Is this dot crawl? (new VCR comparison)
 

Hi folks,

I recently purchased a JVC HR-S9911U VCR with line TBC off of eBay and set about testing some videotapes compared to my old crappy Panasonic, without any TBC.

My signal path is HR-S9911U > Dazzle DVC100. Tested with both Composite and S-Video.

I noticed right away that the colours look better (my old VCR output was looking overexposed and washed out), and the built-in TBC is keeping the picture super stable! :D

However, I also noticed that the picture seems to have more noise in the signal, and especially so on S-Video.

I'm wondering whether:

1. There's an issue with my VCR, and it's introducing noise on both composite and S-Video output?
2. This noise is actually on the videotape, and was blurred / masked by my old VCR overexposing the image?
3. There's an issue with my $10 Amazon S-Video cable and it's causing dot crawl?
4. Something else?

I'm leaning towards the possibility that my S-Video cable is just junk and I should find another one, but as I have never done this before, I would I would greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions you guys have! If the issue is actually with my VCR, I might try and take it up with eBay, since I paid like $500 for this thing...

Attached comparison image sample explainer (from to bottom):

• 4-head old Panasonic VCR, composite, no TBC. The letters look pretty "clean" here. But is it because of overexposure?
• JVC HR-S9911U, TBC/NR disabled, Composite. I'm not sure if there is more noise than on the Panasonic here... perhaps it only "looks" noisier because the exposure is correct... so everything is darker.
• JVC HR-S9911U, TBC/NR enabled, Composite. The TBC stabilizes the picture, everything else looks the same to me.
• JVC HR-S9911U, TBC/NR enabled, S-Video... the noise seems worst here which makes me think the issue is with the cable or the S-Video output on the VCR.

My other attachment is showing that the S-Video output has checkerboarding on the new VCR's blue screen... I'm wondering if that's what is causing the noise in the video tape.

I've added two video samples too. One from the original VCR, composite output (Baumgaertner-01.avi). and one of the HR-S9911U S-Video output (SVHS-Baumgaertner-01.avi).

Please let me know your thoughts, would be greatly appreciated so I can get on with my video archiving project! Thanks to everyone on this form as it's been an invaluable resource getting set up so far.

Dazzle is low-end barely-passable card. It has many issues, including wash-out colors. So it's a weak link.

The main dot crawl issue is 99% likely a cheap s-video cable.
Note: "cheap" is in quality, not price. Monster brand is expensive, but is also a bad cable more than not, for multiple reasons. Ironically, sometimes the cheap (price) cable is a good cable. Go figure.

Thanks for the shockingly fast reply! I'll go source another S-Video cable, and see if that helps.

I thought the Dazzle was adequate as the colors look good to me and I can do lossless capture, but maybe I will have to look at swapping that out as well.

The noise doesn't look like dot crawl to me at least, looks more like normal tape noise. Maybe the VCR is set to EDIT mode which turns off some of the noise reduction? The Digital R3 sharpening thing may also make edge noise more noticeable. What settings to use depends a bit on preference.

Not sure if it's any more noisy than the composite one from the panasonic, the letters may look a bit less noisy as the image seems blown out and the bright spots being clipped. It may be more noticeable on the panasonic output if you lower the brigthness and/or contrast when capturing from it.

The dot pattern on the blue menu background over s-video is normal for JVCs SVHS VCRs (and most other SVHS decks). The color signal is output on both the Y and C channels over S-Video when in the menu which makes it look like that (I think the on-screen display ICs may only support composite output). It doesn't do this for the actual video output from playback.

Also correct. :congrats:

I agree. In my experience, with my JVC HR-S9500MS when using edit=off is better to have Digital 3R=on, when using edit=on is better to turn Digital 3R=off.