so it's on:
capturing some old tapes
30+ years old.
IRE is set to 0 (instead of 7.5) because the tapes are from Japan.
the VCR also happens to be from Japan,
I'm in europe...shipping can be an issue for proper NTSC equipment...
happy I found something in Europe which had already been imported from Japan.
anyway, thanks to these forums for the tip that the inbuilt TBC of the JVC VCRs
though magic in terms of getting a good picture from old tapes,
will not allow for a good capture with a Matrox MXO2,
even with the "allow capture of unstable video signals" option engaged on the matrox.
the audio will go out of sync.
a stand-alone TBC is indeed required between the VCR and the capture card.
at this time I'm using an Edirol V4 switcher for frame synchronization with good results.
the specs indicate 8bit 4:2:2 processing. The results look fine from where I sit.
The audio stays in sync.
some ghosting but I'm convinced that this is on the tapes.
I'm not sure about all the different settings for Y/C DSP, CNR etc.
tbc-DSC09788.jpg