Where to Repair Sony 9850 Hi8 deck and does it eliminate head switch glitch

[elandy]

Anyone know where to get this deck repaired?
Also, Anyone know if this deck eliminates the visible head switch glitch that HI-8 tapes, transferred to 8 bit uncompressed video has?
These are 4- 8 lines that show up at the bottom of the screen. For example, 3/4 Umatic VO decks show them, but BVU models do not. When I copied my HI8 tapes on a Sony GVD-800 Digital 8 Video Walkman VCRand the lines show on my computer monitor and on my ipad when I transfer them.

[NJRoadfan]

What you are seeing is normal, its head switching noise thats normally hidden in the overscan (you won't see it on a TV ever). Mask it with black if it bothers you.

[elandy]

Thank you. I am making these for computer and iPad/Pod and other progressive formats and I do see them in the ipod Touch, iPad and in the computer QT apps. I could mask them but that will reduce the picture area. Since there are 3/4 U-matic decks (the BVU series) which do not show these while the Industrial VO series do show the lines, I wondered if there is an hi-8 deck that does not show these lines, such as the 9850. (Mine is broken, but I would fix it if it hid the lines. I did not notice if it did this before it broke.) Also, I do not know where to get this deck fixed.

[2Bdecided]

There is nothing you can do about this - it is intrinsic to the format - it is not broken.

Because the heads are switching at that point (both when recording and playing) there is no clean copy of that part of the video on the tape itself. There's usually about 1-2 lines entirely trashed/missing, and the lines just after that are a mess. Those lines can sometimes be improved (still quite bad) with a TBC, and sometimes look different on different machines - but there's still a line or two that's not there at all!

This is speaking from experience with S-VHS, but most analogue video formats use the same "trick". They don't head-switch during the VBI itself because trashing the sync pulses would be far worse than trashing the (never normally seen) bottom few lines of the picture area.

Cheers,
David.

[hech54]

I could mask them but that will reduce the picture area.

VirtualDub - Border Control plugin.

[elandy]

Again, thank you. But how does the BVU U-matic recordes resolve this issue so these lines are not seen on playback? Also, if I do choose to maks the lines, how many are there? Is it the same number for the format in general?

[zoobie]

it's a uniform 8px high black line
you can zoom in a bit to remove the head-switching, too, but the line method doesn't change every pixel which reduces quality

[2Bdecided]

If it is just 8 lines, crop them off - your iPad won't care. It'll just (fractionally) letterbox the image. If your software insists on a 4x3 image, blank the bottom 8 lines and move the whole image four lines down. symmetrical letterboxing like this is less annoying that a black bar at the bottom.

Cheers,
David.