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Originally Posted by Bypassall
To put things bluntly, there is a reason people disregard this otherwise promising technology - nobody is maintaining it to a sensible standard
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That's exactly the problem.
Most of the self-named "leaders" ("documentarian", devs, etc) are just young GenZers/20-somethings, who have no real-world experience at video. They refuse to learn proper methods, shun it, and make fun of people that have been doing this for decades. It's extreme immaturity and snark, and their communities are toxic cesspools that make Twitter look inviting and friendly.
I get comments on this frequently. For example, just last week:
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I may be interested in one of your workflow setups. I had gotten a Domesday Duplicator a year or so ago. And I modded a Sony VCR to tap into the RF output etc. However I still have not been able to get the software up and running, and I am finding that the "help" that is available is limited and the documentation not always easy to follow.
As an aside, what is the deal with the whole Domesday Duplicator thing anyway? The idea sounded great to me, which is why I bought the card. But wow the documentation is all over the place, the software fails on download, and when I asked some questions on their discord I was essentially told to "RTFM".
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And I have so many more.
Those kind of comments are common in private. "In private". That's because the immature leader TheRealHarrypm (Harry Munday, 24, of Oxford UK) will belittle the person, then ban them from their little communities. They remove any criticism, silence any voices with any degree of criticism. Harry seems to be unemployed, so he spends his day trolling online.
They've designated me enemy #1 because I won't be silenced. I have decades of experience in video, both in the hobby community (going back to the 90s) and the pro/studio community (going back to 00s). I was literally doing this stuff, to a serious level, before they were even born.
But let me re-visit this phase:
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this otherwise promising technology
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Domesday86 is old tech, created for digitizing Laserdiscs, based on Domesday originally developed by the BBC. Professionals created it, and it works stunningly.
Domesday86 is not vhs-decode. That's a hobby attempt to get Domesday86 to also work with VHS. And it sorta-kinda does, and sorta-kinda doesn't. It has many issues, both in quality of output, and quality of process (the gear, software, etc). Halo (ringing) is the worst part of vhs-decode. Attempts to compensate merely result in a blurred image that looks like it came off a bad composite VCR output.
vhs-decode has been out for almost 10 years now, nearly a full decade, and serious quality issues simply have not been addressed. So I would argue that the window for "promising" ended at least 5 years ago. It's no longer promising. At best, they're trying to "circle the wagons", and salvage what they can, and ignoring or poo-poo'ing the many drawbacks.
vhs-decode output quality is very dependent on the deck head quality, and the transport quality. vhs-decode modulates the data, but the VCR head does the pickup. Cheap consumer VCRs, their gear of choice, is notorious for having inferior heads and sloppy loose transports. And in 10-30 years of aging, typical lack of consumer maintenance, and it's not pretty.
For vhs-decode to ever succeed, as I have said for the past ~10 years since it was birthed as a project, dedicated hardware will be required. Both in terms of head reading (not using VCRs) and with a "black box" to process the data much faster than a desktop/laptop computer can. But no, that goes against their #1 "primary objective" (Robocop reference) that all of their process "must remain as cheap as possible".
So that's why you get
- thrift stores VCRs
- Aliexpress parts
- along with poorly-documented homebrew duct-tape-and-chicken-wire software
All for a low price that results in excessive amounts of time. However, for many of us, time is worth more than saving $100 or even $1000. These young 20-something do not understand this. They've maybe not experienced loss or bad timing, showing them how futile it is to spend gobs of time to save relatively little money (in the grand scheme of life). It's even more egregious when those same people have $5k+ "gamer" computers, $1k+ cell/mobile phones, etc. In that light, it not even about absolute dollar value, but willingness (or stubbornness) to spend what it needed for quality work. They have a "negative economics" problem.
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I've been at this for VERY MANY hours now and I'm tired, to be honest
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Your "VERY MANY" hours simply will not end anytime soon, if ever.
That's why this project remains virtually still-born, near-vaporware noise, ignored by 99.99%+ of people, which includes most professionals and archivists (including ones working for large organizations like LoC). They want nothing to do with this mess. Nor do I, nor do many.
If you continue down this path, good luck.
And my condolences to those many sacrificed hours, frustration, and lost sanity.
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No need to apologize, many people feel with same, especially when they find out they've been lied to about how good vhs-decode supposedly is.
Realize that
vhs-decode quality is NOT better than known-good workflows. 
Namely:
- JVC/Panasonic S-VHS with line TBC (certain models)
- DataVideo/Cypress type frame TBCs (certain models)
- quality capture card -- where ATI/Pinnacle is known good (certain models), GV-USB2/Hauppauge is arguable, and Easycap/Elgato/ClearClick etc is known bad.
And all the gear is in proper refurbished condition, not just random "used" (abused) from eBay. Which is where most of the bad "comparisons" come from. Again, too many young users in that project that have never seen or used this gear, and have no idea what it can and should do. For example, that pathetic wiki has an image of a Panasonic AG-1980P with very obvious caps issues, to show a fake "comparison". It's been point out now, many times, by many people, and Harry refuses to remove it, or replace with an image from a recapped AG-1980P.
You've been misled, lied to, and fed nothing but FUD, from the vhs-decode community. Ranting is warranted.
