Good to know!

I think that there were a couple more JVC suffixes - of which the majority I've seen are posted in the JVC machine list thread. It seems as though they do refer to the colour systems/regions used, yes - I've seen MS and just S be used for SECAM-L-compatible units, seemingly for the French market. I was actually referring to the Thomson suffixes in my previous post - but it's only speculation since it's uncharted territory at this point.. :laugh:

Hmm strange perhaps it does work with Secam (L/B), i doubt it though.

I used to work with a JVC HR-8600MS and the manual clearly says "the tbc don't work with secam and mesecam tapes".

What the 8600ms can do is transcode Secam to PAL (not mesecam). I've never tried though and i can't anymore anyway.
So if you can my drift : jvc 8600ms (pal out)> dedicated tbc (Pal) > capture

And for the record:
Secam-L (Tv recordings,france)
Secam-B (retail vhs movies sold in France)
Mesecam: secam signals (tv) recorded with pal vcr (kind of a hydrid colour coding/decoding system used by few countries like switzerland)

edit:
You're right , i'm reading the 9700MS manual as i type it talk about mesecam only not working with the TBC. There is hope for Secam (L/B)

MESECAM is a home recording format, It is not an official VHS standard and never existed when VHS was officially standardized. In the heyday of VHS when VHS camcorders were a big thing, tourists would go to places like Europe and North America and they buy camcorders to tape their vacation and when they go home they find out that their TV or VCR don't display the color or no picture at all, so VCR manufacturers saw the opportunity to fix this problem and boost their VCR sales by adding such features, and that's when MESECAM (Middle East SECAM), PAL60 (NTSC 4.43 @ 60Hz) and NTSC50 (NTSC 3.58 @ 50Hz) were born.

@themaster1

- Can you upload the manual, if it's not already on this site?
- You're in France, aren't you? Or at least somewhere in non-English Europe, right?

Only if you can read French, HR-S7600MS, HR-S8600MS and HR-S9600MS:

Interesting. Those three manuals seem to say that the TBC doesn't work for SECAM or MESECAM tapes. When I googled, the same goes for the HR-S7700MS.

This means that I can only find that the HR-S8700MS, and the HR-S9700MS may have SECAM TBC functionality.

Crumby, don't bother buying the Thomson unit unless the seller shows you the user manual, and the user manual says that the TBC works for both SECAM and MESECAM.

Here are user manuals for the HR-S7700MS, HR-S8700MS and HR-S9700MS. I also have service manuals for the HR-S6700MS/HR-S7700MS, and the HR-S8700MS/HR-S9700MS. All in French.

The manual of my JVC HR-S9500MS says the same: Digital T.B.C. / N.R. is off when reading SECAM or MESECAM tape even if the light is on. Attached the manual.

I messed up and can't edit my post again. Don't bother buying the Thomson unit unless the seller shows you the user manual, and the user manual doesn't say that the TBC is inactive for SECAM.

Thanks. I am losing hope again.

According to the manuals you posted :

7600/8600/9600 : NO
7700 : NO
8700/9700 : maybe, can be an error in the manual

I asked the Thomson seller to look at the manual

-- merged --

The thomson owner said he didn't found any info in the manual about this. And that he only used PAL tapes.

Looking at the ended auctions history on ebay, it seems unlikely i will find a 8700ms or 9700ms anytime soon.

The TBC are too expensive without being sure of the result. I will try to send tape to another lab.

-- merged --

hello!

I sent some tapes to a lab few month ago. I still have to look at the result more thoroughly but at first glance it doesn't seems very sharp and got some kind of temporal-smoother effect. (i said to them to not use any filtering).

As for my current VCR (a Toshiba) that got very good picture -when it works-, i wonder if it could be fixed. Maybe all of this come from my VCR.
Can a loose belt create all this kind of issues ?
ie : Jumping image on some tapes. Inconsisent alignment (the VCR has to adjust every few seconds) on some others tapes, etc. But OK on some tapes...

Edit : i will look at trying new SECAM VCR anyway, TBC or not.
I saw a s9700ms for 320€ but no shipping, unrevised and like 1000km away.

I did some Secam-L experiments today
The gear: JVC HR S7700MS , Sony RDR HXD890
Note:This JVC vcr can output PAL

Objectives:
1-Does outputing PAL has en effect on picture quality (colors/levels) for Secam-L tapes ?
2- Is the signal TBC'd with pal output ?

Answer: YES to both. The best option seems to output PAL and activate the digital TBC. If you activate the TBC the colors will be better (very close to the original secam-L signal) and the signal TBC'd (vertical lines straighter). If you don't, it'll look discolored at times (not all frames) (although easily fixable in a good NLE) and the timing not corrected.

Also, the sony dvd recorder i use has a tbc (or frame sync whatever) and i used the filter chroma noise reduction. I could notice that without activating PAL in the vcr, the chroma noise is not reduced at all / timing not synced.

Has Anyone ever confirmed this for 8700 and 9700, they only say MESECAM does not work, they dropped the word "secam" That was present in 8600/9600 manuals from the sentence.

To answer my own question

I previously concluded it does not from the samples here

https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...html#post90491

And again, I tried a 9700MS myself and confirmed it with a couple of tapes.

The JVC 9700MS does not have a TBC for SECAM. Dropping "SECAM" from the user manual was most likely due to a blind translation from the EU manual without taking into consideration that this is French model.

With that, it is safe to say there is no Single Panasonic nor JVC in the French market with the ability to do line TBC on a direct SECAM signal.

It is possible as Themaster1 showed to use the TBC if you transcode to PAL (and degrade the quality a bit).
Another (and better IMHO) possibility is to use a VCR (output SECAM)+ an ES10/15 that will take the SECAM signal, convert it to PAL inside, and correct it. It does a great job at it.

The TBC in 9700MS obviously works fine for PAL.

The TBC in 9700MS also works for NTSC (PAL60), but it performs very poorly compared to native NTSC decks.