS950B.
The reality of today is anyone can hook up some test probes to a test point and run through a 1-page install doc for hardware, 1-3k USD TBC units are dead in the water for all but expensive previewing use as the up-to-date budget and archival community have evolved. The only key variable that matters is signal tracking but that's a hard given for anything tape format-wise. This methodology of copying RF, and decoding later is actually not new at all, if you followed the 2010-2011 NASA landing tape mess they had to decode signals in software off tapes due to a lack of any supporting systems being around. |
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We're a long way beyond the 'fork in the road' on this now, and it's starting to get a touch amusing at some of the views of decode based either on posts from years ago or half-baked misunderstandings. I've got decode running with a good degree of success (albeit, not perfect) for, by constraint as an experiment, under £100 worth of equipment. It's a bit of a curve to set up, but nothing beyond the keen user willing to invest a bit of time, doubly so when the savings over high-quality conventional capture run, in all reality, into thousands of dollars. The buy-it-sell-it notion of good quality conventional capture is starting to look less and less appealing in my opinion. It probably was very feasible a few years ago, today it's much more of a gamble, with the inevitable game of 'hot potato' with some of the most sought-after equipment. It's all cheerful until it fails on you and your investment is the final one. Again, for clarity, I am categorically not accusing anybody of malfeasance. It's simply entropy in action. Some people will be happy to make investments in conventional capture, and so they should if they feel like it's the way for them. I can't help thinking sometimes discussion of vhs-decode becomes conflated with 'you're denigrating approved methods' which is demonstrably untrue. Also with decode, if you build a basic little set-up and it's not for you, you've not made a tremendous investment etiher, you can use a scrap VCR from Craigslist/Gumtree for nix and a £25 card plus a £3 lead to get going, then either consider upgrading the VCR or just sell the card again. Multihead capture is becoming established, as well as FM audio decode. If you're technically minded the sky really is the limit, if you're not, follow basic guides and get some great captures at modest prices. If you're not at all technical, there are still all of the conventional avenues open. Documentation is becoming vast and detailed, a thankless task curated by @harrypm as well as others. Self-appointed gatekeepers don't have to 'like' it, nobody is criticising established methods, but the time has now come for a paradigm shift. :2cents: |
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The people griping are almost always from these camps (a) already have and use the gear being discussed, and are simply dissuading other users from getting it too (b) are griping only about price, and would have griped about price no matter the dollar amount (c) never had any intention of getting any gear, regardless of price Quote:
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Worth mentioning: the project is better with PAL than NTSC, not really a surprise since most of the project devs are in PAL lands. Quote:
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The archival community is using tried-and-true gear. Only more adventurous archives are seeking different methods, for a later conversion. They already used the basic kit to convert, often long ago. So far, nothing is really exceeding the basic kit, ROI (or ROT, time) isn't there. Quote:
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- Do I want it to succeed? Yes. - Will it replace extant transfer method? Probably never. Quote:
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... and none of this has anything to do with the false notion of Kickstarter for TBCs. ;) Getting off-topic. |
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The Blackmagic ADV7842-based hardware output is all the same, the only factor is how much ram and how lazy the developers are, Magewell does it better and BrightEyes make bank off it, at the end of the day its the same chip same quality potential, hard-limited by the baseband output of the source device these are meant for live signals when stipped down but could be on part with broadcast TBC units when fully used to spec. (Being next to an FPGA in a closed metal box with no heat sync and no fans hur dur take the lid off and put a fan on it) Quote:
The initial goal was to preserve the medium's signal content as a 1:1 backup of tapes, i.e the modulated signal not the ‘’Visual Media’ content this is not baseband S-Video/Composite capture, so there are no ''capture card limitations'' in any practical sense of the word as its not video capture. It's like a positive or slide photo its the original, captures using the baseband outputs are cheep prints in this case just an imitation of the original source material, decode skips that and projects the original image directly, all things such as chroma noise reduction, sharpness and the like are merely arbitrary parameters adjustable as it is on a physical box. This cuts out physically moving and wearing the tape more and more, you have unlimited ability to process in-post due to having all the information in a non ''baked video'' format. Kits would cost more when it's sub 40-100GBP of total hardware that can be sourced locally cheaper it's an international project, not just westerners bear that in mind the CX Cards are china direct the rest can be sourced locally for free/next to nothing. Quote:
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(That's the full 1135x625 PAL & 910x525 NTSC area for reference that's what VHS-Decode outputs to the aptly named .TBC format) |
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- Casual users will not be major adopters, regardless of a cheap price. This is a typical issue of engineers/devs not seeing the bigger non-technical picture. vhs-decode has already created a race to the bottom, which is completely opposed to the goal of better quality. You cannot have both. Quote:
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Most samples are also from higher-quality retail tapes, not the bog standard crap we all made at home with VCRs and camcorders. The retail tape was contact reproduced, not recorded. That does make a difference. This has been discussed on other sites, and various devs have acknowledged as much. For example, here https://www.reddit.com/r/VHS/comment...eb2x&context=3 Quote:
Again, I support this project. But I'm going to be very realistic about what it is, does, can do, may do. It's ironic that I sometimes get criticized for insisting a standard workflow needs a line TBC (so the video doesn't look like crap), yet others get a pass when describing absolute overkill. The VBI signal is archaic and meaningless to the final digital capture. For example, documentaries won't get better because VBi was left attached. Those just need quality captured footage, and the filmmakers work magic with the available sources. Quote:
I don't BS easily, so keep it real. I can see the potential of vhs-decode, but it's not ready. And you have to acknowledge that it may never be ready, or take many years. It's definitely not a currently viable solution for any sort of mass use. Keep at it, at least keep trying. Quote:
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NTSC sometimes have a bit of tint/phase offset on the chroma, which remains to be sorted properly, though that can be adjusted easily if needed. There shouldn't be any other specific differences between PAL and NTSC on it's own otherwise, the luma part works the same way other than line count/frame rate and what exact frequency band it's modulated on to. vhs-decode still has a fair bit to go to be a practical alternative of course, sand not a replacement for a good digitizing setup as of now, so don't see it as a competitor. It's slowly chugging along and being worked on though. Ideally we would have an easy software decoded composite capture alternative which would be very easy to set up, but we lack a solid way of capturing raw composite as of now (cx card does weird stuff when detecting composite that we haven't been able to work around and DDD and SDR otpions end up filtering out the lowest frequencies.) |
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The vhs-decode TBC? If so, I don't know. I don't think TBC has much to do with chroma handling, specifically referring to inherent VHS weakness of chroma noise. Quote:
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You, and (I think) zcooger, have always been somewhat grounded in reality. :salute: Whereas some of the others devs, cheerleaders, and fanboys have utopian dreams about magical FM video conversion. It reminds me the Tesla fanboys/fangirls, that seem to think all cars will be flying AI driverless Teslas, and by end of the decade. It's just beyond stupid. No realism, no understanding of the technical hurdles and headwinds. And remember, VHS conversion is a legacy task with an expiration date (like developing film). As the clock on this vhs-decode project runs up (just shy of a decade old now, right?), the clock on people who need/want it winds down. New drapes for a phone booth? The current practical method is the typical VCR>TBC>ingest method. And not just any random gear (VCRs, TBCs, cards, recorders, etc), but the items known to perform this task well. That gear is rightfully in demand, and will remain so probably into the 2030s. The entire reason I started to acquire and refurb gear (and resell in the marketplace here) is because I foresaw a day when gear would be harder to find in good condition. I didn't want to just say "sucks to be you", and then give worthless advice for hardware that didn't exist. At this exact moment, vhs-decode is somewhat like the almost-but-not devices of years past. The capture cards with a TBC/"TBC" that was weak to useless, the excellent VCR with flaws, etc. Pros and cons, with cons that overrode pros. I know that vhs-decode isn't "done" yet, but the possibility still exists that it could be practical vaporware. Not true vaporware, just the practicality. Sort of like Schrödinger's cat of video capture, the project is observed to both fail and succeed. But we won't know definitively until vhs-decode actually done. But it's not done, won't be anytime soon, and therefore it's currently not viable. If it's never done, it'll never be viable. Tape degradation is also real, and waiting on this project is not prudent. In the 2000s, this was BS, but now it's 20 years later, and that 35-65 year tape longevity is at 45+ years for the oldest 70s VHS tapes, 35+ for early 80s tapes. Run the project now with best gear, assume vhs-decode never happens. But hold back tapes to re-run if/when vhs-decode is practical. So I want to see this project succeed, and re-run some of my own special "deserves the best" tapes. But it won't be now, or even soon (years). I don't know why others are so obstinate to this obvious fact. I see this, you see this, latreche, etc. ... and thread drifting off-topic again. :smack: |
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But you've still got all your work ahead of you, a sample of 1 isn't that useful. I can find plenty of examples of absolute nonsense posted on here (LordSmurf often entirely breaks universal mathematical Laws when there's input on electrical subjects) but it would be unfair to tarnish a whole community with that, and it doesn't detract from knowledge elsewhere. There are odd posts that pop up in any community, no matter the subject. You're right insomuch as that post is nonsense, but it doesn't really advance any counterargument. If every group was reduced to one poster, one member, one topic pointing fingers would become a wholly futile act. Happy to provide resources on here to established members getting some fundamental topics entirely 'arse backwards' such as to cause mirth elsewhere. Do we then discount everything else? |
Not me buddy, when I say VHS-decode is not ready for prime time "yet", it was never because individuals like the one I linked to, I know it has potential and merits, I know it can be done, It is just as of right know not a viable option for a lot of folks like myself. When it becomes a product I will certainly buy it, If you go back to some of my old posts over at VH, I even offered financial help for the project to a few members there if they ever needed to build or acquire hardware, no one responded though. Then later it became clear that the project wasn't dragging because finances but because the complexity of the hardware and software and the issues that it faces.
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So not only does vhs-decode have to compete with quality gear, but lazy users. The demographic is being eroded from both ends. Quote:
This goofy "bailing wire and duct tape" style of video gear is not the norm, be it (somewhat foolishly) trying to use a DVD recorder as a TBC (it's not), trying HD/HDMI garbage converters (including overpriced Blackmagic/Magewell) on SD (which butchers the output quality worse than the tape source), and cobbling together random crap as proclaiming "good enough" (aka, an excuse for low quality methods). vhs-decode has to break from that mentality as well, if anything is to work in a production capacity. Not random junk VCRs, etc. That brings us full circle to the initial topic of this thread. But it quickly turned into discussing building a TBC from random junk, and selling cheap on Kickstarter (or free "open-source" instructions). It's just nonsensical. This is the sort of runaway topic/discussion that happens online when the participants don't know what they don't know. (See also, why we have so many political loons these days, created crazy crap in their heads, and putting it online for other gullible lemmings to believe and follow.) Quote:
Just can't help yourself, can you? More passive aggressive BS. There's an episode of The Big Bang Theory that guest stars Brian Greene. (Do you know who that is? He tries to explain complex science in laymen terms.) He's giving a book tour, and Sheldon makes snarky condescending statements denigrating his good work. It's one of the few times I found Sheldon uncouth and completely out of line, the joke really wasn't funny (especially now in retrospect, given the anti-science slant these days). You're being Sheldon. I explain things so others can understand. I don't give a damned about the technical accuracy or jargon at that time. I can only guess you've never had to teach students. You cannot bury and drown them, subjects must be eased into, even at the collegiate level. Furthermore, assuming you refer to AC adapters here, you have theory vs. practice issues. Science isn't as clean cut as you suggest. And to be blunt, I have no interest in getting electronics electrical advice from somebody that a mere lineman decades ago. That knowledge does not necessarily translate, for multiple reasons. So enough of your BS, the passive aggressive comments. Enough! :censor: |
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Reality's are whats real.
First off this thread is becoming a meme replacing processing hardware with software is the future due to pure flexibility.
However both lordsmurf & latreche34 are 10-13 months out of the loop the VideoHelp Thread is a legacy userbase mostly from the LaserDisc side and is not using current documentation or methods. Hell, not even a single mention about CVBS decode which does what a traditional TBC setup does use that baseband signal out the back to a digital file no need for the original source signal no need for control over the demodulation process just run whatever you get though the TBC code and that's that, wait ain't this like apples to oranges huh. Quote:
Now, 1135x625 PAL & 910x525 NTSC the 4fsc standard is what's hard decoded from the RF capture, if there is frame jump or shifting etc not only is that saved into the .TBC but is extractable and editable instead of hard cut but this also tells you about tape condition and other errors you would not see in the pre-cropped SD-SDI signal or Desktop PCIE card capture inside the 720x576/720x480 area. Also, not everyone can afford a PVM/BVM to do H/V delay checks or wants to tinker with their VCR or CRT's to see if there is data with decode a simple test capture and decode takes a mear few minutes, with there is no worry or need for supporting equipment to convert that into LTC for standard editing it's just an FFMPEG filter and copy paste into any standard NLE. Quote:
Tape Ware: I mean shedding mostly here as you cant get that magnetic signal value back when it's physically gone forever. As a photographer If you cant resolve past 1:1 grain resolution you cant print an original quality anything, why I like digital so much its less fuss then having to drum scan everything but we do have 1:1 that's the RF copy, decode is the print in this analogy too I'm just saying its a better print without buying the 1895 printing press. Quote:
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That is the 1:1 copy, saved today to be decoded today or tomorrow. Tape decoding is after the RF of the medium is captured and saved, not during the decoding process. That's a hard reality. Quote:
Then tell me what you think or better yet post an uncompressed video on the internet archive :wink2: Currently, with full chroma phase correction and the full-field TBC already working perfectly fine on VHS/SVHS/Umatic it will still beat out anyone with a Panasonic internal TBC or DMR-ES10 the most common affordable methods. There is dropout detection and correction, and of interesting note, Macrovision is also being slowly removed from ''the picture'' literally with the demodulation side being able to detect it and ignore its effect. So as long as you can get that RF data with a copy of the project of today on a 100GB M-Disk or two and read it in 30-40 years then decode has done what it was meant to do replace the VCR and its functions with software and archive the original untouched mediums information in a universal format RF samples. Decode wins today with conventional alongside for hardware reference, It's allowing one-and-done archival today, to the consumer it's the affordable option to the equipment scalping community its death, to the restorative and archival communities it's the first analogue toolset foundation with a value equivalent of FFMPEG in the digital realm. |
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Not only has this thread gone off-topic, but now the off-topic is circular. So that's enough of that. /done. :lock: |
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