SD component video?
 

I have a D-VHS VCR (Marantz MV8300) that will output VHS (SD) video through YPbPr cables. Has anyone tried capturing YPbPr this way with a hardware encoder? Wondering if this would offer any benefits over using S-video signal into the capture box.

I would say try it and compare, The conversion is digital for sure, after the YC signal passes by the ADC and timing the digital signal then converted back to both YC and YPbPr for the corresponding outputs, I'm tempted to try this myself on my D-VHS connected to the BE75 via component input, but due to lack of time I've been putting it off. I would really appreciate a comparison with samples between the two.

I've done some mild dabbling in component captures - mainly the way you'd run across that without a "component outputting VCR" is with a rack mount TBC that accepts S-Video in, but then can output component. SDI would be even better, so wouldn't use component if SDI out is available on the TBC instead.

Depending on how good your TBC is, modern capture cards might see that signal as stable enough to capture without issues. Main issue at that point is how the card handles interlaced content.

Blackmagic and AJA hardware recorders get a lot of shade around here, but products such as the AJA Ki Pro and Blackmagic Ultrastudio Pro have component inputs and can record directly to a hard drive for essentially computer free captures in a variety of interlaced Apple Pro-Res formats with a variety of bitrates. It's not quite lossless, but should be visually lossless after a certain bitrate and takes up less space. If you plan to use something like QTGMC, I'm not sure how or if that can handle ProRes files though.

Attached sample is from two different component captures using component output from a frame TBC using different component to SDI cards, each have their strengths and weaknesses. Could also be that the TBC's noise reduction was set a bit differently between the two, so can't say for sure that they had identical source signals going in unfortunately to really draw any actual conclusions.

I'll be doing more testing including with Blackmagic ultrastudio recorders and the AJA Ki Pro to see how they compare to other capture methods within the next few months.

He is asking about component out of a D-VHS VCR not TBC or DVD recorder.