Best VCR for Betamax tape with tons of crash-edits?
I’m looking for help in choosing the best Betamax machine to buy for an upcoming transfer project.
I made a bunch of stop-motion animation videos in the late 1970s by crash-editing on a Sony SL-5400. “Crash editing,” for those unfamiliar, was just the sloppiest, cheapest way to edit on home equipment back then. For animation, that meant just hitting the play/pause button really fast in order to record just a handful of frames at a time. Every edit would produce a glitch and a little click. When played back on the original machine, these glitches and clicks were relatively minor, and allowed for a passable viewing experience. But even back then, the few times I played the tapes on someone else’s machine the glitches grew to the point of making the material unwatchable. “Unwatchable” meant that instead of just a quick glitch, each edit point would black out the screen for a second or two, or lose sync so badly that the screen would flip around, etc. On the audio front, “unwatchable” meant muted audio for a moment around each glitchy edit point. Since the edit points are often closer than one second to each other, a series of them could turn the video into complete trash when played in the wrong machine. I also made a bunch of music videos back then, and so if the playback machine mutes the audio around harsh cuts it totally ruins the song. Here are a couple guesses I have about what caused the difference in playback between machines: 1) The 1978 SL-5400 (which played the tapes well) was a very early machine. Maybe its simplicity was a benefit in this case. Maybe newer machines see the crash-editing glitches and try hard to make them look more “polite” by blanking the screen out and muting the audio. 2) Or maybe my SL-5400 was in superb shape, while my friends’ machines were in terrible shape, misaligned, worn, etc. 3) Or maybe the problem will just go away if I use a TBC, which I plan to do on this transfer anyway. I’m about to buy a refurbished Betamax machine from MisterBetamax in order to get the best transfer of these tapes possible (uncompressed capture, QTGMC, etc), and the above issue will define which machine I buy. Which plan do you think makes most sense: A) Buy the best, newest machine he’s got. I never used a high-end machine back then, so maybe they’ll handle the glitches even better! And since a few have S-video outputs, I’ll have the benefit of a somewhat better signal too. B) Buy the oldest stable machine he’s got, hoping that a simpler machine will mess with my crash-edits less. C) MrBetamax doesn’t sell or repair the SL-5400 anymore, but I could buy a couple on eBay (they’re out there) and hope I can tune one up myself. The hope here would be that playback on the exact same model of machine they were recorded on would produce the most similar results. Has anyone had any experience with this issue? Thanks in advance for thoughts. |
I would suggest a semi pro deck (don't even know if they are made) or a machine with 4 heads for frame by frame capture (one that doesn't have digital buffer like the ED betas, digital pause doesn't look good on those machines).
Alternatively you can still use a regular Betamax deck in normal playback mode but get a sync generator device that has the ability to take the composite (S-Video) input and output a fresh synch pulse with the video signal and capture that way. Then in software edit your footage to remove all the junk from the clean frames. |
Great advice, thanks. You’re attacking the problem a little differently than I was. I was just trying to get playback to go as smoothly as possible, but it sounds like your methods would harvest one good frame of every image, and then reconstruct the animation from those clean stills later. This is very possible, since each step of animation was probably 5 or 10 frames long (how fast I was able to double-click the pause button back then).
As for the non-animation stuff though: I’m still hoping to find a deck that will play through those crash-edits as cleanly as possible. I wonder if the digital signal stuff in the ED decks (which you say produces the poor freeze-frames) might better stabilize the messy edits on normal playback. I’m much more apt to grab the stills for animation in the computer than to rely on the VCR to produce solid freeze-frames, so maybe the ED decks wouldn’t be a problem? I like them because they have s-video out. If not, the SL-HF1000 looks like a solid non-digital option with 4 heads. I will be running it through a time base corrector before the capture card in any case. |
You might check out the Sony SL-C9. See Palsite description. https://www.palsite.com/slc9ovi.html
It had excellent slow mo ability with a dedicated Slow Tracking control, and the rare feature of slow mo in reverse as well as forwards. On the back panel it also has a TV Vertical Lock adjuster. It might also help to reduce instability with still or slow frame capture. |
I didn't even realize this had a term. (I've never been an editor, my video skills are elsewhere.)
I did this style of editing back in the 90s, when I was briefly interested in linear editing. I didn't like it. I only have one tape like this, just a few minutes long. However, I'd helped clients recover stuff like this in years past -- including a movie producer that wanted to convert his childhood films to the best quality possible. (Sadly, he wasn't overly friendly, and was weird about his kid projects "getting out there" (?) and demanded all working copies be deleted immediately after he received the returned project. There was some neat stuff there, would have made for a nice before/after demo reel. Entertaining Star Wars spoofs, etc. I was impressed by the light saber work he had done 30 or so years ago. It was the kind of stuff that'd have racked up Youtube views, especially after my restore+rebuild work made it enjoyable to watch. Some people are just weird.) |
The SL-C9 looks great, but unfortunately MrBetamax has neither that nor its professional sibling (SLO-420).
My reading suggests that buying from MrBetamax is the only consistently reliable way to get a Beta deck working in top-notch condition, and my repair skills don't stretch beyond stuff I can easily mimic by watching youtube (tape path alignment, maybe replacing an easy belt). So unless I find a better plan, I'm planning to limit myself to his selection. I was even looking at a NOS SL-HF2000 on Amazon, but I fear even an unopened unit might need repairs at this age. |
You missed out on an ED machine I sold 2 weeks ago, I fixed it and did a full service, It was sold for $480 in an auction style listing on ebay, not sure if you are willing to spend that much money though.
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Sorry to hear that. I've got a budget for this project, and am really just looking for the machine that will best handle the material. It will be worth it to me to get this stuff as clean as possible.
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Well, here is a NOS one on ebay, You may need a step down transformer since Japan is 100V:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Brand-New-1...EAAOSwBWZgUhRb |
What a beauty! But I'd be concerned about buying a "Japanese standard" unit. From what I can tell, it plays NTSC-J, which was similar to NTSC but with a different black level. And it also expects 100v power, whereas I've got 120. I guess I could get a step-down power transformer, but even then I'd be concerned all the menus might be in Japanese.
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Even your SL5400 couldnt hope to play back its own animations without glitches. I doubt any VCR could, then or now. At least not at normal speed. The only way to extract the frames then or now seems with slow-mo playback because only that allows the vcr enough time to adjust to the multiple timing distortions, or discontinuities, that it strikes. Time to actually find and read each frame field on the tape without error. |
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But I was age 7-10 when I made most of the animation, working without any adult guidance, and obviously had no money for film or developing. My parents had that SL-5400 though, and I would torture it when they weren't home. They put up with it because I made interesting stuff. The machine would require repairs every year or two due to my hammering on that pause button in order to make animation this way. And even after I got tired of making animation, I used it to make live action movies with lots of glitchy crash edits until about 1984 when my dad finally relented and bought a system with flying erase heads. This early material is objectively bad in both content and technical style--I was essentially a toddler when I made much of it. But it DID play back surprisingly well during the entire time we kept the SL-5400 it was made on. It didn't play back without glitches, but the glitches were minor enough that they were almost exclusively small bursts of noise that didn't roll or destabilize the picture. I made more than 100 short films (animation and live action) during this VCR's life, and played them back on the original deck repeatedly with great results in subsequent years. I realize this may have been a fluke that I can no longer repeat, since our original magic VCR is now long gone. You've given me an idea for the regular (non-animation) material with less frequent glitchy edits though: possibly capture it once at full-speed with messy picture, just so I get the sound and some reference video. Then play the same segment again at a fixed slow-motion speed so the VCR has more time to deal with each glitchy edit, overlay this on top of the messy footage and carefully time-remap it to re-sync with sound. Or, even better, I could only cut to the time-remapped slow-motion stuff right around the messy edit points, then back to the footage captured at normal speed once it is playing stably again. In any case, you've convinced me to seek the Betamax with the most solid slow-motion playback. Maybe I'll be able to find the SL-C9 / SLO-420 you mentioned. Anyone know of any other Beta decks that were exceptional at slo-mo playback? |
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SAMPLE FOOTAGE.
(I should have put this in my first post but didn't think of it.) This shows a short sample of the material in question when I first tried to capture it in 2005. This was a suboptimal transfer (Betamax -> ADVC300 -> Mac) with no TBC, compressed capture, and no special attention paid to fixing the crash edits. I swear this played well on the original 1978 machine that recorded it. Many of the edit points even play back OK in this version, but many do not. This transfer was made from a Sony SL-HF300 that I picked up in 2005. At least you can see the image. I've seen other machines screw the tape up so bad that you can't even make out images. This is why I've fantasized about finding a perfect 1978 SL-5400 for maximum similarity to the original recording deck, but I think capturing from a better deck via slow-motion and reconstituting from there might work better. NOTE: I was 9 when I made this, and it was 1981. To judge harshly would be to insult a 9-year-old :laugh: |
Thanks for the sample!
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If the wobbly pitch of the music was an issue it seems possible to temporarily mod the playback VCR to ignore the unruly tracks on the tapes and just play the tapes at nominal speed, but this to capture only the soundtrack and then marry it with the vision in post. |
This is up my alley as a former Betaphile. *SIGH* I miss them!
Super expensive, but inarguably the best SuperBeta is the SL-HF2100. It had a special, possibly unique set of different sized heads for BI & BII. "Sony improved the way the SL-HF2100 records a picture while still making it backward compatible to all Betas before it. Called the Opt-4 system, it employs dual sets of compound video heads of different sizes on the rotating disk. Compound heads have twin coils and two separate recording gaps. This is done so they will trace one frame at a time and create clear pause and step. These heads are special and only found in high end Betas. For the 2100 Sony changed the gap engineering and made the front part of the head larger and used its gap to record all three speeds. During playback the head gaps are switched. The larger ones play s and and the smaller, secondary one is optimized for playing and special effects. This creative switching method insures that a large signal is being recorded on the tape. The result is a clean solid magnetic footprint that reproduces a picture of stunning crispness and purity." https://mrbetamax.com/DescriptionSL-HF2100.htm It's also the only SuperBeta machine with S-Video out. AFAIK, all the ED-Beta models had S-Video out. As a former Betaphile, I had the SL-HF2100 and IMO, it's picture quality was third in line, behind the EDV-7500 and SL-HF900. The SL-HF2000 is a a stripped down Betamax, sharing only the styling of the SL-HF2100 without any of the extraordinary recording and playback capabilities of its big brother. I didn't own the SL-HF1000, but read reports at the time, that the SL-HF900 surpassed it for picture quality because it was designed for top quality playback vs. the full editing capabilities of its big brother. The same may hold true for the EDV-7500/7300 for the same reason. If you're looking for ED-Beta machines, in the past few years I was surprised to see unknown to me, machines other than the EDV-7500/7300 and EDV-9500/9300 show up on eBay as reasonable, <$1000. Japan only models EDV-5000, EDV-6000(?) and EDV-8000. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...+beta&_sacat=0 There's also the big brothers to the SL-5400. The SL-5600 and SL-5800. AFAIK, the SL-5600 is the same as the SL-5400, just with the added capability of freeze-frame and possibly slow motion. IIRC, they were introduced at the same time. The SL-5800 was a dramatic leap forward in 1981 with crystal clear freeze frame and variable slow motion. IIRC, it used a different type of video heads as the Sony techs (I got to know them really well because I used and serviced my machines a lot) told me that the head drum on the lower models were interchangeable, but not with the SL-5800. Stay away from the early slimline models, SL-2000 portable, SL-2500 and SL-HF2700. They used a folding pin design on the loading ring that was highly prone to failure. I had to SL-2000 (the only machine I didn't keep) and the SL-HF2700 which used this design. The last time I had my SL-HF2700 repaired (one of many), I was told that Sony redesigned the loading ring, but it was still prone to failure. After the final repair, I put on on the shelf and rarely used it. Apparently, Sony eventually did fix the loading ring issue because I owned later owned an SL-20 which lasted a few years. Though it had very little use since it wasn't Hi-Fi. |
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This project is mostly interesting to me as a technical challenge, just to see how much can be done to improve this archaic mess that I made so long ago. The tape is rough enough that I know failure is an option, but it will be interesting to try. |
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Or maybe the internals of the HF2100 are good enough that it’s worth dealing with the touchscreen? Quote:
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This is great--I feel like I’m down to just a couple choices now. A note on budget: I don’t really mind spending a lot to get a properly refurbished deck. My Beta collection is small, so I’ll probably just resell whatever I buy as soon as I get everything archived, and it seems like these things hold their value reasonably well. |
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Edit: The touchscreen was a simple capacitive screen. No swiping, push only. Almost all Betamax remotes can be used in place of this one. The exception is the few remotes that allowed you to switch between mode 1 and 2 (I think the SL-HF900/1000 and maybe the ED-Beta remotes). The touchscreen was very responsive, though I recall reading that the SL-HF2000 models had issues. Remember that the SL-HF2100 was the 15th Anniversary Beta and Sony put the best of everything possible into it knowing that Beta very likely wouldn't be around for the 20th Anniversary. It's truly a one of a kind. Quote:
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Deter, who is highly respected for his outstanding repair work on AG-1980s says it has excellent regular picture quality and I respect that, but my machine's picture was definitely softer than most of my others. Again, for me, I defined quality as sharpness and color. |
I hope Mr. Betamax is okay. Anyone here know him? I had been waiting about a week to hear back from him after contacting him through web-form and email, and then last night I found a post elsewhere from someone who’s been trying to reach him for two months! I’m concerned about Mr. Betamax.
Anyway, last night I bought a Sony SL-HF900. It was refurbished by a fellow named DoctorSony on eBay--a former Sony tech who has a 100% rating selling mostly refurbished Sony camcorders, but many Beta decks as well. It was $600, noticeably less than I was planning to pay Mr. Betamax. People here and elsewhere have said the HF900 was the pinnacle of Betamax playback. What really sold me was that it was also one of the very few decks with “DA4” dual azimuth heads, which means it should have the steadiest slow-motion playback of any non-digtial deck (except maybe the SL-HF2100). I’ve heard the digital still/slow on the ED models harms the picture. My one regret is not having s-video out, but the only non-ED deck with s-video out is the SL-HF2100, and the only one of those I found was from Mr. Betamax and cost $2500. I will try to come back to this thread in a few months and leave a before/after video example of my attempt to restore video laden with crash edits by capturing in slow motion, just in case anyone else is ever looking for a solution. I look forward to experimenting and seeing what can be done. If anyone reads this in the meantime and has additional workflow ideas, please post! Thanks to everyone above for your thoughts. |
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sanlyn still hasn't been to the forum for about 9 months now. He's up in age, and I'm somewhat worried about him. Not just age, but health issues like myself (worse actually). He was a daily regular at VH for years, then here for years. |
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