Servicing Panasonic S-VHS VCRs

[Gibson's Squares]

Is anyone in the UK still servicing S-VHS players?

I've got a UK NV-FS200 which plays tapes but with a really bad snowy picture - looks like a tracking problem but the tracking controls don't seem to solve anything.

Also got an NV-HS1000 which played for a few hours, then just randomly rewound (nb. using rewind, not picture search) my entire tape whilst the tape was still wrapped round the heads!! So scary as it was a really precious tape. Hope it's gonna be ok.

Anyone recognise these types of faults, or able to recommend someone to service the machines?

[rudolf016]

Hi, I don't live in the UK and I don't know who services Panasonic VCR today.
But I also have an NV-HS1000 and wanted to ask you if you also have the same problem like I do.
When you turn on the TBC of the VCR does the colour of the image change a little bit yellowish?

[mammo1789]

When you turn on the TBC of the VCR does the colour of the image change a little bit yellowish?

when you turn on the tbc on hs1000 i have one also ( i believe there is only European model ) the color changes not to much but it is brither than before

[rudolf016]

But the colour does change slightliy?
Is it the same with the NV.FS200?

[mammo1789]

yes it does a little, from my experience i have both and fs200 doesn't change much ( if at all if i turn tbc of or on )

[Deter]

Gibson's, bad tapes will do this to a VCR. Oxide tapes or tapes with shedding can wreck a VCR. You are going to need to do a massive head cleaning. Than test the machine out with like a new factory tape. For the cleaning would clean the heads forwards and backwards.

rudolf016 The color can change slightly even when you press stop to play, stop to play. However on older VCR's it is common for them to start to have color loss. This can be fixed by making adjustments to the circuit board (aka replacing dried out caps). Major color change with TBC on / off, you may have problems, would have to look at the machine to tell you. You can upload two pics in this post, may be able to see something....

[rudolf016]

Do you mean pics from inside the vcr or a pic of a frame with tbc off and one with tbc on?

[Deter]

pictures of the video with TBC on & off

[rudolf016]

Ok, so here the pictures. On on the bottom is the one with the TBC on. They are both the raw capture with a deinterlace filter.

[Deter]

#1 do not deinterlace an interlaced video.

#2 You need to set your VCR in edit mode on the edit/detail switch and use the sharpness slider bar to set the VCR to the levels you want.

#3 PAL tapes have a better picture than our NTSC stuff

#4 The color change is not that bad, you will find if you press stop and re-record the picture three times the color levels will be different each time. Sometimes even a break in the tape will cause a color shift or change. (I would always try to capture in 1 shot meaning never press stop and would also do more than 1 recording)

Doing 2 takes of the same video using a Panasonic:
You will get two different shifts in the color, so if it was reds in the picture, did three frames from take #1 and three frames from take #2 and did this for a minute would have all kinds of flicker.

For your pics it looks like a slight shift in the Black Levels & also Sharpness. (You don't need to get your VCR fixed for this, it is normal) If you set your sharpness levels on the VCR that problem is gone.

If the colors are flat and fading to no color, yea than you have a problem.

Lets say you have a cut in the tape which causes the recording to shift way out, than just redo it again until you get the colors to kind of match. You have a few tricks with using the VCR to get this right, it is too much to write out.

Last off you can than later make edits to how you want the colors to look, here is just a few adjustments to the bottom pic and you can see it looks different. (I didn't adjust one color setting)

[rudolf016]

Alright, thaks.

I de-interlaced the video so you can see a whole frame. I always keep a original copy for editing in the future (that's what you mean right?)


How do I know when and how much to adjust the sharpness? I never can really decide if more sharpness looks better or just different. For example at one moment I find more sharpness looks better and then the next day I find the same track looks unnatural with so much sharpness (and the noise gets sharper) so I always just left the slider in the middle..


Do you mean I should adjust the sharpness in every scene? or even more often?


Yeah, the frame does seem too look better now. What did you change with which programme? Do you think that's possible to do with the VCR settings? or can I simply just do it post capture?
And is that sort of adjustment that you did with the frame even only possible to do with a whole tape (leads back to the question of how often you think I should adjust the sharpness)?