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Originally Posted by Qaenos
I got very good video (low noise) with just the 1980P (TBC set to on) going directly into the Matrox box directly and not using the green AVT-8710 TBC at all.
Is the green AVT-8710 TBC needed/required/better
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This is a problem for novice users to understand.
You don't directly see the effects of the external framesync TBC.
And if you do see a frame TBC, odds are it's not a good one. An ideal frame TBC is transparent, and transparency is a main test to gauge TBC quality.
Line TBC = fixes visual
Frame TBC (aka frame sync TBC) = fixes signal
You need both.
I recently explained that ingesting (ingest = technical term for digitizing video) requires whole pies. Every second, 25 (PAL) or 30 pies (NTSC, skipping 1 per 1000 to get 29.97) are sent, with goal to be ingested. But if a pie isn't perfect (came from oven burnt, not round, not fully done, somebody snuck a piece or bite, etc), then the pie is tossed on the floor. The ingest cannot accept non-perfect pies. Our pie eater is finicky. And when you toss even ONE pie on the floor, the ingest process is interrupted (and you have a mess to clean up).
All VHS were sloppily made. It's inherent to the format. Every tape have frames (pies) with pieces missing, malformed, etc.
To be frank (not the intention here to be insulting), the novice idea of "good" is nonsense, as that determination is based on nothing. That's one of the biggest barriers to understanding video. What you see isn't the signal, merely part of it. Some folks just cannot wrap their minds around this. I'm also a visual learner, but also realize that not all science is visual (easy example = radio telescope, which I had to comprehend for my college astrophysics course).
Even with visual line corrections, the signal can be fubar. That causes dropped frames (thus audio sync errors), but also many more problems. Some do bleed into visuals, some not.
These problems are not constant, but sporadic and random (sometimes not repeatable on 2nd attempt, but will instead appear elsewhere where previously not).
Unless you watch a video 100%, then watch it for 100% again to verify (as you do blink, and focus on some areas while ignoring others), then you cannot say it has no visual errors. Still realizing that the visual problems are not the only problems, though signal does bleed into visual for some errors.
Does this all make sense now?
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Originally Posted by Qaenos
Got the VC500 today. Brand new from Amazon. It worked! 1980P (S-Video TBC on) -> AVT-8710 (S-video) -> VC500. No noise. Good, clean picture.
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Excellent.
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Is there anything in Device Manager
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No.
You can crack open the card, and view the chips, but we don't know enough about the exact chips, and currently have no idea on the firmwares therein. There have been too many variations for years now, and almost all have AGC issues reported in the past few years. The AGC is random, some tapes seem immune, some are not. Some TBCs are effective at (mostly) nuking it, some do not. It's random. The nature of AGC is random, when the AGC is badly done. ATI 650/750 are an extreme example of a horrible AGC.
Did you buy this used? There's always a chance you have an older model, like sanlyn has, which doesn't seem to exhibit this problem. But unlikely. I doubt new VC500 fixed in, and in fact doubt VC500 are even produced anymore (ie, all NOS, new old stock, until warehouses empty).
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I mean it looks good to my eyes, but I don't want it to have some AGC or whatever problem baked in that I may not be noticing.
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This is likely. Furthermore, most novice users don't see issues in tiny preview windows, but it becomes obvious on large HDTVs when actually viewing.