SKNET time base corrector?
 

Has anyone heard of a SKNET Digital 3D YC & NR TBC from Japan?

This is a Japanese unit with a very flawed Panaosnic chipset, sort of a bad beta version of the ES10/15. It only a line TBC, not frame. And then had nasty image issues, especially rainbowing.

Do not buy.

Thanks, I have just found that you have already answered this previously. It didn't come up in my search, must have mis-typed. So sorry, you may delete it if you wish.

If it is not expensive for you do try it and let us know, more devices tested, better for the community.

Yeah, I will as I have already bought it. It cost $60 US so no big deal. I was thinking the same thing. It obviously will not compare to my Cypress GL but worth a play with just for interests sake. I will report back.

I'm still not totally clear on how one proves that a full frame TBC is working well other than "not adding noise", "not dropping frames", and possibly visibly noticeable horizontal jitter improvement. But if you aren't dropping frames and can't see anything visually off with the image, what benefit is there to the the TBC?

Thing is, at least in my setups, not using a TBC at all usually doesn't result in any dropped frames. In fact, I almost always see "inserted frames" whether using a TBC or not which I believe is due to some sort of clock difference on the PC/Virtual dub where it thinks the frame rate is coming in slightly slow, so it regularly will insert a frame every 90-120 seconds and that ticks up by one every few minutes.

I guess the other thing you have to ask yourself is if the incoming frame rate is irregular/slow and the TBC ends up doing frame inserting to keep output it stable, is that any different from having VirtualDub do the frame insertions instead?

You'd think the advantage of the full frame TBC would be for when frames are coming in "too quickly" that it can buffer them down to the correct rate without losing/dropping them whereas the capture card direct without a TBC would have to drop them because it is unable to buffer frames that arrive too quickly. However, if you are't seeing any dropped frames in your capture setup to begin with without the TBC, doesn't that indicate that the TBC isn't needed?

A frame TBC is good for problematic tapes that has severe drop outs in the VBI section, The TBC recondition that signal with one from its own by digitizing each frame into its buffer and releasing it at a steady timed pace. If the tapes are good, no problems with the capture, there is no reason to add any devices in the chain. However, that requires capturing a tape first and see if you have sync problems. For this reason people leave the TBC hooked up all the time to prevent repetitive captures. This may not be an issue if you have very few tapes in a one time job, but if you have a huge lot or if you do this on a regular basis then you can't afford retrying tapes.