Hotronic AP41 TBC for best possible video?
 

Good morning all,

Is it useful for me to buy a Hotronic AP41 TBC to get the best possible video for digitizing PAL VHS and S-VHS videotapes?
This TBC has Y/C in and outputs but i don't know if it can be used and if it will give a better (more stable) video-output.
I'm using a Panasonic NV FS-200, which has a TBC, to play the tapes and i still have a Panasonic video-mixer WJ-MX12 which also have a TBC inside. From there the signal goes to a Sony RDR-HX780 DVD-recorder to convert the S-VHS signal to HDMI. This HDMI-output is connected to a HDMI BlackMagic Intencity Pro capture card which is placed in a Akitio PCI-box with Firewire output and connected to a fast laptop with Sony Vegas Pro.
Will de Hotronic AP41 be a help for me?

Thanks in advance

That's not a healthy workflow, Tons of pieces in the chain which introduce noise and signal loss, Stick with the regular workflow that is proven to work reliably: S-VHS LTBC ON -> Frame TBC -> USB Capture-> PC (preferably Win 7).
If your current mixer has a good frame TBC test it before you go and buy more gear.

Sorry for posting as a reply .... this should be a new message. --- Moved. -LS

The video-chain i'm using now is only the Panasonic NV-FS200 s-vhs recorder to the Sony RDR-HX780 DVD-recorder. This DVD-recorder has a HDMI output what is connected to the HDMI capturecard. The video-editing is done at HDMI level.
The rest of the equipment is a waveform- and vector monitor to see and compair the videosignal with a clean signal from the video-generator at different points in the video-chain. The Behringer is used for audio-post production. The Panasonic recorder has a TBC but that seems a line-tbc and not a frame-tbc.

S-VHS LTBC ON -> Frame TBC -> USB Capture-> PC (preferably Win 7). Frame TBC - USB capture ?? Never seen such equipment.

Never seen?

- JVC/Panasonic S-VHS VCR with line TBC
- external frame sync TBC, mostly DataVideo and Cypress models. Not all, most. And lots of Cypress is rebadged, not sold under a Cypress brand name. Example = green AVT-8710.
- USB capture cards, specific models, not all/random models.

Behringer makes nice audio mixers, I used Tapco.
Wave/etc monitors are usually leveraged by broadcasters, not really digital conversions from consumer analog tapes (as those weren't accurate anyway, very content based)

What issue are you having where you think it could help? The Sony will already help keep audio in sync, and in most cases prevent frame drops, and even features pretty decent stabilization of horizontal wiggle. It can run into rolling/frame drops though if the top of the video is very corrupted. That's where a different tbc unit may or may not help. If you do have tapes with issues I would give the mixer a try first with those, putting it in between VCR and dvd-recorder. (I have encountered with the HX750 that it gets confused by the output of the NV-HS1000 with TBC turned on if there is nothing on a tape and puts up wrong tv system message. Not an issue on jvc vcrs with tbc or vcr without tbc/tbc off but not sure if that's an issue with the fs200 and/or HX780).

Capturing HDMI from the newer Sony/Pioneer dvd-recorders works pretty well in my experience, no need to replace that with a USB card if the capture side of it works fine. The NEC video decoding ICs in these give nice quality, and they allow you to adjust video levels and noise reduction as you want them and turn on/off agc.

For almost 20 years i have promised my kids to digitize the old video's VHS en S-VHS. The last month i have update my video room, the videorecorders are cleaned, de-magnitized and checked. Because there are a very lot of videotapes (about 400) i first like to know more about the best possible way to digitize the tapes. A good TBC is hard to find nowadays. Hopefully there will be a green AVT-8710 for sale soon ... but then i must be very lucky i guess. I don't know if there's a quality difference between my Sony DVD recorder and the mentioned Panasonic DMR ES10 or ES15. So my video-chain is not complete yet.

Oops ... i didnt read good ... thought it was about a TBC with USB output. :)