Local video transfer service equipment! Yikes!

[jbd5010]

Gentleman around the corner from me offers VHS transfers in additional to event/wedding videography; this is a screenshot of the video promo on his website. Rate his setup...

[latreche34]

A bunch of thrift store crap, nothing special.

[BarryTheCrab]

It’s all e-waste.

[jbd5010]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

A bunch of thrift store crap, nothing special.

And he *charges* for it.

[Feedbucket]

You're paying for his time, I guess.

[Davis]

Low end equipment and looks like composite to composite transfer. The very worst quality.

[vwestlife]

Cheap Funai VCRs plugged into a DVD recorder will still give you better quality than LegacyBox or the conversion services in Florida and Arizona which are well-known for bashing LegacyBox on YouTube, despite using "Elcrapo" USB composite video capture devices, even when transferring digital sources like MiniDV and even DVD camcorder discs, and only adding some minimal form of TBC after I called them out on it.

[aramkolt]

I have seen VWestlife's video showing his Sony DVD recorder performing line-TBC like effects with good results, with the main downside being having to deal with physical discs, though I suppose you can use RW discs or just keep write only discs as backups.

I did obtain one of that model for testing, but I actually haven't done the test just yet to see how it compares to a variety of other consumer capture products, but I presume it'll be pretty decent.

I presume the line-TBC-like effects stem from the MPEG2 conversion chip which more or less had that functionality built in whether advertised or not (as do many if not all DV conversion chips) as they were expecting to be used on sources that had these errors. Not having that functionality would have likely led to a lot of returned products.

My theory is that they just ignore the horizontal blanking interval and just start writing data after each sync pulse which would start each line on the same position on the left, essentially doing what a line TBC does. They aren't line TBCs because they aren't buffering, re-constructing, and re-outputting it as analog, but we really don't need that for capture purposes.

VWestLife is probably too humble to post his own video, but I think that the effort that went into the video deserves a post for those that have not seen his review of the VRD-MC5 which I believe he is referring to in the above post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF1-1hwYdKg

[jbd5010]

I'm a big VWestlife fan, but somehow I missed that one, thanks for sharing! Let us know how the testing goes. I'm not aware of Sony ever using LSI Logic DiMeNsion chips, so if there's a Sony chip that we should be on the lookout for, that would be helpful new info.

[jbd5010]

Here's a 12voltvids basic teardown: https://youtu.be/VMgQ7geD-lc?si=scZuxy4k4_cR5Slz

At 28:53 you get a good view of the circuit board. A few MediaTek chips, MT1888 and MT8108. Google search is inconclusive, I'm guessing they are related to the user interface of the device and no video processing. The smaller chips which likely include video encoder (and decoder, since the board has an unused "AV Out connector") are illegible.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

A bunch of thrift store crap, nothing special.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

It’s all e-waste.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Davis

Low end equipment and looks like composite to composite transfer. The very worst quality.

These are the correct answers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vwestlife

will still give you better quality than LegacyBox or the conversion services in Florida and Arizona

My female cat's litter box smells better than my male cat's litter box. But both are literal shit.

[jbd5010]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

These are the correct answers.


My female cat's litter box smells better than my male cat's litter box. But both are literal shit.

Bahaha... best analogy right here

[jbd5010]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vwestlife

Cheap Funai VCRs plugged into a DVD recorder will still give you better quality than LegacyBox or the conversion services in Florida and Arizona which are well-known for bashing LegacyBox on YouTube, despite using "Elcrapo" USB composite video capture devices, even when transferring digital sources like MiniDV and even DVD camcorder discs, and only adding some minimal form of TBC after I called them out on it.

Good to see you on here! Enjoy your vids.