LOL! I'm keeping that bit about the shoes, saving it for the right moment.

Thanks guys!

I've also checked the health tab on both HDDs multiple times and they all showed up with a white line with "ok" at the end so I don't believe it's the hdd. I've also touched the HDDs (just to make sure there's no clicking) and have been able to do it for minutes without discomfort.

I only have the example of the ADVC110 to demonstrate the computer/hdd does not normally drop frames. I've sold ADVC110 and was happy to sell it as it's flawed as per Lordsmurf.

I'll recompile my notes on an excel sheet and upload when I get the chance. Damn Averlogic... Do we know approximately from which year they replaced IC3&4? Is there a reason why one AVT (newest batch black model with Chinese characters instead of "LBT") wouldn't drop frames but the other two would? Is that from a different IC# or is it still dependent on the Averlogic?

According to njroadfan and lordsmurf's older AVTs, the JVC screen shouldn't flicker but should show clean. My AVTs all flicker. They also shouldn't freeze frames/fields but should show color bars if dropped or move onto the next field/frame. Mine are unfortunately freezing on certain spots

I just finished testing out the 3rd new AVT-8710 and it dropped frames as well as freeze fields/frames. Also retested the one AVT that didn't drop frames on the previous test and that started to add the initial 1 dropped frame in the beginning as well.

I know definitively it's not the hdd because I've also ran test captures without the AVT-8710 and it did not have the mandatory 1 dropped frame at the beginning with all four of the current AVTs in my possession (which I'm going to promptly return).

I do have one part about the full field TBC I'm still a little fuzzy on.

Lordsmurf mentioned that the ADVC is nothing more than an overhyped frame synchronizer. My (limited) understanding of a full frame TBC is that it provides clean full frame timing. How are the two nuanced differently?

Latest addition to the list:
-B&H black/black AVT-8710:
Serial# 2 238406 027101
IC6 - (Chinese characters) v2.2 2218-0C22
IC2 - Altera EPM3064A
TC44-10N
S HCC77
1319A
IC1 - Trident SAA7114H
IC3 & IC4 - AVERLOGIC
AL440B-24-PBF
IC5 - Trident SAA7129AH
(Dropped frame)

The first 30 seconds or so of the beginning and end of a tape are the most stressed because of the rewind/fast forwarding of the VCR putting the most stress on these sections of tape. This is why commercial tapes not only have a black runoff section before the FBI warning, but also one of the reasons why previews on a tape actually help maintain the integrity of the main title.

If you are capturing and get a dropped or inserted frame on the VCR screen/color bars/beginning or end of tape, its not the end of the world, nor is a one-off sign of a bad piece of hardware.

Capture a whole tape with each before you discount the lot.

Thank you premiumcapture.

I have captured that whole tape before I received the AVT-8710 with just the panny's line TBC and had 0 dropped frames. It's interesting the hdd and computer was put in doubt before the AVTs with the Averlogic chips. Without fail at the minimum on every capture, the very first frame is dropped on all captures with the Averlogic chip AVTs in the line. I just did another test last night as per above and I saw 0 dropped frames. My hdds all show healthy. This would seem to point to only one place.

So, we have the following:
-No dropped frames without AVT (with Averlogic chip)
-no dropped frames with ADVC110 (a frame synchronizer in DV)
-prerequisite first dropped frame with the above mentioned AVT
-frozen frames/fields kept at longer than a second with the newer AVTs
-no frozen frames/fields without the newer AVTs
-newer AVTs having failed the JVC menu screen as it constantly freezes frames/fields there as well
-no errors or warnings on hdd nor is it running hot
-no other software being run while virtualdub is running

I'm still confused about the below nuance:
"Lordsmurf mentioned that the ADVC is nothing more than an overhyped frame synchronizer. My (limited) understanding of a full frame TBC is that it provides clean full frame timing. How are the two nuanced differently?"

You have two items:
- a frame sync
- a frame sync TBC

They're not the same. ;)

Hi Lordsmurf,

As promised, please find the spreadsheet attached below
Attachment 4308

After returning all of the AVT-8710s, I was able to find another green/black AVT-8710 not too long ago (took a long time to find one). The model on that shows it's 2 years older than the first one I've picked up. It uses the KOL chips and delivered different results as expected. When I ran the same tape through the Panny without it's line TBC but put it through the AVT-8710, it did not produce ghosting like the previous 2007 green one did. It also did not drop frames every time (didn't suspect hard drive error due to drop frames not occurring prior to the AVT-8710s I had before). However, it does drop frames 7 out of 10 times at the very beginning which is fine. It also passed the JVC menu test. The blue blank screen looks perfect as well as the menu pages. I hope this information helps anyone looking for a proper AVT-8710 unit as this definitively confirms that not all green AVT-8710s are created the same. Without knowing Lordsmurf's AVT unit, I'd say it's from 2005 (or late 2004).
I've also noticed the 2005 AVT-8710 I have doesn't produce as brighter a picture as my previous 2007 after reseting the unit which was interesting. I'm wondering if each unit resets to a different level or if it's only units after a certain serial number.

On a different note, I've been capturing Hi8 tapes using a Sony DCR-TRV520 following the same procedure (VTR->AVT-8710->ATI card->Huffyuv) and settings as my VHS tapes. It seems the DCR models signifies it records DV and CCD models records analog. If I use a DCR-TRV520 just for playback purposes and use SVideo out and Audio out from it, am I safe or does it convert to DV and reconvert to SVideo/Audio analog mucking up my image? Is there a better player I should be looking for? Also, am I assuming properly to use the same set up as VHS for Hi8 tapes?

Thanks!

Hi,

Close to a week and haven't heard a response for the above queries.

In the meantime, I've been working out my other problem in regards to capturing through my second hdd. It turns out it's not due to the hdd itself as I've suspected. It's from the IDE cable type that came with my computer. My primary IDE controller had the 80 conductor IDE cable (only open slot for the main hdd) but my secondary controller had a 40 conductor cable plugged in. When I swapped the 40 conductor with the 80 and changed all the jumpers to cable select instead of master/slave, it worked as expected. Hope this helps anyone looking to purchase a computer hooked up with IDE HDDs.

Thanks for your work on the AVT, should prove useful. The worksheet .xlsx is incompatible with earlier versions of Office, so took a few days for me convert it on another PC to a version of Office designed for Earthlings.
:wink2:

My AVT-8710 is from 2004. It resets only when I tell it to.

Someone familiar with your camera will have to answer that, But I thought the output from a DV camera was digital and should be capped via Firewire to DV. I don't want to guess about that, but anyone can tell you this about setup for VHS vs DV: every source is different, regardless of format. Treat each source individually.

Makes sense to me. I didn't know IDE drives would even work with the wrong cable.

Thanks Sanlyn,

Sorry about the conversion issue. I know the feeling as I'm using XP at work.

All of my AVTs reset when I tell it to but the latest one I have seems to reset at slightly different levels than the others. I was wondering if each AVT had a slightly different baseline reset level.

My DCR has a SVideo out so I've been using that, not FireWire. I was wondering if I'm safe using that camcorder or if I should be looking for a CCD model instead. Also, if different workflows for different sources, do I need to use a different set up for Hi8? The AVT/ATI/XP//Virtualdub/Huffyuv set up doesn't work best with that source?

IDE 40 and 80 conductors both fit in IDE motherboards as they're 40 pin. It seems the 80 conductor increases the speed performance and 80 conductor universally accepts cable select. I believe all IDE drives work with both but upgrading all cables to the 80 conductor would be ideal. Good thing they're not expensive

Yes, thank you, vhsdigital34! I can't believe you really bought and returned that many, but I appreciate your research on this. I've found my own green AVT is useless for dealing with Macrovision tapes because it turns the picture into a bright, blooming mess but I appear to be alone with that issue. And MV is the only reason I bought it...

Is the spreadsheet supposed to have columns? Google Sheets doesn't seem to open it properly.

Questions like these always amuse me, because if you personally can't tell the difference when watching, does it matter? :)

If you want to attach a 5-sec sample, I can tell you whether it has any evidence of any DV compression artifacts.

I would have thought the TBC in the camcorder eliminates the need for the AVT-8710, but lordsmurf said otherwise in a recent post:
I would still take it out of the chain and see whether you get drops with your own cam and tapes. There is no reason to change the rest of the setup though.

Hi msgohan,

Sorry about the .XLSX. It's all in column A. I've listed them in chronological order.

I'm still a noob so just because I don't notice it doesn't mean it's good. I'm ultimately trying to future proof my old tapes so I'd like to get it right before the days of TVs being 110 inches on average (or the wall) doesn't mess with things.

I'm not sure if this model even has TBC. I wasn't sure if using S-Video and Analog audio outputs whether the DV or TBC would kick in or if it outputs an untouched analog signal. I appreciate the offer for checking my samples but I'm having a hard time logging in through FTP. Once that's taken care of, I'll upload them. I say them because I captured two sets of the same footage. One with AVT and one without of the same scene.

Thanks again!!

If it has TBC, there will be an option in the menu to switch it on/off. See page 80 of the DCR-TRV480 manual, for example. Just google the PDF manual for your cam and CTRL+F for "TBC".

I suggested a 5-sec sample because it would be well under the 32MB forum attachment limit, and more time from the same scene probably wouldn't add any additional info.

Thank you very much msgohan! Had no idea that can be toggled on/off like that. So I should make sure TBC is on and DNR is off, correct? I'll check it once I get home.

The reason why I captured more was because I wanted to get past the initial jitters which lasts around 5 seconds of capture.

Sorry about the late reply but I'm still waiting for the FTP access. Hoping now that we've passed the holiday season we can move forward with this project.

The camcorder did have an off/on switch!

Just tried installing GOM player on a new computer to view the footage but noticed with the new versions it was having difficulty. There is a simple way to resolve this with perfect (better than VLC) results (maybe this was why people thought Gom wasn't good for this).
Here are the steps:
1) if already have GOM player, uninstall and reboot to get rid of all of the files
2) install the current version of GOM player
3) install FFDSHOW Codec from the link below:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/files/

You'll notice it does a fantastic job playing interlaced huffyuv. Love it.

Hope this helps!!

I've PMd the FTP details.

Hm. Interesting. Last I saw, GOM had been going down in quality these past few years. It was always a 3rd-best player. VLC used to be best, but has gotten more quirks as time goes by. MPC is proving to be the best media player these days.

Nice to see others' research on players. :)

Thank you admin!
I'll check out MPC but so far compared to VLC at least, I don't see nearly as much scanlines. Playback is also smoother.

Hi msgohan/Lordsmurf,

I've uploaded 4 different capture files of the same footage to show the difference between having AVT8710 and having DNR on and off. TBC on the Sony DCRTRV520 camcorder was kept on for all four. Please let me know which produces the most faithful to the tape. I've immediately noticed taking the AVT out on these captures creates continuous jitter on Virtualdub. Thank you very much!!

-DNR on, with AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...NR_AVT_VTR.avi
-DNR off, with AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...NR_AVT_VTR.avi
-DNR on, without AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita..._NoAVT_VTR.avi
-DNR off, without AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita..._NoAVT_VTR.avi

Apparently the AVT and your DNR don't make nice together. This happens sometimes. I'd say the line tbc and the mild DNR in your player are more important, if you had to eliminate the AVT to get a stable image. The images with DNR on and NoAVT have less mosquito noise on contrasty edges and less noise in dark areas. Images with the AVT have a slightly higher gamma than with no AVT.

Otherwise there is so much disturbed camera movement it's difficult to say much more.
:hmm:

Thank you sanlyn,

The problem with that is, without the AVT, virtualdub shows dropped frame as well as constant jitter so taking out the AVT wouldn't be too good (unless there's a workaround or those values don't matter). These are old home videos with heavy camcorders so it's pretty tough finding any footage that's stable. I've found a portion that's relatively stable and have captured just as the above but am having issues getting into FTP again. Once I get FTP access I'll post them here. Thanks again!!

For this specific case, then, I'd have to say that since your DNR is apparently mild and not doing that much, turn it off and insert the AVT. Your DNR might be having trouble with that tape or is outputting something that gets the AVT very upset. Hardware noise reduction is a good thing (it's OK on my AG1980) but those circuits can't be expected to solve noise problems as thoroughly as many Avisynth or VirtualDub filters -- which for many tapes will often be needed anyway. Really tough noise problems require strong multistage filters that are very slow, much too slow to run during capture.

Hi Lordsmurf/msgohan/sanlyn,

Here's a new set with less jerky movement. TBC on the Sony DCRTRV520 camcorder was kept on for all four. Please let me know which produces the most faithful to the tape. Taking the AVT out on these captures creates continuous jitter as well as dropped frames on Virtualdub. Thank you very much!!

-DNR on, with AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi
-DNR off, with AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi
-DNR on, without AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi
-DNR off, without AVT:
http://cdn4.digitalfaq.com/vhsdigita...R_DCRTRV52.avi

You seem to have some seriously damaged tapes. The last 4 captures, like previous batches, each have different results. One of them disputes the theory that the AVT is causing bright top-border flashing -- in this last group, the only top flashing that occurs is in the capture that has NoNDR and NoAVT.

You appear to have tape damage at about 400 frames into each capture. This bad spot plays with different defects in every setup, including one or more frame hops in all 4 captures. The capture that plays this damage most steadily had DNR and AVT both turned on. The others had multiple hops and/or reversed fields on one or more frames.

The link to Frame_Demo_5fps.mp4 (https://www.mediafire.com/?bv9ely92u61pbuq, 54MB, no popup ads) plays the same segment from each capture, starting with the first non-disturbed frame in each capture. There are 4 segments separated by 1/2 second of black frames. Each segment is played twice before moving to the next segment. The frames are deinterlaced to study motion and noise field-by-field. Frame motion is slowed to 5 fps. The segments are played and identified in this order:
DNR AVT
NoDNR AVT
DNR NoAVT
NoDNR NoAVT

The link to STARTUP_NoDNR_NoAVT_1fps.mp4 (https://www.mediafire.com/?18sb9my7tzf8cka, 6.3 MB, no popup ads) is deinterlaced playback of even and odd frames from the startup noise of the "NoDNR_NoAVT" capture. You will see one bright flash and two instances of field reversal during play. The video plays at 1 fps. I'm not certain about the purpose of all the startup noise in these captures -- maybe I missed the explanation somewhere along the way.

While it's true that analog tape never plays back exactly the same way twice, this is pushing the issue past normal. Either these tapes are in horrible condition, or your players need service and adjustment, or both. I don't think the AVT's can be blamed for every possible capture problem, especially when the problems occur without an AVT in the circuit. Of course, every component can develop problems, no doubting that. I've had my AVT since 2004 and haven't encountered the problems I see here, but I have seen problems like this with poorly adjusted players and wrecked tape.

-- merged --

Sorry to see these problems keep popping up. Have you had any of your tape players inspected by pro shop? Cameras tend to be somewhat lightweight tracking device, but there are many variations among models. Didn't you also have a VCR with tbc built in?

-- merged --

Oh, well, this morning the 1fps demo plays differently on every media player. No surprise. There are better ways of doing this sort of thing, but I don't have time right now. Anyway I think it demos the field and frame oddities I'm seeing in those noisy intro frames.

Gotta love software players. :laugh:

Can't say I blame the players as my much as my own careless encoding, set up with a haywire GOP size and frame sequence that didn't translate well as 1fps. 5fps works better at valid GOP sizes and a different frame structure, so the linked video should work. It's a slightly abbreviated look at field-by-field play in the noisy startup section of the NoDNR_NoAVT sample. Two instances of filed reversal (one near the start, one near the end) and a bright luma-blazing flash in just about the middle. I think there might be 3 field reverses instead of 2, but I got tired of watching it.

STARTUP_NoDNR_NoAVT_5fps.mp4, 8.1MB
https://www.mediafire.com/?hlnsvfzd0vb292v

There is no DV conversion happening. There are no DCT compression artifacts.

That said, the video in your captures is oversharpened. Assuming you have Sharpness at 0 on the ATI 600, you may want to look into a different camera after all.

@sanlyn: I've attached your files to the forum. We increased attachments to 99mb max yesterday. :)

Thank you, lordsmurf. I had been getting odd errors trying to attach small jpg files lately, but I guess that was part of the forum revamp.

Thanks sanlyn/msgohan!!

The odd/even videos are really cool (how do you create one?)! Is the hop during regular playback caused by the field reversals (I'm assuming field reversal is when the fuzzy lines stay from top to top or bottom to bottom instead of alternating)? Why does the bright luma flash happen in the middle? I didn't put the start up noise in there on purpose. Is there a way to capture without them or is that just plain damaged tape?

I do have a VCR but I've started to capture my Video8/Hi8 tapes off of my camcorder (our old Sony DCRTRV520 my parents used).

I haven't touched any of the sharpening tools (I have an ATI VE 7500 PCI card) nor do I know how on the card. Should I go with DNR on and AVT on or DNR off with AVT on? I think the camcorder can also adjust sharpness but doesn't tell me what the default setting is. Given this info, should I go this route? If I purchase another camcorder, which should I shoot for? Is there a Hi8/Video8 to VCR converter (Much like a microSD to SD converter)? Is that a better option?

Thanks guys! This is really informative/cool!!

Don't sharpen analog tape, especially home-made, and especially damaged tape. You'll be sorry you did. There are better sharpeners and denoisers in post-processing. Denoising with a capture card during processing is too slow for real-time capture and simply blurs everyrthing., considering what your. The only VCR with decent denoising (not that it's a complete denoiser) that doesn't smear or blur motion is in the Panasonic AG-1980, AFAIK.*

*But I had a couple of noisy, badly made retail tapes where built-in DNR created posterizing effects ("clay-face") in the results. I had to forego the AG-1980 and use one of my old Pansonic SVHS players that didn't have denoising or tbc, so I used a Panasonic ES15 for tbc pass-thru and to defeat Macrovision. The caps required other repair besides denosing, so I did all that in post-processing. Thus, an example of the same tape getting better results with another player. That particular problem didn't exist on other tapes with the AG-1980 -- it's just the oddball character of the noise on those couple of goofy tapes themselves.

The bright flashes might be caused by playback signal errors making your camera think it was seeing copy protection, which itself is a series of imbedded signal errors applied on purpose. The field reversal is playback field timing errors interpreted digitally. As was said earlier, digital processors don't see analog tape the way your TV does. Line level and frame level tbc's are designed to prevent those errors. However two line tbc's and/or two frame tbc's in combo can be problematic -- in some cases one will simply ignore the other, in other cases one will get thrown off and create problems.

Members of the forum are constantly advising people to use good equipment -- not necessarily the most expensive but at least in good working order. Your ATI card would be the best capture device for analog tape to lossslessly compressed AVI, especially since the tapes obviously need post-processing work. I'm not an expert in playing VHC-C tapes, but it looks as if your camera isn't playing them well. I've seen other members advise on playing those tapes, so hopefully others will chime in.

If capturing to DV is your only option or out of the budget, then so be it -- analog-to-DV can always be cleaned up to look better, even if it is a pain in the neck. Meanwhile the AVT seems to be working OK, though you'll notice that it does raise gamma a bit, but that can be corrected with VirtualDub capture using brightness and contrast filters (which are usually the only capture-time filters you should use). VirtualDub doesn't use it's own filters for that, it hooks into the filters in ATI's capture software.

The frame-stop clips were made by deinterlacing with QTGMC in Avisynth and using Virtualdub output to set the frame rate. But this didn't work for the 1fps demo: I had to make 5 copies of each frame in Avisynth and output the results at 1fps. The output of both clips was encoded to mp4 with TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works. Deinterlacing demonstrated how each field was being played differently and where the field reversals occurred.

To show you the kind of stuff you can use in Avisynth to get that pesky 1fps demo:

The first step was to trim only the first 72 frames of the sample clip. Your original sample clip was earlier recompressd with Lagarith from huffyuv (your version of huffyuv would open only using DirecTShow plugins with ffdshow on my machine) :

I then made 4 copies of the "2A" file using plain old "Copy"+"Paste" and renamed them "2B", "2C", etc., for a total of 5 exact copies. Then I wrote another script to interleave each frame from each copy of the video into a new video that could be encoded at 1fps:

The "Interleave" would join frame 0 of 2A, frame 0 of 2B, frame 0 of 2C, frame 0 of 2D, and frame 0 of 2E in sequence, then join frame 1 of each input file in sequence, then frame 2 of each file, etc., etc. These scripts worked with lossless Lagarith media, so nothing was re-encoded at any step.

If you view the 1fps mp4 one frame at a time, you'll see that here are 5 copies of each frame. You'll also see that some odd/even frames are duplicate fields. I suppose there are other ways it could be done. These scripts were improvised quickly. Each script took about 5 seconds or less to run.

Thanks Sanlyn! That's awesome!
Just checked again on my camcorder. It looks like it doesn't have an option to sharpen

Is there any recommendations for a camcorder for capturing Hi8/Video8 tapes through SVideo?

-- merged --

Does anyone have a camcorder/player model to recommend Huffyuv Hi8/Video8 capture?

-- merged --

Am I not getting a response because I didn't start a separate thread?

Look at this thread: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...cr-buying.html

It starts out being about Betamax, but quickly turns into a Hi/Video8 topic as well.

Personally, I find most Hi8 cameras from Sony to be perfectly fine, stereo or not. Remember that "stereo" camcorders are still recording from a single location, so it's not truly stereo anyway. The bigger issue is the cameras cleanliness and alignment -- that can be more elusive. Lots of old Hi8 cameras have alignment issues there days.

Thank you lordsmurf!

Does anyone know what the "edit" function on a Sony hi8/video8 camcorder does? Only gives the choice of on or off and states "to minimize picture deterioration when dubbing". What is it doing and should I turn this on or off when capturing through SVideo? I can't seem to find any further literature on this. Thanks!!

On most players and camcorder outputs, the "Edit" setting disables processing such a dnr, etc., and sends the unaltered signal to output.

Thank you sanlyn. Does turning edit on turn off the TBC? If not, is it best to keep edit on if not using DNR?

In the case of JVC VCRs, the 'edit' setting is not suggested. That ruins the point of owning the JVC S-VHS VCRs.
Same goes for the TBC.
It really just depends on how that video camera behaves.

Why do you ask? What are you observing?

Thank you Lordsmurf. Was asking because couldn't find much info beyond "to minimize picture deterioration when dubbing". If it turns off the TBC on the camcorder I agree edit should stay off. Thanks again!

Nope. Sorry, I beg to differ. The "EDIT" mode on JVC SVHS VCR's has nothing to do with enable/disable TBC or enable/disable DNR. All other JVC "Picture" modes will give you an image that makes retail SP tapes look as soft, blurry, and unwatchable as EP tapes played on a typical JVC. But if the tbc is turned on in those modes, at least the side borders will be steady in the capture.

I'd like to say something though, to questions such as posed here about tbc or dnr turned off/on, EDIT/AUTO/SOFT/SHARP turned on/off, etc.. If you can't see well enough to recognize that a tbc or dnr circuit or other setting isn't having any effect at all, you should be sending your sources to a professional instead of wasting your time and money. Seriously. The effects of line-tbc stabilization on a good VCR are as easy to spot as the appearance of a great many disturbances that occur when a tbc is not working. It would be nice if we had a sticky around here that shows examples of overdone/underdone VCR processing with various picture modes, examples of tbc on/off, DigitalR3 on/off, and all that, sharpen on/off/high/low/default, etc. The difference between these modes and settings is anything but subtle.

Try a short capture with your camera's "EDIT" turned off, then capture the same scenes with it turned on. If you can't see any differences, then submit samples of each and we'll help teach you to recognize the difference. I don't think many here are quite sure whether "EDIT" mode on your camera affects tbc or not, but I don't see why it should. How to find out? Make comparison captures and watch them.

Hi Sanlyn,

I'm with you that a sticky should exist with examples of differences shown. I can see differences of TBC on and off. Sharp/soft is obvious as well (if you can turn it on or off which my previous camcorder did not have). When it just says Edit or Auto without much description as to what it means (could be anything), it's not as easy to pinpoint what to look out for especially when looking at it for the first time)

My question wasn't with JVC VCRs, my question was specific to the Sony camcorders that are recommended for capturing Hi8/Video8 tapes. I'm in between camcorders as the one I've purchased was not as described. I was doing my homework in the meantime going through the manual and noticed "edit" with the description I've provided above. I am not going to a professional at this point after I've gotten this far... My question was more for those who've used the Sony camcorders for Hi8/Video8 capture who would have knowledge of the desirable/undesirable effects of turning this on and off. I obviously can't provide screen shots of that and probably not for a while (somehow shipping takes forever with the current purchase). Again, as described on my original post about this edit feature, I was asking around since there's no literature on it.

If anyone who's had experience capturing with Sony camcorders (I'm assuming there are many) can provide some insight I'd be much obliged. If not, we can go the capture screen shots route to compare.

@vhdigital43: I've been gathering samples for this very thing. :)

@sanlyn: I've started to dislike the JVC term "DNR". It's too confusing.

DNR stands for "digital noise reduction". Have you ever seen analog noise reduction? I haven't. I'm not even sure that such a beast exists. All noise reduction (NR) is digital. So "DNR" is redundant. It's like a "PDF document" (portable document format document!)

Too many have confused "DNR" to mean that a JVC VCR only has NR when the "DNR/TBC" is enabled.

With a JVC, the TBC enables some NR. It's not separate. But the other filters on the deck are still NR! The "picture modes" (also a somewhat dumb descriptor) are a type of NR. All the different NR's on the S-VHS VCRs are why you own S-VHS VCRs. It's not *just* the TBC. It's everything, from the superior transports to the various NR circuits. And yes, the TBC.

Some tapes will look better on 'EDIT' mode (the picture mode NR = off), but most look best with 'NORM'.

On NORM, the picture mode does NOT affect clarity as it does with either 'SOFT' or 'SHARP', but simply applies an intraframe NR. I need to doublecheck myself, but I believe the TBC applies a tiny fractional interframe NR (hence all the accusations of a TBC making footage blurry). I may have those flipped. Either way, the 'Norm' NR doesn't affect the resolution.