Update!
In the past month, between tasks, and especially with being a prisoner in my home (now in week 3 of self-quarantine to avoid the coronavirus pandemic, and many days of heavy rain), I've performed lots of TBC research. I took lots of notes, lots of sample images and clips, and will someday hopefully have time to share all of those in longer writings. But for now, here's the details.
I was able to acquire another set of PixieFS units. Unlike last time, these work.
latreche34 saw weird image issues:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post66589
So did I.
After experimentation, this appears to be directly related to the T-OUT-CVS jumper. And BTW, I have no idea what that jumper is supposed to do. It's undocumented. You can see that jumper in
latreche34's image here (middle and right), and it needs to be flipped (middle and left). dpalomaki stated that the internal jumper selected s-video/composite output, but this jumper did not have that behavior on these units. (BTW, that likely means there are multiple revisions on the unit, though I had already surmised that from other tell-tales.) Once that is switched, the image can be quite clean and nice.
Can be.
This unit hates JVC menu, which are well known to not be 100% perfect NTSC signals. This is why the "JVC menu test" is good at finding flawed Cypress TBCs (the latter era black AVT-8710 and comparable). To the untrained eye, the Pixie appears to be a flawed Cypress as well. But it's not. Yes, it has issues with signal imperfection, and even apparent frame sticking under certain condition.
I've not detected any missing, stuck, or repeated frames as you'll see with the bad Cypress, on the actual converted footage. Only on the JVC menus, and FF/REW-while-playing operations. And that would make some sense, because it uses "green" era Cypress chips. My hypothesis is that the PixieFS is badly reverse-engineered Cypress TBC, at least at the core.
At the same time, it's not a weaker TBC like the TBC-5000, which is seemingly for the same audience (non-VHS conversion). It can be, but it's really more about the source quality and the VCR/camera model in the workflow. With some hardware, it's terrible. With others, it's quite adequate, and quite strong.
Strong, you ask? This TBC tries to do too much. It's obviously meant for non-consumer sources, not VHS or Video8/Hi8. And given the price and marketing, this makes sense. In addition to doing frame level timebase correction, it seems to attempt some sort of line correction. And it does so quite badly. So bad, in fact, that under certain conditions, it conflicts with the line TBC in the VCR, and that's what results in the frame sticking. In my ugliest line TBC tests, the Pixie actually scored well for the attempt, but the actual converted footage was still unwatchable. That same test scores AND views well ONLY with the ES10/15. The Pixie attempt scored better than the AG-1980P by itself.
With my full-tape test, I even saw small signs of temporal NR, using a Panasonic with the TBC off. Interesting.
If you
- can find a bargain on this unit ($X00s max, understanding that recommended TBCs are all now 2x+ that cost)
- have non-JVC gear like the Panasonic AG-1980P or a Hi8/D8 camera
- have retail or master (not copies) source tapes
- and only have a small collection of tapes
then this can work for you. It can be a bargain that suffices for your small project.
I still don't recommend it as a general good-for-everybody TBC. But I'd nod my head in understanding if it was used in the above scenario, similar to how I nod in understand for NTSC Mac users that use Canopus DV boxes. It's not best, but it can function in some narrow situations.
Right now,
in the marketplace subforum, I'm selling both of my units.
Since there are multiple revisions of this unit, with most of them being highly suspected to use the flawed "black" Cypress chipsets, I would urge you to avoid randomly buying this from eBay or wherever. Odds are you'll get screwed with a lemon. Definitely lose time, lots of headaches/grief. Maybe lose money.
Again, not recommended. On the digitalFAQ.com class scoring, 1st/2nd/3rd/4th, this unit gets a 3rd at best (my in-hand units), and 4th at worst (the "black" chipped units).
The saddest part is that the unit is clean, the transparency is essentially perfect. The passed signal from my Panasonic AG-1980P is immaculate, and puts almost all other TBCs to shame, including the "green" Cypress and most DataVideos. And that's a real shame. Yet another analog video device that failed to live up to promises or expectations, but got so close.
The contrast/color/brightness is also nice on this pair, on par with other good Cypress.
So, there you go, a thorough review of units.