In this case you are leaving out the most important part of the VCR, Tape playback. And it is usually the most problematic part, RF pickup, RF decode, video processing of Y and C, line TBC/DNR, What you are doing now is just a passthrough mode of the signal, it merly have any impact on the incoming signal, Most VCR's apply a mild signal amplification, that's all.

Alright, I have finished doing quite a few tests. I have tried to take everyone's advice into account with the different tests.

I abandoned the DV source method and got a PC with an S-Video output set up. After quite a bit of fiddling with the Nvidia control panel, I was able to get a very clean looking 720x480 output on the S-Video monitor.

I also found a new test pattern that was designed for 720x480 resolution (source_pattern.avi) so that I wasn't causing myself issues by scaling down a high resolution image.

I did captures with the following setups:
PC -> capture card (PC_capture.avi)
PC -> VCR -> capture card (pc_VCR_capture.avi)
PC -> VCR -> TBC -> capture card (pc_VCR_TBC_capture.avi)

I then recorded the test pattern to a VHS tape and did the following captures from the VHS tape playback:
VCR -> capture card (VCR_capture.avi)
VCR -> TBC -> capture card (VCR_TBC_capture.avi)

All of the direct captures look alright to me. They are a lot softer than the original, but I think that the monitor is indeed doing some sharpening. This time all of the small lines are distinguishable, which I think proves that the problem with the last test was some sort of scaling issue somewhere, and not a lack of resolution at the capture card.

However, there is no trace of the small lines left on the captured video that was recorded to the VHS tape. Is this expected since it is just regular VHS and not S-VHS?



I also played a video clip from the PC, through the VCR, and into the capture card (video_passthrough.avi).

I then recorded a video clip to a VHS and did a capture of the VHS playback (video_VHS.avi).

The captured passthrough video looks pretty good to me, however the VHS playback is a bit fuzzy. Perhaps I have just gotten too used to the modern age of high resolution displays.

Let me know what all of you think of the captures.

I just did a capture of a commercially produced tape and the output looks very good. There is some random "noise" or "artifacts"? that pop up once in a while but that may be due to the age of the tape. I know this tape has been played many times.

I have attached a clip of what I feel is the worst part of the capture. The gain seems to change levels when the sky is visible. Is this possibly an effect of Macrovision?

What do you think of the quality?

No that's not Macrovision, it's probably the flicker of the light source of the film projector during scanning of the film to video.

The fluctuations in the sky brightness might even be artifacts of the original "cel" animation process used to create the original film. The backgrounds are on different layers than the main characters and the single, frame by frame exposure settings are probably more focused on making the main characters stay properly exposed than the background layers. Thus the background exposures can fluctuate a bit. If you look closely, I think you will see this phenomenon in most "old school" hand drawn animation.

My :2cents:

BW

That is interesting. Thanks for the info. It makes me feel better about my setup. I will have to replay the source tape on a TV and see if I can notice the exposure change. Everything I have read says that the AGP AIW capture cards do not have AGC problems, so I did not think the capture device should be causing it.

I think I can see the same exposure changes in these captures done by someone else. It is hard to tell though since the colors are quite different and I'm sure the youtube compression hasn't helped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0M70dbvqAo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFdQ0xJyOMY