Of lordsmurf's list, the thrift store had Home Alone. ISBN 0-7939-1866-9 / UPC 086162186639.

I also picked up The Land Before Time, in case we want to add animation as a category. They had two tapes with near-identical covers. It took me two minutes of careful comparison before I saw the text that indicated one was a 1994 reissue. I went with the original one, of course. It's from 1991, though only the tape itself actually lists that year. ISBN 1-55880-081-6 / UPC 096898086431.

Good call. I'll see if I can find Home Alone locally first.

I have that, too. I'll go out and get it right now. (I call it "outside" but it's not. We have this big cabinet of family tapes.)

I may be able to test ATI 600, ATI AIW, Tevion cards, and JVC DVD recorders! So we can see more than just the VCRs.
First it would be through a pair of Panasonics.

___

Edit: The Land Before Time is from 1988. This is probably the first edition -- we bought it when it came out. Stuffed animals and tumblers, too!
Same ISBN, but the UPC is different: 047897808647

Missing a digit somewhere, smurfy.

Yep. Fixed it. :)

Had a busy week! I'll try to catch up with everyone on this thread soon.

Here's a list so far as to what everyone has suggested where ISBN's were provided:

• Titanic (1997) - ISBN 0-7921-5171-2 / UPC 09736-33481-39. (on way)
  
• Home Alone - ISBN 0-7939-1866-9 / UPC 086162186639. (I need to order)
  
• The Land Before Time (1988) - ISBN 1-55880-081-6 / UPC 047897808647 (I need to order)
  
• Flashdance (1983) - ISBN 0-7921-0000-X / UPC 097360145434 (received today)

Also, I am waiting for this order to come in:

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) - Has not arrived. I don't know the ISBN at this time.

Comments:

• Which tapes should we ensure we have for doing comparisons? Maybe we list them by priority? For example, if anyone must have one tape, maybe this should be: Titanic? So Titanic (1997) is priority #1 (or #0)?
  
• Let's have a variety of videos, but keep the list narrow enough to where we all can have them.
  
• Let's make sure these tapes are still available. We can't compare unless we all or a good portion of us can obtain these tapes.

Once I capture them, I have no use for them. So they can be circulated among our group easily by mail.

By the way, I intend to tabulate our capture files into a "Results Thread" and keep this one for discussion of tapes, timestamps, goals, etc. So long as that is not against the rules.

^^ Sounds like a good idea to me. I'll stop by the thrift store in town tomorrow and see what I can find.

From an exposure stance, I think Home Alone takes precedent. It has quite a few good scenes, both dark and light.
And that's what we want. I'll be popping it in soon.

I'm tempted to just run the whole movie overnight each time, so I have all the scenes and can just scrub to it.
Any objections to grabbing the whole thing?

I'd grab select scenes for others. Maybe just capture the first 10 minutes there? Land Before Time, etc.

I'm not hurting for drive space. I have several TBs open for stuff just like this. :)

Grabbing the whole tape and then scrubbing through for interesting bits was my intention for every one. Unfortunately I can't do that with my current setup due to Macrovision.

robjv1: Could you give me approximate timecodes for the Titanic shots? There were a few I couldn't find easily.

Hmm, I'm confused -- our plan is for all of us to choose an identical selection of different frames, correct?

Sure, although I thought we were skipping Titanic? All of the scenes there are within the first five minutes or so of tape #2.

We somehow or other decide upon what we are going to compare: some video scenes, some image scenes. Then we provide the necessary timecodes where they are found so that everyone can grab the exact same portion. I need the movie captured to decide on what I think would be good to suggest, first. ;)

"We" are skipping Titanic but I still wanted to check for myself.

Ahh okay, I got where you are going now. Yeah, I'm sure it'd be easy to come up with a good set of scenes to test different characteristics and qualities of the signal. I'm going to leave it to you guys to establish which scenes will be used to minimize my time spent capturing stuff.

I'd be up for a test but I'd hate to do it with Titanic, I hate that ending to that movie. How about we try it out with The Lion King? The scene I think is best to try out is the song Be Prepared. It's about over 30 minutes into the tape and has lot''s of reds, blacks, greens, and yellows. Some of my test decks could be: JVC HR S6900U, JVC HR S7100U, JVC HM DT100U, JVC HM DH30000U, Panasonic AG 1970, JVC HR S80000U, and once I get these, JVC HR S10000U and JVC SR W5U.

Awesome, looks like you found the thread haha.

Yeah I am personally neutral on the movies we use, I think it'd be a good idea to make a standardized set to work with that we've all agreed on, whatever that set might be. I'm gonna wait to contribute until we've all agreed on a solid list, but once that decision has been made, I'd be happy to get whatever tapes necessary. The MV tapes may be problematic for those without TBCs though or will at least muddle the "purity" of the comparison if a TBC or signal enhancer of some kind is needed.

I'd want to avoid anything by Lucas or Disney because of harsh anti-copy that can mess with capture. Some of them are so messed up that even a TBC can't fix it! So I don't know about using The Lion King. I have it if we must. I think The Land Before Time is a better choice.

Edit: I'm capturing Home Alone this morning on both Panasonics. :)

Let's make this our discussion thread -- and make a new just for showing results.

^^ Like that idea about the discussion/results. We'll definitely need both!

So do you guys think maybe we should all just decide on one video first, go through the whole chain of tests with that video and then move onto the next after everyone has contributed?

I just see this going all over the place otherwise with our variable collections and I'm not really keen on rooting around the thrift stores for a bunch of videos and making a bunch of captures that we may or may not use. After all of the suggestions have been made and considered, if someone wants to be appointed (or self-appointed) to compile an "official" list of videos we'll be doing, I'd be a happy man haha. ErikCalifornia has a pretty good cross-section above.

I'm going to do a thread on live-action, and one on animation.
Home Alone was captured at 352x480 (oops). I'll do it again at 720x480, then go to the other VCR. So I've started. :)

Went to another thrift store and I found another copy of Land Before Time. No case, but it says 1989 on the spine label. Still not the right one?

Some other tape was described on the packaging as being recorded in the "best quality EP mode"...