Is DVR with "digital TBC" good for VHS-to-DVD?

[cosmin]

Hi,

I have a chance to convert an old VHS tape to DVD, at a near-by DVD rental shop. They say they use a regular VCR for input, and a Pioneer DVR-65H recorder to produce the DVD.

I looked at the Pioneer's specifications, and it has "Digital TBC". Does it mean what I think it means?
http://www.pioneerelectronics.ca/pna/product/detail/0,,32171715_134382244_134382262_ta...etailComponent

In other words, should I expect a better output, as opposed to using just a regular DVD recorder with no bells and whistles?

I am also curious about the comparison between the output of a digital DVD recorder (DVR), as opposed to the output of a good offline MPEG encoder such as ProCoder.

Best regards

[gshelley61]

Nearly all name brand DVD recorders have some type of built-in time base corrector (TBC) to help stabilize and correct sync timing flaws in analog videotape. In fact, all Pioneer DVD recorders have the same digital TBC circuit as the DVR-65H. That unit is simply the "Elite" version of the DVR-520H, with a bigger hard drive and nicer cosmetics.

Using high quality standalone DVD recorders to create MPEG2 video works very well... like anything else, it helps if you have the right gear and experience. Each source video usually needs some degree of tweaking to get the most out of the image and to achieve a top-notch encode.

[cosmin]

Thanks for the info.

It's good to know that DVR's have TBC circuitry. I used to think that a good way to go from VHS to DVD is via a DV camcorder with analog input, which is then captured to a computer via a FireWire, which is then converted to MPEG using a good MPEG encoder.

But regular DV camcorders don't have TBC, do they?

Which means that a direct VHS-to-DVR setup is the best, both in terms of quality, and the amount of time spent.

Is my conclusion correct?

[The_Doman]

I used to think that a good way to go from VHS to DVD is via a DV camcorder with analog input, which is then captured to a computer via a FireWire, which is then converted to MPEG using a good MPEG encoder.

But regular DV camcorders don't have TBC, do they?

Well, most of the time that will work very well.
I have a (PAL) Sony D8 camcorder and I am using that method all the time for my VHS conversions.
Most DV-camcorders with Analog-In seem to have some simple form of TBC to stabilize the incoming video signal.
It works really great for me, but the process takes some time ofcourse.

Here is a quick clip from VHS using the Analog-in of my Sony D8-TRV120.
Using Procoder with a 2passVBR 5000-7000.
Using avisynth script to black borders and do light noise reduction (DNR2).

http://rapidshare.de/files/1408974/Diesel_Creature_VHS.VOB.html
(Click on the FREE download)

[cosmin]

Nice capture, The Doman!
Here is a tip: due to how the DCT and MPEG works, if the widths/heights of black borders are multiples of 16, they are compressed to nearly nothing. I saw in your video that the top border is 15 pixels thick, while the bottom border is 17 pixels thick. You can get a little better output if you shift the whole image down by one row, before converting it to MPEG:

Crop(0, 0, 0, -1)
AddBorders(0, 1, 0, 0)

Cheers

[The_Doman]

Nice capture, The Doman!
Here is a tip: due to how the DCT and MPEG works, if the widths/heights of black borders are multiples of 16, they are compressed to nearly nothing.

Well I did keep nice multiples of 16..
I used this avisynth script to feed the (DV) video into Procoder:
#avisynth
AVISource("diesel.avi",false)
Letterbox(16,16,16,16)
dnr2(11)

When the AVS script is loaded with Virtualdub the top and bottom border are all 16 pixels wide.
But in the MPEG2 file the picture is shifted up 1 line it seems.
Intresting....