Hauppauge USB-Live2 trouble with unstable input?

[Kocane]

Hello friends,

I've recently bought a Sony 8mm VCR, with VHS too, which I plan to use to give the digitizing of our old tapes a go again (the first one I made years ago was shoddy, no TBC and a Dazzle DVC100 - yuck!)

So I bought a Hauppauge Usb-Live2 since I heard it was a nice device, and it does seem so. Compatible with Windows 10 and all that.

However, I've noticed that when there are unstable input I see these odd image shifting with weird purple color. Here is an example:

0vfBsHN.jpg

(If this image is a bad example then I'll get some better ones tomorrow)

With the Dazzle it'd just jump the image around a bit since the camera did get a little yank, but on the hauppauge it makes these odd colored curves. Any idea what can be causing this and how I can avoid it? I've noticed that is less with TBC on but it's still there.

I also got a Panasonic NV-GS400 (PAL, like all the tapes) which I tried using as passthrough with my Mac Mini and FireWire. However - and I see this is much discussed on this forum - it obviously makes it DV encoded which isn't exactly great. At the same time I've read some of Lordsmurfs old posts where I can see it also comes down to whether its NTSC or PAL due the the color space (?). Is it still inferior to my Hauppauge?

One immediate thing I noticed using passthrough is that the playback is constant. Even when it's just playing back empty tape or "fuzzyness", it shows whats going on, where my capture cards would simply just typically stutter and freeze when there wasn't a steady video input.

Hope I'm making sense.

Thanks,

[hodgey]

What TBC do you have?

We have 2 Hi8 PAL VCRs here (both with the F mechanism, which is the same as in the SONY SLV-T2000 Hi8/VHS combo if that is what you have), and the output doesn't seem to be the most stable, they easily trip up the dodgy black AVT-8710 TBC. I have seen something that looked a bit like your image when testing it without a TBC once (with a diamond VC500), though mostly it just produced a very skewed image. Strangely, when I tested the capture card on a linux machine, the image wasn't skewed, but it jumped much more instead. Not sure if it's the same issue that you have. Does the image do jumps occasionally, or does it stay like that for a while?

[Kocane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgey

What TBC do you have?

We have 2 Hi8 PAL VCRs here (both with the F mechanism, which is the same as in the SONY SLV-T2000 Hi8/VHS combo if that is what you have), and the output doesn't seem to be the most stable, they easily trip up the dodgy black AVT-8710 TBC. I have seen something that looked a bit like your image when testing it without a TBC once (with a diamond VC500), though mostly it just produced a very skewed image. Strangely, when I tested the capture card on a linux machine, the image wasn't skewed, but it jumped much more instead. Not sure if it's the same issue that you have. Does the image do jumps occasionally, or does it stay like that for a while?

Mine is the Sony EV-T2 which is basically like the EV-T1 but with audio dubbing, I guess.

When I bought the Hauppauge I tested it with a camcorder and without TBC enabled, it seemed like it'd do this odd effects very often when the input was unstable but with the EV-T2 it seems to be way more often, even with TBC enabled. Like mentioned, the cheap DVC100 doesn't do this.

Here's a gif of the issue:
https://i.imgur.com/q3d6tpq.gif

and the same part with the Dazzle:
https://i.imgur.com/hKIHjBb.gif

You can see the image does some shifting of sorts but it's like the Dazzle handles it way better?

Ofcourse, the DV passthrough on my Panasonic is very stable as well.

[hodgey]

Ah, okay. The information on these combo units seems a bit scarce, though that one also seems to have the same Hi8 mechanism.

When you talk about a TBC, do you mean an external TBC, or the built-in TBC in the camcorder/VCR (does the VCR have one?)? The camcorder TBC helps stabilize the lines in the image, but it still won't result in a completely stable signal, to which different capture cards react differently. (And better/more expensive card doesn't have to mean better at handling crappy signals *cough* blackmagic *cough*.) You may want to read the sticky on TBCs if you haven't already, which explains it better than I can.

That jumping looks like what I've seen with capturing directly from the Hi8 VCR with the VC500. I believe an external TBC of some sort would help with this, LS can probably confirm or deny.

As for using DV pass-through. You read right in that it's not as bad for PAL as for NTSC, which comes down to how the DV format does chroma subsampling I.e storing less colour information than brightness information to save on space. The PAL format does this in a less destructive way though it still throws away some colour information that you would capture if it was captured with a capture card. DV capture will also result in some compression artifacts as a result of the compression algorithm, so you will have to see whether it's enough to bother you. Lastly, you lose the ability to fine-tune the brightness and contrast settings for the capture.

[Kocane]

I do mean the "TBC" built into the VCR itself. I don't have an external one. I'm sure it'd fix my issue but it's just out of my budget to buy one, but I'm sure it'd fix my issue. I just find it odd that the better Hauppauge seemingly is... shit if you have some unstable video input, where the Dazzle DVC100 prevails. I'm OK with the slight occasional jumpy video but not so much with the way the Hauppauge device handles it. Shame.

I've also considered getting something like the AverMedia C725B since it'd fit nicely in my small form factor case.

Then again, this guy has an AverMedia card of that sort:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...TV)-TBC-needed

and his videosample basically shows the exact issue I'm having ...

[hodgey]

Something that may or may not help for video8/hi8 tapes is adjusting the tension regulator in the hi8 mechanism. I did find that it could help lessen the image skew (that happened without any TBC) a bit, see p. 31 here for the VCR, there are similar manauals for the other mechanisms used in the camcorders if you can locate them. Granted, I'm not a VCR mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, so I can't say with any certainty whether it's a good idea, or if it's fully safe. I haven't found a lot of info on the technicalities of the Video8 format, but it seemed similar to the effect of adjusting backtension on VHS vcrs.

The more safe alternative if you don't have the budget for a fully fledged tbc would be to look for a DVD recorder with pass-through as mentioned many times on the forums, some can be found pretty cheaply, especially since you don't need something with very strong line correction capability. The DV route may be okay too, the quality degradation isn't massive.

[Kocane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgey

Something that may or may not help for video8/hi8 tapes is adjusting the tension regulator in the hi8 mechanism. I did find that it could help lessen the image skew (that happened without any TBC) a bit, see p. 31 here for the VCR, there are similar manauals for the other mechanisms used in the camcorders if you can locate them. Granted, I'm not a VCR mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, so I can't say with any certainty whether it's a good idea, or if it's fully safe. I haven't found a lot of info on the technicalities of the Video8 format, but it seemed similar to the effect of adjusting backtension on VHS vcrs.

The more safe alternative if you don't have the budget for a fully fledged tbc would be to look for a DVD recorder with pass-through as mentioned many times on the forums, some can be found pretty cheaply, especially since you don't need something with very strong line correction capability. The DV route may be okay too, the quality degradation isn't massive.

Thanks for the replies and help.

Modifying this particular VCR I got right now is something I'm not particularly crazy about. I know I only gave 185€ for the thing but that still feels like a lot of money in my book

I've been searching the forums and I've seen the Panasonic DMR-ES10 mentioned alot of times and it just so happens someguy is selling one in my town.

@lordsmurf, my searching also reveals that you clearly know your thing about the ES10 - do you think it'll be capable to fix the issues I'm seeing here?

-- merged --

I went ahead and bought the ES10. Seems like it fixes the issue pretty well :-)

[sanlyn]

Good show. I've been using mine for years. Works wonders, despite a few less noticeable problems. Be sure to turn off its noise reduction -- it smears motion and causes posterizing effects.

[Kocane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

Good show. I've been using mine for years. Works wonders, despite a few less noticeable problems. Be sure to turn off its noise reduction -- it smears motion and causes posterizing effects.

Good to hear.

That's the "AV-in NR" feature that needs disabling on AV4, right? I assume "automatic" means it'd be on.

[BarryTheCrab]

My ES-15 needs the remote to shut off noise reduction, you may also need a remote. Maybe the menus are different, just mentioning that.

[Kocane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

My ES-15 needs the remote to shut off noise reduction, you may also need a remote. Maybe the menus are different, just mentioning that.

You mean the 'display' button only found on the remote, right?

[BarryTheCrab]

I'm not home but I think that's the one, I haven't memorized it and need to hunt for it!

[Kocane]

Pretty sure that's it, yeah.

Now my setup is about ready :-3

No external TBC but hey...

Now I just gotta figure the right capture settings on the USB Live2 (proc amp) and potential fixes in VirtualDub, etc. All that seems a little overwhelming.