Test of JVC Picture Modes (Norm, Edit, Soft, & Sharp)
 

Decided to do a test to see what JVC Picture Mode gives the best results. As most of you already know, most JVC VCR's made in the late '90s and early 2000's gave users at least 4 options for picture quality: Norm/Auto, Edit, Soft, and Sharp. Higher-end machines gave users more control over these options, as well as Time-Base Correction, Video Stabilization, Noise Reduction, etc. So, using a JVC HR-J692U 4 Head HiFi deck, I captured a couple clips from an old EP-mode recording of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show made on an '86 JVC VHS machine with linear audio, recorded between late 1989 and early 1990. Because the video files are too large to put up, I'm just going to include 3 screenshots of each mode, one from the live action scene, and two from the Legend of Zelda cartoon that's at the end of the tape (one is a solid yellow flash, showing the amount of chroma noise in the image, and the other a normal screenshot).

The results aren't surprising, at least to me. Sharp had the most detail displayed, but suffered from extra chroma noise and ringing artifacts. Soft had the least noise, but loses a bit of detail and the chroma bleed seems to be greater. There isn't much of a difference between Norm and Edit. Edit preserves more details, while Norm has slightly less chroma bleeding. Bitrate wise, Soft is the lowest (9.87 MB/s H.264 .mov), while Sharp has the highest (13.76 MB/s). Norm and Edit are roughly the same (12 MB/s and 13 MB/s, respectively). Norm seems to give the best balance of noise/detail for general purposes, while Sharp would be good for situations where detail is of utmost importance, while Soft seems good for multi-gen tapes, or pre-VHS HQ tapes, where there is an excessive amount of noise.

AFAIK (based on hearsay and my eyes) EDIT setting bypasses some of the internal filtering. In my opinion this test proves that once again. SHARP has some "sharp" edges but loses a bucket load of detail compared to EDIT and NORM. This is expected because for the sharpening to not make the VHS artefacts worse, it needs to be blurred to the n-th degree first. SOFT is outrageously smeared and horrible.

My conclusion, if you can, use EDIT and denoise/sharpen *after* the JVC for best preservation of detail.

Thanks for the pics. :)

NORM -- or AUTO with Calibration enabled, which isn't suggested -- filters, but retains original image clarity.
EDIT turns off all the NR filters, aside from TBC functions only.

NORM is suggested for most projects, most of the time. EDIT only as needed. :2cents:

TBC functions include a strong NR still, and it will destroy details and temporal resolution from the point of view of post processing. So even with EDIT it's not possible to have the whole cake. But if someone's doing straight to DVD/MPEG2/etc conversion (propably this is what most of the readers do) and post processing is not wanted, it's a good tradeoff.

The picture mode is just intraframe (in-frame) NR.
The TBC adds in some minor interframe (temporal) NR, but it's just a few frames in depth.

NR artifacts are mostly seen on sources that have lots of obvious motion.

SHARP is NR + badly done edge enhancements.
NORM is just NR.
SOFT is NR + narrow pixel depth blur
AUTO is still just NORM, as far as anybody's ever been able to tell.

The TBC has to buffer frames, so adding a slight temporal NR to it makes sense.

I should note that this VCR has no NR or TBC built in, at least as far as I know. There is a Video Stabilizer function, which functions sorta like a primitive TBC. This makes me wonder just what is being affected with Norm and Edit. It could be that there is no difference, and they're merely empty options merely added to fit specs. NR is automatic, is it? Most of my tapes are first gen recordings from digital SD satellite feeds, or from good-quality cable, and thusly aren't über noisy. I'll have to search for some crappy recordings or multi-gen stuff. I know I did a generation loss experiment a while ago out of boredom, which I guess might be good.

Oh, hehe. Missed that - sorry. Explains why the modes looked a lot worse than I remembered (compared to 9000+ series).

We once had a 8000 series JVC with a TBC and a Video Stabilizer. Every tape I tried looked worse with the stabilizer enabled. TBC and VS serve a different function and could not be enabled at a same time.

If your EDIT and NORM sample pictures are from the same frame, they are not identical, not even very close. EDIT has more contrast/sharpening, or less blur (difficult to tell which way around). Judging from some fine detail that doesn't seem to be possible to interpolate from the NORM version, EDIT really is closer to the source and NORM is a blurred down version of that. Not to say that EDIT wouldn't be over-processed too - but that's just JVC being JVC. ;)