Hello, just wanted to start out by saying that this forum has been a truly excellent resource for me. Thanks in advance for the sharing you've done in the past. I'm a documentary filmmaker who has to contend with VHS based source material. I've been rounding out my kit through the help of the archives here. Mostly I'm looking to digitize my output and upconvert, perhaps to HD if the source material will. Let's save the discussion of VHS to HD upconversion for another thread, please.

I recently purchased a Feral A4:2:2 unit to place inline and clean up my video signal. It is not entirely clear to me what difference the Feral made when I just played with it now [edit: ok more playing, and definitely subtle image enhancements[ hooked up behind a Panasonic AG-1980. The first question I have is whether anyone has a manual for this unit, or knows of a reasonable-priced source for a manual or a copy of one? Otherwise, would someone be willing to give a general description of the controls and operation of the Feral? I have seen them highly recommended in past threads on this forum. Mine only has TBC A on the rear panel. I was able to figure out generally how to change settings. Perhaps if I were to ask specific questions? Let's start with the serial output on the rear. Specifically what would I hook that up to, and use it for? Is it RS-232 or 422 or somesuch?

I have three recordings (who knows how many generations, at least third) on Quantegy T-160s in SP of baseball games from 1970, 1971 and 1976. These tapes have been my test case, as they all show substantial degradation of color, and one particular problem. The top maybe 1/2 inch of the screen is distorted, by that I mean it bends. I have surmised that this is a horizontal sync issue. After trying different VCRs, I have been able to pretty much solve the sync problem with the AG-1980, and TBC on. I am hoping that the Feral will give me some finer grain of improvement over aspects of my image. With TBC off on the AG-1980, I could NOT completely improve the sync issue at the top of the screen going through the Feral. I was able to slightly improve it (small black area remains in the upper left corner). I have not yet tried the Feral hooked up to any other VCR.

Here's what's in my kit.

VCRs:
Panasonic AG-7750 (bought cheap, video head kaput, nice doorstop)
Panasonic AG-1980
Panasonic AG-1830
Hitachi UX717
Hitachi VT-F999EM (NTSC/PAL/SECAM multifunction)

displays:
Dell 2405 monitor (24" monitor)
Hitachi CMT1435 (NTSC/PAL/SECAM multifunction 14" tv)

I am looking at probably adding a SignVideo DR-1000 as the final component in the chain. Looking for recommendations on alternate options, as well as a good used unit.

The audio on these recordings is far from ideal. There is a significant amount of flutter on at least two of my games mentioned above. I may have an alternate source of audio for these games. But, wondering what folks use to clean up less-than-perfect audio from VHS caps. Is there any hardware which will substantially improve the sound prior to my computer? I am not opposed to separate video and audio caps, in theory. Or is this all post-production work with software filters?

My PC won't boot from a nasty BSOD, and I'm still missing a component for my mac to capture, so screen captures not available at this time. I'd prefer to get the picture as clean as I can prior to calling on the collected wisdom here with caps anyway.

Cheers. Any help appreciated.