Jittery VHS>DV capture, no jitters on CRT?
 

I purchased one of those analog to digital capture devices that records directly to an SD card. During capture/playback the video jumps/skips frames in an unwatchable jittery fashion. I figured it was my VCR (Sony SLV-679HF) so I did a deep dive into researching higher quality VCR and am leaning towards Panasonic AG-1970. However, while traversing down the VCR research rabbit hole I learned that the jitters might not be the VCR but instead the DV capture device. So I tested the VCR with an old CRT and voila, no jitters! Sooooo, now back back to the drawing board. I'm looking at maybe one of those Tensun S-video>HDMI devices and then HDMI to PC using OBS. Or maybe Blackmagic intensity shuttle? Or will the jitters go away if using TBC VCR with analog to digital capture device? Haha, lots of questions. Thanks!!!

Absolutely not.


Yes indeed.

That was a mistake. Return it. Was it one of those ClearClick devices? Those devices earned the nickname ClickCrap (or similar).

It probably is your VCR having lack quality output, but that junk device was most of the issue.

Why? For most users, JVC decks are better.
If Panasonic needed, AG-1980 best, not 1970. The 1970 isn't bad, but quirks, quality hits.

Correct. DV also sucks, 1990s conversion tech, long ago displaced.

That's not a test. CRTs understand bad VCR signals, compensate for them. But an old TV is not capture/ignest.

No. Do not do this.

No. Do not do this.

No. Do not do this.

You need a standard workflow:
VCR > TBC > capture card.
But not just any random VCR/TBC/card. Specific items, known for quality.

- recommended JVC S-VHS VCR with line TBC
- recommended frame TBC
- recommended capture card, exact card chosen depends on OS (WinXP/7 best, Win10 worst)

Typical issue, just need the right hardware. :congrats:

Thanks, that helps tons. I was leaning towards Panasonic only because I read they are better for EP tapes (Wish I had known better when I was 10).

Funny update, I tried passing the Sony VCR composite output through my Sony GV-D200 Hi8 deck and pulling the S-video out into the ClearClick (ClearCrap) device and the jitters were mostly gone. Not quite where I want to ultimately be, just found it interesting. I'd like to find a decent TBC VCR for $300ish, if not an AG-1970 then probably JVC HR-S7xxx. And from there maybe an ES10 pass through. As far as capture cards are concerned, are there any USB based devices you would recommend or should I stick to PCI? Thanks!

$300 gets you a deck from a recycler on eBay.

Realize the claims of "working" and "tested" are nonsense, it's pure gambling. (Tested/working = seeing the LED clock, seeing any quality signal from crappy old retail tape like TMNT. Ridiculous non-tests.)

USB and PCI are just comm methods. Both USB and PCI have quality cards, but MANY more than are junk.

Yeah just like most capture dongles those clearclick things do not handle direct vcr input all that well despite being advertised for that purpose.

That's actually quite interesting, it's been documented a fair bit that the digital8 camcorders and video walkmans can stabilize horizontal jitter pretty well when using them to convert from s-video or composite in and grabbing from the firewire port but that has the downsides of no control over video brightness and DV compression artifacts.

The camcorders don't have separate analog in and out so you can't go external analog input -> analog output on those. The digital8 video walkmen do though, they are pretty rare and expensive so not a lot of people have them and are able to test I guess.

On SVHS decks with TBC the TBC part is only active on internal playback, so would have maybe expected the same here and it just being passed through (Unless it's just the clearclick handling s-video a little better than composite.) I wonder if going analog in->analog out also applies DV compression or not, though would be hard to say when capturing to a clearclick.

OP needs to confirm tape sources.
- VHS?
- Video8?
- Hi8?

To confirm tape source, they are mostly Hi8.

eBay HR-S7xxx prices
 

Is $500 more reasonable for functioning HR-S7xxx?

The OP's only posts are from his join date, but he did sign in this morning, so hopefully he's still around.

This may be easy to check, actually. My Sony DCR-TRV340 has these block-based patterns on single frames upon transitions from garbage input to normal video. To me these represent a visual signature of Sony's Digital8 AV->DV passthrough compression, as I haven't personally seen another workflow that produces these artifacts. (I previously mentioned this in my "TBC" comparison thread.)

Attachment 14977
Attachment 14978
Attachment 14979
Attachment 14980

Assuming the answers to all of the following assumptions are "yes", it would be a simple check:

• these artifacts are generated by the DV compression chip; the uncompressed D1 stream inside the device is free of blocky errors?
• GV-D200 produces the same signature artifacts as DCR-TRV340?
• ClearClick compression by itself shouldn't generate the same look (i.e. no potential false positives)?
• these artifacts are large enough that they remain obvious after ClearClick compression has mangled the video?

I've attached a proof-of-concept video. It's the same segment that I took the screenshots from, crunched down using the lowest quality settings I could see in x264vfw (ultrafast crf 51). The signature glitch-blocks are still visible among all the other little blocks.