Stand-alone TBC HW/software workarounds?
I've read some of the threads, with varying opinions, about use of TBC equipped DVR (e.g., Panasonic ES-10/15) to augment a good S-VCR's internal TBC. Lord Smurf talks about some of the LSI equipped DVRs and their utility. Can you give me some examples? For NTSC and PAL VHS capture, guess I would need the respective DVR versions?
Apart from the well known, hard to find, expensive stand-alones and DVR-based TBC, are there software workarounds that are effective in controlling the worst of what external TBC is designed to correct? |
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I see plenty of Panasonic ES10/15's around, most for less than a c-nore. I got my ES10 for $80 (with remote), my ES15 for a little less and a remote from Panasonic for $30 USD. Compare that to 500 to 600 bucks for a VCR with built-in tbc (and good luck finding one that works). I don't care for JVC DVR's. They don't work for pass-thru anyway. |
My experience sofar is, try to get a recorder combo > VCR & DVR in one, you avoid using the composite and s-video connections, with all their artifacts you have, compaired to component, component gives a sharp image, composite or s-video gives a foggy & smeared image, when you see the results next to eachother, some people like the foggy effect, i don't.
plus.... you can set the component output to progressive on such a combo, which saves you to de-interlace if you need to play on a lcd/flatscreen. The component video output was designed to connect a flatscreen, this was pre- HDMI.... my DMR-ES35V defeats also Macrovision in prorgressive mode, and gives a super steady video output, no black or dropped frames, There are also VCR's with build-in DVD player, these are useless ofcourse, (They still call it a dvdrecorder though > be carefull)you should google for the manual in question, Manualslib has a good collection, sometimes their Capta fails... try the next day in that case. Capturing from component saves you some work in post, and gives better results is my experience. |
There is an anti-horizontal jitter plugin somewhere on this forum, but it doesn't work very well as it's not really something that can be done well after capturing.
I've tested a few DVRs now, can't speak for NTSC, but at least on PAL they've all seem to buffer and provide a stable output signal. If the signal is bad, they can give some repeated frames where my Datavideo TBC is able to recover stuff, such as with heavy tape damage. From what I read here and on videohelp, it seems that the NTSC models often don't work as well as the respective PAL ones on pass-through but I could be wrong. So don't assume that the following applies to the NTSC versions of these DVRs. Pioneer DVR-440H - Seems to correct horizontal jitter quite well and I've seen it fix flagging the TBC on my philips VCR could not fix. Is also is dual PAL/NTSC and can convert PAL-60 to NTSC. I've seen some minor clipping on the back SCART port though. White/Black level is adjustable, White AGC can be turned off/on, and noise reduction and Y/C separation is adjustable. I know a fellow forum user uses a previous generation DVR-530 as well, though I don't know too much about it, and there were a lot of changes in the x40 generation afaik. Toshiba RD-XS24 - Also seems pretty strong at correcting horizontal jitter. There is some weirdness when using it with the Philips VCR with the TBC on and outputing noise though. Has adjustable brightness, gamma, contrast and sharpness. The levels are a bit clunky by default. It also seems a bit suspectible to RF noise, but maybe that's just my unit. I've read about others using later RD-XS models (like 34) with success. JVC DHR-M300 - Doesn't seem as strong at correcting jitter as the previous two. Does work on pass-through, unlike what I've heard about the NTSC version. Has HDMI out, which is a capture option, turns on HDCP if it detects macrovision, though seems to pass a non copy-protected HDMI signal otherwise. Doesn't have any adjustment options, and seems to not record below y=16 and sometimes clip very bright parts. Sony RDR-HX910 - Have yet to test this much, seems to have some positive effect on jitter, but not great, and also seems to have some posterisation and has "hard" borders on the sides like my datavideo. It also seemed to blue screen on bad signals. I've seen some people talk more positively about newer Sony models though. There are a few receivers that also reportedly has some TBC functionality, but I don't personally know much about them. EDIT: And as stated by eric, some of the late-model VHS/DVD-recorder combos may also have some built in buffering, though I haven't personally tried any, and many of the later ones are chinese-made plasticky funai stuff that breaks easily. Haven't really noticed any difference between S-Video and Component on my DVRs though, like eric mentions on his ES-35 maybe it's something specific to his model. EDIT2: Over at the german gleitz forums they also recommend using HDMI out on Panasonic DVRs, though they are supposedly not as good at correcting horizontal jitter as the older ES10/15. EDIT3: Also note that DVRs as far as I've seen will output a macrovision signal if they detect it on the input (unlike a full-fledged standalone TBC), which some capture cards react badly to. |
Thanks, gentlemen. I appreciate your experiences. As opposed to these considerations, how about only using the JVC S-VCR with onboard TBC for capturing (with AVI AIW 9600) but NO stand-alone TBC capability? Not a good idea?
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It should only be used for passthrough, generally to specifically correct tearing. While not always ideal as a TBC stand-in, what I call a TBC(ish), it can be done. In fact, paired with a DataVideo DVK-100, it can create an interesting workflow. But still, posterization is present. So external framesync TBC is better, even if more costly. In terms of a good DVD recorder, the LSI models from JVC are generally the best, with clean encoding up to 4 hours, and chroma noise removal. Chroma noise is the bane of VHS, the yucky color noise you easily see. Quote:
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NTSC vs. PAL makes no difference, that's just the color signal... Quote:
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JVC S-VHS are excellent, but the line TBC isn't going to correct dropped frames. You need an external framesync TBC. That's why some DVD recorders do well, being mostly framesyncs. But not TBC, so some errors (notably artificial ones, ie Macrovision) still get through. Are you just trying to avoid TBC for some reason? Budget, maybe? Remember, you can always buy it, use it, then later resell it. |
Hello Lord Smurf,
Thanks for your detailed and informative comments. To your last questions, yes. It's the scarcity of reliable TBC and the cost. The last "good" TBC-1000 I checked out, although a later black model, still went for what was it...$700+ on Ebay. Given that I have not even started experimenting with a setup (just got the AIW 9600 yesterday and am trying to resuscitate my old XP machine with new motherboard), I really want to get a handle on basics first. Have not used Virtual Dub yet, either. That being said, still wanted to get a better understanding of viable TBC-ish options. |
Yes, the TBC'ish way is an much easier way, I have here also a JVC S-VHS wich works fine as passthrough, only thing that looks bad, are the special speed playback modes, these are some kind of digital enhached functions, resolution is bad, but no black or dropped frames, at a certain point, you do some crazy tests to try to generate dropped frames :) my JVC S-VHS has a too strong video signal i guess, because at strong contrast points colors "shoot out" which i don't have on my Panasonic, so i find it strange to read things here that are just oposite to my findings, my JVC S-VHS VCR is the HR-S8960, and i can't find much about this one on any forum, so i can't "place" it exactly in the JVC "line" of VCR's, and i also see no other people who capture from the component video connection, and can judge about it, like i can.
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Hello Eric-Jan,
I already have the JVC S-VHS decks (HR-7611EU and HR-7900U) for PAL and NTSC playback. Both have the onboard TBC. Unless your HR-S8960 has a unique TBC feature, I don't think it would do the trick for me. Are you playing the tapes from a standard VHS player through the JVC? |
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The Intensity Shuttle is queit sensitive in capturing a video signal i discovered, and heard from others, but sofar the Pan. and jvc do fine, i can correct color shifts etc. in the video driver, and i have found a standard setting for all my tapes, noise in the picture is also handled fine, and bleeding is very minimal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHZkl3ayzqM |
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All that aside, the ES10/ES15 didn't use the LSI chip. The only NTSC DVD-R from Panasonic that used the LSI chip was the DMR-ES20 and its hard-drive counterpart whose model number I don't recall. The DMR-ES10/ES20 and all subsequent pannies used a Panasonic chip, not LSI. The ES20 used the LSi chip on recordings of all programmed speeds from 1 hour to 6 hours and more. True, Panasonic ES20's utilized the LSI denoiser on recordings longer than 2 hours, where they produced a full-size 720x480/720x576 frame with low-bitrates that were too low for that frame size, and after 3 hours the low bitrate noise was intolerable. Most competing brands on recordings longer than 2 hours use half-D1 (352-width) frames and lowered the bitrate accordingly, while Panasonic kept the larger frame but used lower bitrates not sufficient to render the large frames properly. In any case, recordings on consumer DVD-R's longer than 2 hours were dreadful from all makers. if you wanted long recording times you could do better with a good VCR. |
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