Composite vs. s-video opinions?
 

I’d like opinions on this…

From 12voltvids…

Sure. :)

WTF is he even rambling about? It reminds me of Chumlee on Pawn Stars blabbing about "modulators" on cars.

Is that just a long-winded way to state the obvious: "s-video is better than composite"?

^ NOTE: There are some exceptions to this rule, but let's not make this reply too confusing.

- composite VCR out = capture card separates Y from Cr from Cb
- s-video VCR out = capture card accepts Y, accept CrCB (then separate CrCb).

Something certainly blows here. :hmm:

Yes, as expected...

Huh? :weird:

Is today the day that I lose all respect for 12voltvids? Because I've long suspected he has a tenuous grasp of S-VHS VCRs. But to compare the composite format Laserdisc to the Y/C format VHS is just newbie-level wrong.

I need to see confirmation that he is the one who wrote this. Say it ain't so! :huh1:

There's probably an actual explanation for this. Blaming s-video is ridiculous...

I think he's mixing up concepts here. Yes, pumping values to "look better" is a thing. But so is (for example) bad caps on Panasonic S-VHS players.

No.

So he uses S-VHS VCRs for Hi8 tapes? :laugh:

In a word: ignorance. :rolleyes:

If this is truly 12voltvids, he does a great job at fixing low-end VHS VCRs, but he clearly doesn't know anything about video capture, S-VHS, and all the topics we've discussed here for literal decades now.

Again, if that is him, I'm extremely disappoointed. So disappointed that I need to reevaluate anybody else that I may (mistakenly?) respect. No words. (Well, I had words. But now I'm out of words. :P)

Really, 12voltvids? FFS, arrgghhh! Say it ain't so! Say it!

It's like discovering that he thinks the sky is pink. :screwy:

... oh crap, I lied, those were words! Now no more words. :laugh:

No, he is wrong. He is mixing up composite as in RF composite recorded on tape (both Y and C are modulated into one high frequency signal recorded by the flying video head), and composite CVBS the signal processed from the RF after separation of Y and C from the RF and combined to generate a CVBS signal for composite display, and I can tell because he is giving example as laser disc, doesn't he know laser disc is a composite format by design? In the other hand tape is Y-C format by design.

You don't need to listen to him, just look up JVC VCR's schematics. The Y-C board he is talking about does process both VHS and S-VHS tapes alike, However composite and S-Video sockets do have separate paths from the RF composite and again for both VHS and S-VHS alike. In a nut shell, S-VHS and composite have separate paths from the source, but S-VHS and VHS have the same signal path for given connection type.

Didn't you mean s-video? :wink2:

I think most people fail to understand composite because of not understanding the simple definition. Ignoring the videotape jargon definition, to "composite" something is to "mash two (or more) things together". In this case, video. But also something like "composite board" (board made from sawdust and wood scraps). For consumer analog videotapes, the carrier takes both chroma channels (Cr = mostly reds, Cb = mostly blues), and smushes them together into a single color (chroma) signal. "Composite" is not just a term for a wire, nor some sort of mysterious video magic/voodoo, etc.

Yes, it was a mistake on my part.
Maybe the OP can post a link to the video and we can go discuss it with him. I find his capturing suggestions weird sometimes, i heard him saying in another video that line TBCs in VCRs are useless.

https://youtu.be/_aLhDs6vtmk?si=U69Bxs-6FNONwLBE
I did not mean to cause a stir but when I watched the video and read his comments concerning S-video it seemed to fly in the face of much of what I see here.

You didn't stir anything. You informed us that a so-called "trusted voice" doesn't know his ass from his elbow when it comes to quality VCRs. He only knows how to fix junk decks. Duly noted.

And sad, very sad. :screwy:

I'm honestly shocked at his ignorance, and even some of his horse's-ass replies to others on that same video. You think you know a guy, then nope.

Pure ignorance.

In another comment someone asked if capturing Hi8/V8 with a D8 camcorder over S-Video is better than Firewire and his response was:

Wow. :huh1:

I forget the movie, as well as the exact quote. But it was a situation where a character had a sudden realization, the expression drained from his face, and he erupted with the phrase "oh my god, he's a fuck!ng idiot!" (paraphrased), in total disbelief. This person they had trusted, believed in, had faith in. In an instant, boom, gone.

That's me right now. :huh1:

I'd long found his consumer VCR repair info quite informative, even if he had fits of rage about AG-1980P decks (which I can understand, as those are a costly PITA). Or how he wrongly thinks the MX-1 mixer is a TBC (it's not, it's weak line). But this. THIS? I can't trust anything he puts out there now.

The sky is pink.
Cats mate with dogs.
Hamburger tastes like chicken.

Crazy. :screwy:

On the topic of the AG1980, he was working on an AG1970 in that video which does have a certain "ceramic board" with essentially painted-on components likes to go bad that can't be repaired and severely affects picture quality. The AG1980, luckily, doesn't have any ceramic boards, so things like recapping are still possible. I think if he had an AG1980 in front of him when he made the comment, he wouldn't have said that they are also "trash". It's easy to think that the AG1970 and AG1980 would be similar inside because their part numbers are almost the same, but in reality, they aren't even the same dimensions on the outside of the unit (AG1980 is larger/taller).

He also hates surface mount capacitors (for good reason), so whenever he runs into them, he tends to have a less favorable view of whatever device it is because they are often numerous and often all bad (depending on the year the device was manufactured).

From a consumer electronics repairman's perspective that gives an estimate of how long something is going to take to repair, I can see why he wouldn't want to chase down which of the 300+ capacitors inside need replacing on the AG1970's or AG1980's which he likely doesn't work on often. Having lots of daughter boards and cables running through the machine does make them harder to work on and from his perspective, he'd say that someone wanting one of those repaired would be better off getting a modern VHS player that is less complicated with less points of failure (outside of the flimsier loading mechanism which aren't as sturdy as they were in some older machines).

With 12voltvids, he's more of a fix the issue reported by the customer fix only that issue and if the output picture looks decent and the mechanism functions, stop there and do quick maintenance for super common problems if it doesn't add much time to the job - this would be things like lubricating failure points that are easy to access - mode switch cleaning if it's apart enough where it is easy to access and cleaning the tape path/heads. He's generally paid to get things "working" and customers generally aren't going to want to spend a bunch of extra money for him to do more in depth work to a machine that basically functions as intended.

As for the S-Video/composite question - that's easy enough to answer - Just capture both with your current setup and compare yourself. S-Video does have a technical advantage, but in many cases, you could show both captures to a lay person and they won't be able to tell the difference, or they might just like how composite looks better as there will usually be some differences in brightness/contrast which they may find preferable. Many capture methods commonly used (not saying that is the case for "recommended" hardware/processes here) don't capture the added detail you get with S-Video anyway because they are so low resolution or use low quality ADC's. Details can also be lost when uploading to YouTube, but if YouTube is your final destination for the content anyway, the result could be the same whether S-Video or composite was used. I generally don't buy devices to test that don't have both S-Video and Composite inputs/outputs because I am also curious to what degree S-Video is superior - eventually results of that testing for a variety of devices will be posted so you can see for yourself.

The video title refers to Panasonic PV-S7670.

@12voltvids
2 months ago
Been in the professional digitize business for 30+ years. TBC is really not necessary if you have good capture equipment. Pretty much any moniDV, Digital 8 camera and the digital players like the GVD800 GVHD700 ect will accept your composite or S video and spit out a 4:1:1 DV stream which is the same as DV and Digital 8 encided on the tape. Then firewire into the PC and capture with your favorite software. You end up with a 480i 25mbit stream which then you can either save as a .avi or export it in whatever format turns your crank. Another option which I have found to be very good is the stand alone recorder boxes from CA. Depending on the model it can turn out high bit rate .mp4 directly in either the native 480i or will up convert to 720p60 or 1080p60 and you can choose 4:3 or stretch to 16:9 if you don't want black bars. Depending on device it will accept composite, component, RGB, and even HDMI inputs. Since I deal regularly with betacam SP which is a component format this comes in handy as I can take the direct Y, R-Y and B-Y outputs directly and spit out a picture that is as good as I have seen.
An old videonics MX1 mixer works great as a frame store TBC if needed but with the hardware I am using I have not needed it except with dealing with macrovision.

Here’s another comment of his that is on the same videos comment section.

@12voltvids
2 months ago
If customer wants. AVI I use the GV-HD700. If they want mp4 it goes straight into the CA in full quality mode 1080p60 set to 4:3 aspect. That gives an 8 gig per hour .mp4 files. Then I go direct to a USB stick for client. 9 out of 10 want a DVD copy as well for backup. I can do this in real time. Vhs or camera into the DVD recorder and the hdmi (upscale to 1080p) directly into capture box. I use a toshiba dvr7, it has firewire in. So I can use the hd700 to digitize to firewire and take that into toshiba and then to the ca capture box. I do high volume digitizing so not needing to use the computer is a bonus as I can be capturing video while doing other stuff on computer. I have been doing this for years including broadcast tapes betacam sp, sx and umatic for broadcast professionals. Needless to say they are pretty picky for quality and they have all been very happy.


His comments on that video are kind of out there. I bet he’s really stuck in his ways and bullheaded about his transfer method by now. He knows a lot about repairing analog gear but he’s not a good person to ask about digitizing advice.

FWIW: from the service manuals specs
the AG-1970 is 430mm x 109mm x 403mm
the AG-1980 is 430mm x 110mm x 380mm
the AG 1970 is nearly an inch deeper thanks mainly to the heat sink on the back.

The 1980 is plagued with the failing SMD caps; because if comes from the era of bad cap production, The 1970 by and large predates that era. But both are a pain to work on.

VHS and S-VHS use the same color information (C) recording method, the difference is S-VHS has much wider B&W bandwidth. The recorded color information has substantially less (less than half) bandwidth than found in a color broadcast signal or the professional recording formats such as Betacam. Composite video output from a live broadcast quality camera is much better. As noted by others another weakness when using composite is the Y/C separation circuits found in most consumer gear.

The quality rub with DV/firewire vs analog playback for Video8 & VHS (and the Hi band variants) is mainly due to the compression. At the sampling level and depth it offers better resolution but that is before the compression does its dirty work. Noise in the video, as is common for most home video, makes it especially bad.

And keep in mind that all this analog stuff is legacy gear, a lot of it 20+ years old, and there can be major differences between individual machines depending on their condition.

While there is no huge luma resolution difference between displaying a VHS tape over composite or S-Video, the benefits are luma and chroma signal cleanliness. He argued that a VHS tape already has low horizontal resolution so displaying it over composite is not going to make it any worse because it is already worse, this is generally a false argument, and I say generally for 2 reasons: 1- There are some good capture cards that have excellent comb filter hardware, so they can correct the video signal problems introduced by combing Y and V in one channel. 2- S-VHS (Hi8) players tend to have a good composite out compared to conventional low end players due to a better quality comb filters in them.

His approach to capturing (as well as repairing) is do it with minimal time and effort, I can understand that from a business perspective but from quality perspective to say there is "zero" difference is an extremist statement.

I'm also skeptical about his statement about IRE, he said VCRs output US NTSC as 7.5 IRE over composite and 0 IRE over S-Video, While I can't disapprove this since I don't have the necessary studio gear I know for a fact that only professional camcorders that have the ability to switch between IRE values, consumer camcorders and VCRs are locked to whatever region they are sold within, For example a US VCR automatically compensate for the IRE level of a US tape, if you put the same tape in a Japanese VCR it will not compensate, it just plays it in 0 IRE because Japan don't have 7.5 IRE level.

The IRE question wouldn't be too hard for me to test - I have a few S-Video-input waveform monitors as well as a couple of Japanese NTSC VCRs. S-Video waveform monitors aren't very common - I've only seen those inputs on some MagniMonitor and certain Videotek monitors. My guess is that the IRE level is baked into the recording and the VCR will just play it as is. The viewing device then probably has its fixed idea of where the black cutoff is supposed to be. Question is if automatic gain control will try to bring up or down the lowest luma levels in circuitry to match what the VCR thinks black is supposed to be before it exits the VCR? Anyone with a waveform monitor can probably just feed the luma component of S-Video only into a regular composite waveform monitor and probably also visualize the IRE level too, but I also haven't tried that yet personally.

I'd guess that he probably personally does not observe a significant difference with his capture workflows which are unlikely to be ideal, but it accomplishes what the target audience is after - a watchable copy of their memories that doesn't take up much disk space on a flash drive. He most likely does one-step captures which he mentions in some of the videos that in the past was to DVD using DVD recorders or now he at least endorses standalone capture boxes like the the Cloner Alliance boxes. I doubt he's probably seen results with a lossless/QTGMC combo. My guess is that he still uses S-Video for captures when the hardware supports it.

He seems like a reasonable guy, and if presented with the right comparison video, he'd probably change his stance on the S-Video vs Composite debate if shown the appropriate evidence. It probably just isn't as big of a benefit if using something like the Elgato Video Capture which has a rather low bitrate and odd deinterlacing/possibly throws away half of the available fields.

FWIW, he does mention that his favorite capture decks is a HR-S99xxU, speaks favorably of TBCs, and has made several videos showing (with live examples) of the benefits that they give, so he probably does use those as well.

Like everything else here, his IRE statement is false.

Ya think?

No, I don't think so. He's been extremely belligerent and rude in his Youtube comment responses to others, which is why I entered the conversation as a brick wall. I wasn't going to let him get away with that. He is an extremely knowledgeable person, but only with low-end consumer fodder gear. He does need to learn greatly here, but he also needs to be put in his place. I've had enough of that from other halfwit Youtubers, I truly was not expecting that from somebody that I thought was better than that, and thus deeply disappointed in him.

He uses crap, then defends his purchase with excuse. ("good enough", "customer doesn't care", etc)

And yet, in other videos, contradicts himself. What's his angle here? I've been online for 30 years, and I've been consistent. Obviously I adopt, adapt, change when needed. But that always results in newer nuanced definitions, exclusions, exceptions, etc -- never 180-degree turns. When somebody does 180, they were either very wrong to begin with, or likely still have no idea what they're doing (shift with the wind).

I think he's out of his knowledge zone, and blustering through it. Anybody with lesser knowledge is fooled, but several of us with higher knowledge knows he's completely full of crap. BarryTheCrab here, the OP, is what I'd consider a mid-level users after many years. He knew it, he saw it. So 12volt isn't making some nuanced errors, but making drastically wrong statements -- and then pigheadedly doubling down. I detest that mentally, with anything (politics, cooking, safety protocols, whatever).

"Mid-level" in this group is a frickin' high-level compliment!!!

He is a typical technician of corporate America (including Canada), They teach you just enough to know how to repair a machine but not enough to be an engineer to get that fat salary, This is pretty much valid in every field out there, technicians have brick walls they can't pass over not because they are dumb but because the system is designed that way.

You've earned it, you have some video knowledge. :)

There are several groups of people that contact me, or post in the forum. You're in the group "Hmm, __ posted/PM'd/emailed, this might be interesting!" So when you write something, I read it for sure.

Ah, nice ID there! :old:

Yes, I do believe you are correct. I didn't see that until you mentioned it. I've known people like this over the years. He knows what part goes where, but doesn't really understand why it's built that way. Rather than learn, he just makes terrible assumptions, resulting in screwy misinformation.

You'll see this with a lot of car mechanics, too. They know a Chilton manual cover-to-cover, but can't tell you any details outside the manual.
- very few mechanics learn more, the how/why, and become masters in their field
- most mechanics just shrug, "dunno" -- these are the majority, the "not-dumb good guys"
- bad mechanics make assumptions, or make crap up -- and while a small minority, still, far too many of these exist (sort of like bad cops)

Speaking of manuals what do the JVC and Panasonic SVHS Owners Manuals say on this? The JVC ones I've read do say that for full picture quality, SVHS recorded tapes must be played back on an SVHS deck and using an s-video cable to the monitor or recorder.

Do they also say that playing VHS recorded tapes on their SVHS decks with s-video connections will give better picture quality than on a standard VHS player, or on an SVHS deck with a mere composite connection?