Using the Panasonic 1980 sharpen
 

Hey
I am doing some old 6 hr mode vhs to dvd from the panasonic 1980, to AVT TBC to a Sima to JVC dvd recorder, I think the sima works, all the controls seem to do what they are labled and I have read that unit takes some heat here, being a cheap proc amp type unit, it has sharp control and so does the Panasonic, so I use the panasonic heavy and the sima just a little...would this be correct?

Actually the tapes are not that bad shape, close ups look good and clear for a tape 25 years old, but distance shots are blurry...these are football games and the clock/score are blurry also, the sharpen does help...any other suggestions?

Thanks!!

Hardware sharpening adds grain.
Software sharpening adds aliasing.
More of either does more damage.

But when you're restoring, you take the lesser of evils. :)

I'd suggest that the 1980P maxed out on sharpness is pretty harsh already. Adding a Sima probably doesn't help as much as a SignVideo DR-1000 does, although it's probably a cheaper option.

Remember that grain and edge noise aggravates MPEG encoding, and can lead to digital artifacts on the final DVDs.

I'd guess you're making it as good as it could probably be. I just finished with a project that was very blurry. The restored version was better, but there's still really no way to sharpen blurs.

Does that answer it? Maybe help some?

Is the SignVideo DR-1000 is a real proc. amp? Can you pick them up used and if so what do they sell for?

The Studio 1 Productions (now SignVideo) DR-1000 is an "image enhancer" -- formerly called a "Detailer" by the even earlier incarnation of the company, Vidicraft -- that sharpens an image in two ways. It also has counter-NR for defeating noise that can be introduced by the act of artificially sharpening video.

It's not a proc amp -- it doesn't alter colors.

This is one reason I never use the full term "processing amplifier", as that could almost mean anything to the layman. Same goes for "image enhancer". The terms are too muddy and generic sounding.

Proc amp = color fixer, corrects "brightness"/"contrast"/saturation/hue/IRE/luma/etc
Detailer = makes images look sharper, or have "more detail"

SignVideo DR-1000
 

The DR-1000 is a great unit. One thing I like about it in particular is that it lets you adjust how coarse you want your adjustments. Playing around with the coarseness adjustment in addition to the actual adjustment knobs can yield great results.

It has way more of a range of sharpening then you can possibly need. It's marked with about 24 points of adjustment from low to high.

It lets you adjust it based on two different algorithms, one for "detail" and one for "sharpness".

It's hard to explain the difference in how it impacts the image, but I usually turn detail up just a hair or not at all, and I never turn the sharpness up to more than 5 or 6, maybe a bit more for really stellar sources.

I wouldn't recommend turning it up so high that you have to use the the noise reduction knobs (marked core and black) as they tend to smear the image a bit.

It can be a subtle difference, but it does make things look more sharp and clean, way better then the Sima unit.

I like the Sima...for the money it seems to work pretty well and is very strong, it's a shame it can't be "tuned down" some, now I am sure the SignVideo DR-1000 does alot better job, but at what, approx. 6x the $$, does it do that much better of a job, is it worth the $300-400 (I think they are in this range) vs less that $100 for the sima?

Yes, they run $315 brand new with shipping direct from SignVideo. I haven't seen too many of them pop up on eBay, so I can't tell you the used market rate is, but then again I never look for them, so perhaps LS could be more help there :)

I had the Sima (SCC CT-2) for about a year and the main strike against it me was that it negatively affected the image quality when it was in my chain. The DR-1000 is almost completely transparent and doesn't add artifacts to the image.

The other thing that bugged me was that turning up the sharpness on my unit seemed to make make very little difference. It didn't seem to sharpen things up much at all, which is a huge strike against a sharpener :) The sharpening it did do was similar to the Sharp mode on my JVC deck, just too chunky, made everything look plastic.

Perhaps there was something wrong with my unit though, as you seem to feel it sharpens things up quite a bit, so maybe you should stick with it, but if you ever have a chance to try out the DR-1000 for cheap, give it a shot. You should provide some before and after image samples of your unit, I'd be curious to see how it works for you.

The Sima sharpening method is probably very rough and basic compared to the relatively finesse of the SignVideo/Studio1 units. Even the older 1980s Vidicraft tech is a bit more subtle. The last Sima device I saw reminded me of Archer gear -- nothing special, but would work to a degree.

Yes for a good price I would love to try a Signvideo out...
And yes the Sima sharpener does work, I wish I could save you a frame of video, Admin said he would work up a thread how to do this, but in my original dvd which someone recorded from vhs there is a newspaper and you cant read the big headline and after the Sima you can, it's not great but it made that much difference, I would say overall maybe 10% sharper and after that it got artificial or like the signal was breaking down, can't describe it any better than that.

My DR-1000 was about $75 shipped --- pure luck, from somebody that did not know what they had, misspelled it on eBay (and had an awful description), years before videoheads were really talking about these devices online like we do now. I got this back in 2004.

It's not likely to happen again. :)

The units are about $300 new, maybe you'll get one for $150-200 if you're lucky. These are low-production items, bought and sold by knowledgeable users, and tend to hold most of their value for that reason -- sort of like AVT-8710 TBCs or TBC-1000's.

Thanks LS.....that makes me feel real good!....Give ya $100 for it :)

It sounds like it is working pretty well for you then, my particular unit might have just been junk. I've heard there is a lot of variability in quality between units.

The SIMA unit you have -- everything must be accessed from menus via the remote control, correct? That's another thing about the DR-1000 that is really nice, the knobs let you tweak things just a hair or too and back again without having to plunge through a bunch of menus.

The Sima I have has knobs, and just tweek back and forth till I get it the best I can see, rewind and begin recording, the adjustments are severe, lots and lots of adjustment, they could have made it 1/2 as powerful and it would have done a better job, I can't believe anything needs as much range as it provides...but I have been wrong lots of times!

I think that's the primary failing the cheap devices, like the Sima -- the dials and knobs are not finely nuanced. The higher end equipment is both stronger AND has the ability to finely tune and adjust. The cheaper gear tends to range from harsh to wimpy, to your situation (good, but not with fine settings).

To be fair, the Panasonic AG-1980P sharpening slider isn't much different. It does not has as many fine adjustments as the DR-1000 does. However, it works good in most cases. I'm sure the Sima is the same for you.

I've used my DR-1000 less in recent years, because I've started to use the AG-1980 a lot more. However, the DR-1000 is often connected to the JVC S-VHS 9800, when an SP tape is being transferred.