ADVC-300 suggested settings to capture live concert VHSs

[MLKLuke]

Hi guys,
I just bought ADVC-300 and I was practicing with it in these days. I have to capture some live music concert footages from early 90's to early 00's from VHS tapes that all are 1st generations copies from the masters (most of them Hi8, some VHS-C). I understand that the best thing is to adjust canopus settings case by case but I would like to know if there are some guidelines to follow or some suggestions to set the paramaters to improve and not to ruin video quality. I read that 3D NR can produce video artifacts if set at high/strong for example, and I don't know if white-black correction is ok for those kind of videos...if is better to use 3D or 2D separation (should I select both of them in the software control panel or disable one of them?!)...and what's the best setting for 3D motion

can you please give me some tips and help to find a general guideline?

thanks in advance

bye

Luca

[edDV]

Hi guys,
I just bought ADVC-300 and I was practicing with it in these days. I have to capture some live music concert footages from early 90's to early 00's from VHS tapes that all are 1st generations copies from the masters (most of them Hi8, some VHS-C). I understand that the best thing is to adjust canopus settings case by case but I would like to know if there are some guidelines to follow or some suggestions to set the paramaters to improve and not to ruin video quality. I read that 3D NR can produce video artifacts if set at high/strong for example, and I don't know if white-black correction is ok for those kind of videos...if is better to use 3D or 2D separation (should I select both of them in the software control panel or disable one of them?!)...and what's the best setting for 3D motion

can you please give me some tips and help to find a general guideline?

thanks in advance

bye

Luca

You would ideally be capturing from the first generation camera tapes. Do you know how the dubs were made? Was a TBC used?

If not, the timebase errors and increased noise are in the second gereation tapes and can't be corrected.

Best advice other than finding the original tapes is adjust the proc amp (brightness, contrast, saturation and hue) for the better picture and test noise reduction (on/off). TBC will assist second generation playback but won't correct first generation errors.

[lordsmurf]

To call whatever is in the Canopus box a TBC anyway is a bit of a stretch. Because it allows copy protection to pass, there are clearly some holes in its ability to function fully.

The VCR is usually more important, anyway.

Color correction needs to be done in a proc amp.

The processing by the ADVC-300 is too strong, really starts to add errors like banding/posterizing. Temporal compression, too.

[MLKLuke]

thanks for your answer. I was just testing the proc amp settings you mentioned, but I don't know how to use the other features of advc-300 (2D / 3D NR - 3D YC separation - 2D YC separation - 3D Motion - White/Black correction - Edge Enhancement). unfortunately the tapes I have are the best copies-sources available and I don't really know how the dubs were made for each tape, that's why I bought ADVC-300 to capture them and preserve quality

[edDV]

To call whatever is in the Canopus box a TBC anyway is a bit of a stretch. Because it allows copy protection to pass, there are clearly some holes in its ability to function fully.

The VCR is usually more important, anyway.

Color correction needs to be done in a proc amp.

The processing by the ADVC-300 is too strong, really starts to add errors like banding/posterizing. Temporal compression, too.

The ADVC-300 TBC is line only and not that good with VHS. I agree a separate proc amp would be better. But second generation VHS will be rough anyway.

[edDV]

thanks for your answer. I was just testing the proc amp settings you mentioned, but I don't know how to use the other features of advc-300 (2D / 3D NR - 3D YC separation - 2D YC separation - 3D Motion - White/Black correction - Edge Enhancement). unfortunately the tapes I have are the best copies-sources available and I don't really know how the dubs were made for each tape, that's why I bought ADVC-300 to capture them and preserve quality

VHS (unlike SVHS) has luminance bandwidth limited to 3MHz during the recording process. PAL subcarrier is up at 4.43 MHz and doesn't overlap luminance so color separation from VHS composite is easy. An advanced Y/C separator won't do much for VHS. It would help for wide band composite PAL.

2D / 3D YC separation --- not much help for VHS
2D / 3D NR are noise reduction modes --- see if it helps scene by scene
White/Black correction --- this is similar to brightness (black level) and contrast (white level).
edge enhancement --- see if it helps scene by scene

You can't correct timebase errors from the first dub process.