AG-1980 TBC made video uncapturable
 

Wondering if anyone has seen this happen.

I am capturing a batch of old tapes. One of them has a "title screen" that from the looks of it was geberated by an old TI-994/A computer. These 80s PCs didn't exactly put out NTSC compliant signals.

I was unable to get a watchable video for this title screen until turning the Line TBC on my AG-1980 deck off. Once of, the quality is poor but it is watchable.

Are there instances where a TBC actually does more damage than good?

Really much tape dependent, I've had that only happen three times out of the many VHS and VHS-C tapes I've done (I've lost count but it's probably been like, 50 to 60).

They were all tapes that were clearly edited using some old fashion editing deck. Or at least, 100% not original camcorder master tapes.

An example being a wedding tape from 1987, the edited in title and ending cards look fine with the TBC enabled, but the footage of the wedding itself had horrible streaks/lines that made the footage unwatchable. Turning off the TBC resulted in those streaks going away but instead introduced wiggling/flagging instead.

Had to use a Panasonic ES15 DVD Recorder in between the VCR and frame TBC to fix the flagging, and keep the line TBC inside the VCR disabled to prevent those streaks.

I get that the ES15 adds in issues, but I think the consensus is "use it when needed" like in these examples were the benefits on using it outweigh the drawbacks for those specific tapes. But if it isn't needed for a tape, then don't bother.

Also have to deal with flagging/tearing on some tapes that were clearly 2nd gen copies, only a Panasonic ES15/ES10 can fix that.

Let's put it like so, I have a ES15, but I only rarely need to use it for just a small set of stubborn tapes, which all have one thing in common, they were all 2nd gen copies in some way (Video8 -> VHS copies), raw footage edited down into a highlight reel type of deal, etc)

Not every 2nd gen copy I've done is like this, but still.

The signal may be incompatible with modern digital monitors. It may have looked fine displayed on the older CRT monitors pre about 2000.

Yes I have atleast one tape where with tbc on I get bad picture still I can barely see whats on it. With tbc on I get totally different pictures but its stable and I can see the show almost as good a modern hd.

Back in the early 90's I would usually use same tape to record over several times only switching when something I really wanted to keep was recorded or it was worn out usually about 10 re-recordings, sometimes on different vcr's if multiple interesting shows happened at same time.

I guess it was a tape that was re recorded with tv shows maybe from different vcr's so with tbc it tracks one recording and off tracks another.

I have seen tapes where turning the TBC off is beneficial, though I haven't seen enough of those tapes to be able to predict which tapes will do it and which won't. I've seen it on commercial movie releases as well. Not unique to the AG1980 either, the JVCs will do it to on certain tapes as well and even different series within the JVCs will do it more than others. In my experience, the 7x00 series has more tapes that do worse with the TBC on in my limited experience.

Once you've done the best capture you can on that tape, I'd be interested in giving it a try on a variety of machines to see what they do. Closest I have would be an Apple IIc which also was a NTSC composite out and I suppose I could make a recording off of that and see how it looks played back.

Tapes with tracking issues, shrunk or stretched tapes, damaged tapes, recorded on mis-aligned machines, LP/EP compatibility issues ... All this can trip the line TBC and even the frame TBC. So you have to deal with them individually, This is why some people have multiple VCRs and a wide variety of capture hardware. If only few tapes are giving you a hard time you can find a reliable business to do them for you.

Would be interesting to see. I had an Apple II back in teh day and its output was NTSC-ish.