What about BrightEye TBCs?
 

Good afternoon,

Roy here,

New to this hobby myself.

What about the various models of BrightEye TBC? They seem to be frowned upon, not clear as to why? Drivers, or lack of for older OS? Lack luster performance perhaps?

Thanks in advance,
Roy

Those are not TBCs.

Could you explain why?
Do you have strength tests comparing them to the exorbitantly priced Datavideos which are failing by the day without parts to fix them?

They are not TBCs in a sense that they don't have analog output, They are capture devices with built in TBC and proc. amp. They have SDI digital output, so they don't connect directly to a computer, There are different types of SDI to computer adapters based on the connection type, SDI-PCIe, SDI-Thunderbolt, SDI-USB3, all of them are compatible with any OS, legacy or new.

"latreche34... They are not TBCs in a sense that they don't have analog output". A detail I did not notice.

Thank you all for your feedback.

BE1, BE3, BE5, BE25, BE75 all have TBCs AND frame syncs.

Brighteye defines a TBC as follows in their manuals:
The manuals also refer to the "recommended use case" for their products being for VTRs. (Video Tape Recorders/VCRs). If you open up and look inside any of these units, they do have at least one large ram chip right next to the processor which is required to store a frame or two of video which serves as the frame buffer. These units are all ALSO technically frame syncs because you can feed them an external genlock signal if you need the output to match timing to a separate video feed. Genlock is really only necessary when you are doing live video transitions from one source to another while a TV station is live/on-air.

If using one of these gets your dropped frames to zero and there's no noticeable image quality loss, I don't know why they'd be considered inferior to the "recommended" TBCs.

Differences between models are as follows:

BE1 - Any-analog-in to SDI and Optical out (no audio embedding)
BE3 - Any-analog-in to SDI (no audio embedding)
BE5 - Composite-in to composite-out (audio not applicable as audio cannot be carried over composite)
BE25 - Composite-in to SDI (with audio embedding)
BE75 - Any-analog-in to SDI (with audio embedding)

*"Any-analog-in" means composite, s-video, or component video via BNC connectors. Component-in is ideal if using professional formats such as analog Betacam (which natively records in component video) and is noteably absent from all "recommended" analog capture cards.

I wouldn't necessarily let the lack of S-Video-in exclude the BE5 or BE25 devices if you can find one at a good price. It's often nearly impossible to tell the difference between S-Video and composite outs of a VCR depending on the hardware chain and source material - that'll be part of my more detailed testing later once I come up with the best testing to do for head-to-head comparisons. I'm not arguing that S-Video will always theoretically look better on paper, but the difference in reality on low resolution formats such as 25 year old Video8 and regular VHS won't be as stark as say looking at the S-Video vs Composite out of a DVD player which has a digital source to create those signals from.

I have one of each of the above models for testing aside from the BE1, but I've only done some basic initial testing so far. From memory, the BE5 and BE25 both pass the "VCR the blue screen" test whereas the BE75 does not at least with a JVC NTSC VCR. PAL BE75 users have told me the BE75 will pass a JVC PAL or multisystem blue screen. I don't remember if the BE3 passes that test or not, but I'm thinking since it's most closely related to the BE75 (basically the same thing, just without audio embedding). Solution to this in practical use is to turn off the VCR's blue screen setting so that it displays static when there's no video playing instead of a blue screen. It might also be possible for the blue screen to work fine with the BE75 if you feed it an NTSC genlock signal. I think what happens is that the BE75 tries to auto-identify the incoming signal type as NTSC or PAL and since a VCR blue screen is something like 270p, it is technically neither and won't lock on until it sees a real PAL or NTSC signal. Not sure why the BE25 doesn't have that issue, but the firmware must handle that a little differently apparently.

The 3 models that have S-Video input are all SDI-out only. In my opinion, SDI-out is preferable anyway because it leads to one less conversion back to analog and then back to digital, plus, the Brighteye products are doing it with a 12 bit ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) instead of limiting color depth to 8 bit like all of the "recommended" TBCs. You can then decide to use whatever SDI capture card you want and capture at whatever bit depth and chroma subsampling (usually 4:2:2) you want. The SDI signal remains 480i/525i over SDI, preserves interlacing, and does not do any upscaling.

Audio embedding is convenient, but not required if you capture audio separately from your SDI capture card. You could also use a separate SDI audio embedder box before the SDI capture card and achieve the same thing. Often, audio embedders will allow you to set a fixed audio delay as well, though the two or so fields of video delay added by any TBC should not really cause a noticeable lip sync issue, or you could just move the audio down by a fixed amount in post-capture editing. Some SDI devices will also have separate analog audio inputs to capture from such as the AJA Ki Pro and many of the Blackmagic Hyperdeck products that both generally record to ProRes 422 formats onto removable HDDs/SSDs/Flash Cards. You'll never see these products recommended on this site for capture because they aren't good at handling raw analog video (they do not contain TBCs), but if the incoming signal has already been appropriately digitized stable SDI by one of those Brighteye products, they are quite happy capturing that at their native SD resolutions with preserved interlacing, which they all support.

Wait, wait... :wait:

This is the accurate definition. But I'll expand on it...

These BE boxes, most SDI boxes, are what you refer to as "closed loop" system. These boxes try to do everything from you in one pass. Unfortunately, since these boxes were created for non-consumer sources (not VHS, not Hi8, etc), the interactions with video can vary wildly. Our messy consumer signals don't always play nice with gear. When one area is not cooperative, you'll have to use another. But since "all in one" integrated, you essentially lose everything (essentially both TBCs and the capture cards), and must start over with gear for those tapes. Some aspects have menu on/off control, but pathways can still render that moot.

latreche34 has had better luck than most, at his low-volume use. But many others have not. There's a reason these were dumped on eBay for lesser prices, and not as often bought.

A mere "frame sync" is not a "frame sync TBC" (frame TBC). Those are very different items. The ES10/15 recorders have mere frame syncs. A frame sync clocks without correction.

Don't rely on manuals. When you know how copywriting works, you'll realize that the information gets "telephone gamed" to an extent. The person who wrote that probably doesn't know anything about TBCs or video theory. Some engineer gave some bullet point notes, and the copywriters attempted to turn that into sentences. It gets more fun when you realize those copywriters are often ESL, the engineers are ESL, and they speak different L, so the E never had a chance. It's just blah-blah-blah. People that understand TBCs cock their head, while newbies gobble up the gobbledygook.

For example, this sentence is horseshit nonsense: "The incoming video is written into the memory using its own jittery timing."

Format matters. Not consumer sources. Broadcast appliances did not expect low-end VHS tapes.

The keyword here is "if", which generally fails in some way.

In general, this is a very false statement. :no2:

This is a misleading statement. This is what Ken Rockwell refers to as "measurebating", where you think a bigger number is automatically better. That is completely false logic. Other factors tend to matter more, not megapixels for digital photography, and not bit depth for analog-source digital video.

I'm not against SDI boxes, but you must understand what you're getting yourself into. It's not as simple as some would have you think. There are downsides, there are limitations, there will be frustrations beyond a standard workflow. It's not better, it's just different. Maybe different good, but more likely different bad.

I may have better luck with these devices, but seeing from other people's feedback and the extensive tests I've done, they just work, and work very well, and I'm talking about consumer video tape sources.

Prices on used market don't define quality, everything starts out cheap when no one is looking for it and goes up in price when it catches attention, SDI capture devices are no different, they are around $1500 now and expected to go even higher.

Yep, when you have good luck, keep with it. I would. :congrats:

Some other people, with other items, have had good unusual luck, with their lower volume use, but are way too vocal about it. It's led to countless newbies being led astray, wasted time and funds, on something that will not work for their needs. The highly unusual luck factor was left out by the overly vocal fellating reviews of those devices, as well as the low-volume aspect that arrived as those conclusions.

I've always been glad that you don't do that. You seem to be as pragmatic as I am, and recognizing the luck and volume factors.

I have a BE SDI setup myself, but it mostly collects dust, as I cannot rely on it for consistent results. To me, time matters most, and I cannot afford to recapture because the gear f'd up. And sometimes, the tape is "one and done", so that first pass matters. But it does look nice when it works. Sometimes it reacts better to some tapes, so it has a deserved place in a multi-gear workflow.

The trend seems to be cheap analog to HDMI and HDMI grabbers and OBS, While visually attractive, it is nowhere near the standard of analog to digital conversion of SD materials as defined in the 80's, even before the computer was on the scene, just SDI when it was first utilized in Sony D1 machines.

I wouldn't call it attractive whatsoever. Maybe the idea of HDMI wows the uninformed, but the method is crap, yielding garbage quality, essentially molesting the analog signal of any quality.

LS, which BE model do you have for testing?

It would be good to see a test of your unit against a recommended setup so we can see where it underperforms from your perspective.

Since I am more interested in seeing tests to "show" rather than "tell", what specific testing or head-to-head comparison could I do that would potentially change your mind about the BE products? It would need to be something that is reproducible, so needing to use a specific tape that has a lot of issues is probably off the table unless you are willing to send me that specific tape to test. If it is so hard to find a tape that the BE can't handle, I'd question the real world value of not being able to handle 1 tape out of, say, every 200 tapes will really matter to the average user who are unlikely to come across such a tape.

I know you've mentioned the Young Indiana Jones VHS releases as having particularly strong macrovision that may be a good test, but you've also said that not all of those tapes are particularly bad, so hard to say if the one I have is supposed to cause TBCs to struggle.

Recommended hardware I can/will put the BE devices against includes:

AIW 9000 AGP Theater 200 in a dedicated XP Capture PC - All electrolytic SMT/through hole caps replaced on AIW card.
Datavideo TBC-1000 with distribution amp bypass, fully recapped, with external ultra-low-noise 5V power supply
Tevion USB ATI 600 Clone (aware some units are problematic, would need to know what testing proves mine is a good one)
Pinacle 710 (aware some units are problematic, would need to know what testing proves mine is a good one)

For the AIW card, I have made a custom 8-pin to S-Video 3ft cable for shorter cable length and better quality cable using Extron Mini RGB double shielded 75 ohm coax (uses 25awg solid center core coax with foil and braid shielding).

As far as the "Perhaps you got lucky and got a good BE unit" statement, I think I can dispel that as well. I have access to at least two of each of the BE3, BE5, BE25, and BE75 which I can test to look for any variability. I also have 3 AIW AGP 9xxx cards with all capacitors replaced to look for variability there as well.

I've tested that tape here.

What a wealth of information, expertise and experiences in the feedback here.

My journey started innocent enough. Just wanted to convert the few VHS tapes and DVDs that I had to a more portable format (mp4) for travel. Then I became more intrigued/borderline obsessed with the hobby (with a beer budget). As of today and this writing, I guess that I would be classified as the latreche34 definition “The trend seems to be cheap analog to HDMI and HDMI grabbers and OBS, While visually attractive, it is nowhere near the standard of analog to digital conversion of SD materials as defined in the 80's, even before the computer was on the scene, just SDI when it was first utilized in Sony D1 machines.” I use a Elgato Capture USB to mp4 with a JVC HR-S7800U purchased through LS (Please see attached video clip). Being “borderline obsessed” I’ve explored other methods/avenues for a better mp4 end product with minimal post editing (some trimming). So far, I’ve tried with a I-O Data GV-USB2 (most likely a weak spot) and VirtualDub 1.9.11, VirtualDub2, OBS, Adobe, PyroAV/Link and etcetera-etcetera. Please see my mp4 attached video clip compared to latreche34 set up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzQt2pOgRE0 .

As far as to a TBC, I’m more inclined to spend money on a newer TBC and the necessary supporting components as opposed to an older TBC that have fewer options available to repair when things go south.

-- merged --

Mods... Please edit my post #14 to read "VirtualDub 1.9.11"
Thank you

What was the capture chain and post-processing used for your clip? I take it that it's the Elgato video capture plus the 7800u using the standard elgato software?

Are you saying when you tried the other methods listed (Such as GV-USB2 plus Virtualdub) that the result was visually no better? I presume you've also tried this tutorial for OBS? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk-n7IlrXI4

I haven't tried that OBS tutorial yet, but I do plan to test it eventually against recommended methods.

That was the exact capture chain I used for that clip, along with a computer configured as follows…

Asus H110M-C motherboard (1151 socket)
Intel Core i5-6500 Processor
32G DDR4 2133
Kingston 240GB SSD (operating system)
Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM (storage/staging for transfer)
500-watt power supply

I have since changed out the processer to an Intel Core i7-7700K Processor of which gives me a slightly higher quality end result than the Intel Core i5-6500 Processor. Don’t get me wrong, this computer is far from being the ultimate capturing machine. But at this place and time it is what I have to work with.

Zero post editing was performed for that clip using the Elgato video capture software.

I am saying that.
Also, truth be told I did not give VirtualDub 1.9.11 and VirtualDub2 with the various filters and codecs options much of my time (perhaps at a future date). Getting to my desired mp4 format seemed to be post editing heavy.

Have not tried that particular OBS YouTube method. I did watch it after you posted here. I will most definitely be giving that procedure a try, thanks for the link. I’ve been messing around with the OBS settings using the I-O Data GV-USB2 and using this link method https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYuDSU-7LyI . Video is fine, but with sub-par results with the audio sounding “tinny”.

CPU, RAM, graphics card, motherboard -- none of that really matters for capturing. It has no effect. It just needs a minimum, multi-core and SATA, which determines motherboard, which determines graphics. Even an old Intel dual-core and SATA-1 can work fine. Space matters most, so SATA2 and 2tb max (HDD or SSD).

There's a lot of bad videos on Youtube regarding capture, and anything suggesting OBS should be ignored. But know that AIW cards are "more sensitive" (in a good way, especially for testing).

Good morning,

I’ve read/heard that as well from several sources.

Would whole heartedly agree with that observation.

Definitely something for me to look into, I’ll start here… https://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vi...e-ati-mpeg.htm

If still available, I’ll pull the trigger and buy. Having multi-OS support is important to me. I see that as of June 24 you have “Updated June 2024 Available: - Pinnacle USB*, NTSC, $175, similar to ATI AIW USB, WinXP/V/7/8/10/11** all work well - 1 available” https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/mar...ati-600-a.html

Any thoughts on the following… Other from being from FleaBay ��

https://www.ebay.com/itm/387271312573
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186431881252

That's a random Pinnacle card. No. The Pinnacle cards I have are very specific. Not just the model, but the version of the model, and it's not something you can observe externally. Like everything else lately, I'm having a hard time sourcing these exact cards now. "Get 'em while I got 'em."

That ATI is probably fine, but that price is ridiculous. I have those for less, and I've replaced the crap OEM USB cables for mine. What you have there is just another recycler, a pure profiteer, and he/she thinks they found a brick of e-gold. They know nothing about the video product, nor care to. That ATI card may have been sitting in a non-temp-controlled storage unit for the past 20 years, and smell like cigarettes or rats (sadly common on eBay). Nothing that old is "new" anymore. I open "new" boxes, burn-in test everything. Because sometimes sealed items don't work.

eBay = gambling, not buying.

Good afternoon/evening aramkolt,

Just to follow up…

Must say that I’m very happy with the settings outlined in the link that you provided for OBS ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk-n7IlrXI4 ).
The mp4 files are much larger than I’m used to, but the quality is much better than I expected.
Please see attached.

My workflow,
OBS
I-O Data GV-USB2
JVC HR-S7800U
Asus H110M-C motherboard (1151 socket)
Intel Core i7-7700K Processor 32G DDR4 2133
Kingston 240GB SSD (operating system)
Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM (storage/staging for transfer)
500-watt power supply

Thank you,
Roy

That's a terrible sample clip. Too much going on, nothing but fleeting 1-2 second clips. Your eyes don't have the ability to examine anything, so you miss everything, and falsely think "the quality is fine". Sure, you can look at stills in the editor, but this isn't a photograph, it's video (moving photographs).

It's also a retail "big name movie" release, so you mostly have duplicate frames, not true interlaced content. But the deinterlacer still found a way to screw it up, as the dupe frame dance/vibrate.

Overall, the video has butchered deinterlacing. It's a mess of vibration, comb artifacts, and mush. Some scenes have this weird error where the deinterlace causes part of the image to movie, and not the entire image. The sources wasn't that unstable.

OBS is such an awful tool for use with videotapes.

I don't have this movie to do a direct comparison.

I also lack time, in midst of other capturing tasks that take priority.

I can agree, does seem like OBS captures tend to look like they have compression artifacts compared to properly restored video, even if the video source isn't as crisp as others. That and I can just tell the video has duplicated frames, noticing that since it's from a movie, the overall video isn't as smooth as if the was footage was recorded in 29.97 fields per second and then de-interlaced properly to 59.94, such as footage recorded on standard camcorders or TV recordings depending on the content shown.

As an example, here is a clip from a VHS tape containing footage from some awards ceremony in 1992 hosted by a bank company that one of my family members use to work for, deinterlaced using QTGMC as well as some restoration work done in Hybrid.

And in this case, it's dual damage. OBS = bad, Elgato = bad.

In many cases, actually IVTC (inverse telecine) to 23.976 fps, from the actual 24 fps film sources. You only deinterlace if issues, mixed source output (ie, broadcasted documentaries sourced from VHS), etc.

Very nice! :congrats:

In that exact clip, we can nitpick softness, upscale quality. Lots of factors are play here, discussion for another time. But getting to "nitpick" should be a basic goal. Get a baseline quality, and then feel free to quibble over minutia. Congrats, you are there. And getting there was simply a matter of (a) good gear, (b) good software. The real fun, the real rabbit hole, is all the advanced post-processing to restore/upscale/etc.

Thanks for the compliment. Yeah I know I could redo the restoration part. But I'd say that my goal of getting the capture part looking all good was achieved, if I need to redo the restoration by tweaking some settings in Hybrid, then all I need to do is just reuse the original capture file instead of needing to replay the tape from the beginning, redoing the capture part, which shouldn't be warranted imo.

Of course when it comes to the softness of the image, part of it can be the quality of the recording itself. The film camera used, and the fact that since this was an edited together awards show, there is a possibility that this was edited using a computer and then recorded onto tape, or perhaps contact duplicated.

I've digitzed worse quality recordings (just judging the quality of the image, not the stability), such as amateur home movie footage recorded onto VHS-C, yet I've also digitized other home movie VHS-C tapes from a different source that look much better, so the camera itself can certainly be a factor. A cheap camera won't look as sharp and nice as a more costly camera, even if they both film on the same tape format.

Softness is a combination of source/recording, playback, capture. Lots of Q&A to isolate every softness hit to quality. And then more discussion on detail revival via restoration. That's the fun (or "fun") part, where actual video art shines. You are there! Everything becomes nuance.

It can easily get worse --- which is what was posted earlier.

Getting to quality is often simple fixes, get better hardware and software. People usually just make it hard on themselves, unwilling to spend funds on the tools needed.

Good morning,

Thank you for the input.

Guess I don’t have an eye for it. The clip that Aya_Rei provided and the clip that is attached looks no better or worse to me. Just saying that I can’t justify/rationalize spending any more of my already, mostly exhausted, “beer budget”. At this place and time, I can only be satisfied and work with what I have available to me. As time permits, I will continue to dabble with this hobby and seek out advice and constructive criticism.

Thanks in advance.

Please see attached

No offense but I can tell that it looks worse and more blurry/compressed, even compared to your OBS capture, part of the reason why is the low bitrate of the mp4 file, around 2300 kb/s. Guess this was done with Elgato's capture software? Sure seems like it, especially since it's only 29.97 FPS. From what I remember, Elgato's deinterlace method is quite frankly, very bad.

It's vastly different, and those differences will be huge when it's viewed large (not in a teeny tiny computer preview window). If we had the same tape source, it'd be easy to show. This isn't some small difference, but an elephant stumbling drunk, essentially impossible to not see.

Rather than give up, I suggest agreeing to a uniform source tape. What movies do you have?

I find it daft how this thread when from semi-overkill BE SDI boxes, to essentially Elgato/OBS crap method. What happened between now and then? It's only been a few days?

Good morning/afternoon Aya_Rei,

No offence taken…

It is significantly more compressed. The full OBS 007.mp4 file is over 7GB, whereas the recent uploaded clip full version Elagato file (E-007.mp4) is a mere 1.84GB. The OBS 007.mp4 file was created using this YT link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzQt2pOgRE0 .

Great feedback here,
Thank you for the input.

-- merged --

That would be awesome…
Please see attached.
VHS-1 = Files with 02 in front would require less opening of boxes. If we can’t/don’t have one of these same movies, I attached my complete list.
VHS-2 = Complete list, I’ll be opening boxes for awhile

Crazy, I know… I do value the feedback.

The few days has given me pause to reexamine my budget.

Thanks in advance.

Ah, you have some good tastes! :)

I see some on the VHS-2 list. Let me see where I am this weekend, perhaps I can squeeze in a few test captures.

Young Frankenstein is actually one of my fodder tapes for gear testing. It has specific calibration uses. We may, or may not, use it as a test.

I want to squeeze in Back to the Future, as I never tire of seeing it. But I'll need to find key scenes. A lot of movies open molasses slow, so it's not always easy to say "capture the first 5 minutes".

"lordsmurf
Ah, you have some good tastes!

Thank you. :)

I see some on the VHS-2 list. Let me see where I am this weekend, perhaps I can squeeze in a few test captures.

Young Frankenstein is actually one of my fodder tapes for gear testing. It has specific calibration uses. We may, or may not, use it as a test.

I want to squeeze in Back to the Future, as I never tire of seeing it. But I'll need to find key scenes. A lot of movies open molasses slow, so it's not always easy to say "capture the first 5 minutes"."

Thank you for taking the time for this...
Attached is a five minute Back To The Future Clip. I'll do another post for a Young Frankenstein clip. Also let me know if I need the VHS tape for this.

Thanks again,
Roy

-- merged --

Young Frankenstein clip

YF is useless here, so I removed it. All credits. The post-credits to train scene may be better, not sure. May need another section.

BTTS is a good comp clip, it looks bad, lots of blended deinterlace.

Your earlier clip was 1440x720, but not these? Are these using same method as above, Elgato/etc? Let's make sure everything is set before I start comps.

BTTF is a favorite movie, so I have no problems taking a 5-minute break to watch it, and run a test capture. :)
Processing will take longer, "get in line".

Another thing I noticed with both clips is the excessive amount of rainbow artifacts, especially noticeable around the text, granted it was more easy to spot on the now since removed opening credits of Young Frankenstein.

I might be wrong but the mp4s should be from the Elgato, I've used it before so I'm aware of the file thumbnails the card's included software generates. The mp4 being in 640x480, deinterlaced to 29.97 and have a low bitrate of around 2200 kbps looks to be in line with using the Elgato's quite frankly extremely crappy software with it's default settings.

So yes LS, the BTTF and YF mp4 clips were made using Elgato's own software unless the OP states otherwise. Using it before gave me an idea on what clues to look out for

Take your time, I very much apricate :)

Both YF and BTTF were Elgato, and my very early attempts with this endeavor.

I've attached a 007 clip that I recenly did (30min ago), using AmaRecTV and HuffYUV. If you have any time could you give an opinion?

Thank you for your feed back. You are correct about these are Elgato mp4s.

Could you also comment on the clip that was attached to my reply to LS?

-- merged --

My mistake... It is AmaRecTV with Lagarith (@720x480 fps=59.94) and not HuffYUV.

Converted from AVI to mp4 by VLC

Well it's 720x480 (3:2 AR) and not flagged with a 4:3 aspect ratio for starters, so it appears stretched than how it is intended. That and the mp4 is extremely compressed with only 1000kbps. It's starving for bitrate and it very shows, it has massive compression artifacts, that and by freeze framing, was able to still see interlaced lines. So it looks like it was incorrectly deinterlaced. Though it should've probably not been deinterlaced to begin with since the source is from a 24 FPS film.

Appreciate,

Post #36 is what I did. Was hoping for a better outcome than OBS or Elgato.

Plan on redoing all of my VHS collection.

Definitely need to get better educated with the proper settings for AmaRecTV.