Is Panasonic DMR-EZ48V passthrough similar to DMR-ES10 / ES15?
 

Hi, Is using a Panasonic DMR-EZ48V as a pass passthrough device similar (or the same) as using a DMR-ES10 / ES15?

I am using a JVC HR-S7722 to capture VHS tapes and am sometimes having trouble with frame dropouts / jumps when using the built in TBC on the JVC. I heard that using a DMR-ES10 / ES15 as a 'passthrough' post JVC and pre capture card could help with this - I am yet to find an affordable & dedicated standalone TBC such as an AVT or data video.

I already have a DMR-EZ48V which seems to have all the same connections / operating system as an DMR-ES10 / ES15 so wondered whether I was missing some critical feature! I've played around with the settings and can't seem to improve the JVC signal any further or eradicate the frame dropouts / jumps when they occur (and these only happen on certain recordings / tapes, not all)

I have a couple of capture cards - ADVC-55, ADVC-100, and two DVcam machines (Sony DSR-25 & SONY HVR-M10E) which all enable S-video + Audio in and DV out.

Any help or advice is much appreciated, thank you

In the case of PAL at least, most later panasonic DVRs have similar functionality though a slight bit less capable on very extremely bad tapes, I don't know if the same is true for NTSC, though I have seen posts with people using other NTSC panasonics and they seem to at least some correction at least. I personally have a DMR-EH57, and it works as well as the ES10 on 99% of tapes. Less sure when it comes to the DVD-recorder/VCR combo units, I would think they had similar hardware, and I've seen people report the earlier models (ES30 and ES35) work similarly to the standalone DVRs at least but don't know for sure with the later ones.

How did you set things up when testing if it helped? If you have the jumping issue you would want to turn off the internal TBC in the JVC and let the panasonic correct line wiggling instead. There isn't anything you should have to enable/disable on the panasonic for it to work if it's there, the TBC function is part of the A/D conversion process. There is a noise reduction you can enable or disable but that doesn't have any bearing on signal issues.

Another thing to note, is that at least for the standalone models, the Panasonic DVR (at least the ones I've used) will turn off the analog output signal (at least svideo and composite, not sure about component out) after a few secs if it thinks there is nothing connected to the selected input. This could mess with whatever captures from it. This can be triggered if you play back a part of a tape on a VCR (with no TBC active) that has recording that's nearly or completely blank with no sync stuff (e.g if you press record on a vcr with nothing connected to the selected input channel.) This does not happen if there is e.g nothing recorded on the tape and the VCR outputs noise etc.

Thanks Hodgey
Since writing this thread earlier today I think I might have cracked it.
I am now going out of HR-S7722 via SCART into AV2 on the DMR-EZ48V, I switched that input from S-video to RGB/Composite and seem to have a much more stable input to my capture device (from DMR-EZ48V)

Whereas previously going S-video + audio from HR-S7722 directly into capture device I was getting dropouts (with this particular tape), I now have no dropouts passing through the DMR-EZ48V (via SCART), and outputting S-Video + Audio from DMR-EZ48V into my capture device.
So fingers crossed, I am capturing a 3 hour VHS tape and will monitor progress. TBC on the HR-S7722 is switched on and still improves the pictures even passing through the DMR-EZ48V.

BTW I am in UK using PAL

If the VCR was set to output composite over scart, and the DVR was set to s-video in over the scart port it's no wonder it wasn't working well. I would have thought setting both to s-video would be better though, but maybe the DVR has some filtering disabled on the S-video in or something.

I forgot to mention, another thing to be vary of with the PAL Panasonic DVRs (at least the standalone ones) is that they have can sometimes clip bright areas. It's possible to work around it by lowering the video level of the input signal, but that's can be a bit clunky.