Prevent VHS tape distorting effect?
Hi all, I'm trying to digitize my old vhs tapes to dvd, and was wondering if there's anything I can do to help fix this kind of warping affect that's happening on a part of my one tape (you can see what I'm talking about starting at around 51 minutes in, in this first part I already digitized: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13ak...CepUiuvaO/view ). I tried adjusting the tracking and that didn't do anything, so is there anything I can do to try to fix this, or am I stuck with what I've got?
Thanks. |
Please attach a tiny clip of the area in question. I'm only downloading it beacuse I saw the CN logo, and I'm a cartoon collector. I'd normally not download a 4gb file for a sample, nor will others.
What is your workflow hardware? - capture card - VCR - other devices, such as a TBC And software? - capture (VirtualDub) - edit, encode, etc edit: Download done, looked at it. Your VCR is terrible, and your capture card may not be helping. You're wasting your time to do low-quality lousy work. You need a more stable VCR. See http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ing-guide.html. And a TBC. Right now, you're actually making digital recordings that look worse than the original tapes. This doesn't have to be the way things are. You can make the digital recordings look better than the tapes, as good as retail DVDs, often better than you ever thought possible. All that is required is the right equipment. And you're at the right site to learn what you need! :) |
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I am using a Panasonic DMRES40V VHS/DVD combo player (circa 2005), and I am dubbing the tapes onto DVD-Rs. From there, I am taking the disks and running them through a program called Handbrake to encode them into easily viewable files (though I am also copying the raw Video_TS files onto my hard-drive as well). When encoding, I am using settings given to me by someone who is more technically versed than I (which I've attach to this post). So far the disks have seemed to produce 1:1 copies from the original tapes, as have the handbrake encodes (at least to my eye), but again, I'm not much of an expert in these matters haha. I actually just got this combo player serviced because it needed some new capacitors, and was told that everything else looked to be in tiptop shape. I have a few other vcrs, a JVC from the late 90's and two other Go-video combos from the early 2000's, and so far, this Panasonic has the best picture quality out of all of them. This was a rather expensive and high quality unit at the time. Any who, going back to the main issue at hand and tape in question, this distortion effect only happens in a slect portion of the tape tape. The first 50 minutes (as seen in the google drive video I uploaded) looks okay, then the distortion kicks in for the rest of the cartoon network recording, before going back to ok quality for the remainder of the tape that has my grandmothers soap operas (I think the whole tape had soap operas to begin with and I recorded cartoon network over them, so could my taping over have screwed it up somehow??) I've also heard about these TBCs, but there's so many out there I don't know where to begin. Are there any good ones for Panasonics like mine? Also, nice to see another cartoon collector out there. These are actually my childhood tapes I'm trying to digitize and preserve (and pass the time through this never-ending quarantine haha). It's been quite the learning curve and difficult task, though. I have a few tapes with mold on them and one tape that broke that I need to splice together, but I want to make sure I know what I'm doing before I take that on. Thanks again for taking the time to assist a dummy like me, I appreciate it. :wink2: |
You are doing it in the longest and most damaging way that can possibly be, Just get a USB capture device and start learning how to do it the right way, There is a lot of materials in this forum that help you choose the VCR, the capture card, the capture software, just take your time and read through them.
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You're capturing two-hour tapes onto 4.7GB DVDs.
I'm capturing two-hour tapes onto hard drives at about 70GB per tape. Do the math. |
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At any rate, I'm just trying to see if I can fix the distorting effect I'm getting here as I have explained in the OP. |
How can they be 1:1 if they're throwing out 90% of the information?
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I also want to preface that this is a fun little project I'm doing, and I'mnot looking to go all out and spend a ton of money. If I did, I would've taken to get these converted professionally, but it's not worth that much for some TV recordings. |
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The difference is they use H.265 in a carefully optimised, multi-pass setup. And even then you can find plenty of commercial discs that look horribly compressed. You're using MPG2, which is a vastly inferior compression codec, and you're compressing on the fly. |
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Here are two pictures, the first one from the original vhs and the other from the disk I copied to. I don't notice the difference.
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I have some of the same content (CN recordings) on VHS as you do, and can try to upload a clip sometimes this week. My quality and yours will be night-and-day difference. Quote:
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As a cartoon collector, realize that the entire reason that I started to help others online (in the 90s), was due to our collecting community, people like you and me. Because 20+ years ago, I wasn't yet working professionally in video, and it was still pure fun hobby. But I sought quality, and didn't bastardize it as (then) VCD format (now H264 MKV crammed through Handbrake). What you're doing is a travesty, and I want to help you do much better. Quote:
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Bird poop, cat poop, dog poop. Which taste better? The correct answer = who cares. It's all poop. Quote:
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It can, it should, but there's more to video. The playback quality (VCR+TBC) must exist, and then the choice in codec/interlace/etc matters. I can make a horrible uncompressed video, or I can make a clean 35gb lossless video. Quote:
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Do you thin that any of us actually like spending money on good video hardware? Because we don't. But you buy the tools you need. Or you suffer the consequences of using garbage. On that scale of 1-10, what I'm suggesting to you is about a 5 or 6. All budgets setup have a fail rate, but right now you're pretty much failing at everything. Quote:
Yes, sadly true, lots of bad discs exist. The reason is not properly handling the sources. Been there, done that, handled downstream QC, and it increased my hatred of the cop-out phrase "good enough" (an excuse to pass off $hit quality for pay). Quote:
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Wow, guess I should just pack it up and forget it then lol.
I really appreciate that you guys like going the extra mile, but I've put about $50 into this project total and I don't want to spend any more money or do any sort of reselling/buying equipment. I've done about 10 tapes so far this way too, and I really don't want to backtrack. Unless you guys would like to take the tapes off my hands and see what you can do haha. I should also mention that most this stuff was recorded on this vcr, so how is it that the quality could be better from a vcr that isn't any good? Sorry to hear about your mold exposure LordSmurf, that sounds serious. I may just throw those away then I guess. |
Just set the project aside, and resume it when you have more funds and energy to do it correctly.
What toons are on those tapes? |
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Most of my stuff is anime, but I have a few Boomerang recordings and other miscellaneous daytime CN from the early to mid 2000's. I have a friend that's requesting some of this stuff too, which is another reason why I'm doing this in the first place really. So, any way, is there anything I can do with what I've got to fix the distortion, or is it a lost cause? |
If you give me a rundown of what's on the tape, I may be able to convert some of those myself.
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Does the effect happen if you play it on another VCR to a TV? I suspect this is may have been caused by something was not working correctly in the recording VCR. It looks like the point where the VCR switches between video heads is not completely stable, maybe the recording VCR had something loose on the drum motor or an electronic issue distorting the signal telling the VCR how the drum is positioned. It looks a lot like what happens if you touch the top of the drum on a VCR playing back a tape and slow it. I suppose one workaround if it is in fact the playback VCR is to play it on one of your other VCRs and send the output to the ES40 for either recording to DVD or as a pass-through using it's stabilizing features to a capture card.
I suspect this is the type of tape where one would have to test on a ton of different setups and find the best compromise rather than expect it working well on one of the suggested setups. One would need something quite capable to handle the extra signal instability that comes from this error, and I'm not sure what device handle it the best, or if some VCRs would be able to deal with it better than others. The ES40v is from the same lineup as the ES10, ES20, EH50, and ES30, and share some of the DVD recording side those. The ES10 has as mentioned excellent stabilizing features, the ES20 less so, so I'm not sure which is closer. |
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