time base correctors: what happens on jittery signals?

[nixie]

Hi gang.

I was wondering if people here could give some feedback on how their time base correctors behave on really jittery signals, such as old EP vhs tapes.

TBCs are generally made for taking out the mechanical jitter of the VCR for the purpose of making a good copy tape. Here the source tape is good quality with just some slight jitter introduced by the mechanics of the VCR.

On old jittery tapes, the TBC itself may have trouble operating properly. This can lead to various artifacts, such as dropouts that appear black or white, pixelated, funny colors, or repetition of the same last good frame for many frames, etc.

How does your particular TBC behave on really jittery signals? I'd like to know the manufacture and model and how it behaves.

Thanks.

PS: The Pioneer 510 DVD recorder itself has problems with jittery signals and blacks out. This can cause even more confusion when judging the quality of a TBC when being fed into a 510. A better way to judge the TBC is to look at its output directly with a good quality monitor (not run through any recorder)

[Capmaster]

I have a TBC-1000 standalone TBC. It does just fine even on old EP recordings. The picture quality is marginal, but the capture card seems to clean up some of it with its input noise filter. The TBC has straightened out some pretty awful, damaged tape caps over the last 2+ years.

Bottom line: No issues with old, slow recordings at all

Remember that the TBCs built into recorders and VCRs are probably not full-frame TBCs but rather line TBCs. They won't help with some tape stretch, mechanical slop or any macrovision removal. They don't act on the vertical timing, only the horizontal one line at a time. They'll clean up jagged vertical lines in the material but they won't help much with major tape curl or lip sync issues. Lip sync might be handled with a separate synchronizer if the unit has a "TBC" built-in, however. Just be aware of the difference