Need VCRs with video stabilizers

[Litaiff]

Hello.

Here in my town, many tapes, the vast majority I receive for digital processing, always have various problems, almost always damaged. I live in the worst location for these tapes, where besides mold, there are insects that damage the magnetic strip, not to mention the weather with the very hot and humid climate here in the Amazon region. For me, it's extremely important to have devices that correct tape faults and stabilize the video.

I have a few, and of all of them, the Philips VR788 is the best I have for stabilizing the video on damaged tapes.

I'm always looking for devices that have the same "power" to stabilize video as the Philips VR788.

If anyone knows of good devices that can do this well, please recommend them to me.


I left an example of a damaged tape that the Philips VR788 managed to stabilize and another Philips VR999 that could not. Tape was in EP mode.

[timtape]

Probably the 788 is not "correcting" or "processing" anything. It's probably just playing the tape back better, extracting better what's on the tape because it's in better condition.

The 999 probably needs a service. The picture problems look like poor tape tracking due to the VCR needing attention. You may also find that the 999 is damaging the tapes as it plays them. Digital processing cannot bring back picture or sound information which was not captured. Sometimes it can replace lost picture information with similar information from other frames but that's about all.

There is no substitute for a good playback deck in good condition.

[Litaiff]

Probably the 788 is not "correcting" or "processing" anything. It's probably just playing the tape back better, extracting better what's on the tape because it's in better condition.

The 999 probably needs a service. The picture problems look like poor tape tracking due to the VCR needing attention. You may also find that the 999 is damaging the tapes as it plays them. Digital processing cannot bring back picture or sound information which was not captured. Sometimes it can replace lost picture information with similar information from other frames but that's about all.

There is no substitute for a good playback deck in good condition.

This tape was already damaged; the owner probably tried to play it without proper treatment and damaged the sides, as shown in the photo. The only VCR I have that played it well was the Philips VR788... But I also think the VR999 isn't in very good condition. I bought it recently.


[Attachment 88006 - Click to enlarge]

[timtape]

Yes both tape edges are stretched as shown by the frilling. Stretching is normally caused by playing the tape in a machine needing attention. It leads to unreliable linear audio and picture tracking. Playing a dirty tape can also stretch it. The best chance with a stretched tape is to play it on an excellent machine. For the very best results there is a way to reduce this problem but it's normally specialist work.

[Litaiff]

Hello.

I purchased this Philips VR999 player, and it appears to be misaligned. The previous owner must have unregulated the guides roles, or the misalignment was caused by something else.

However, the VHS tapes in SP mode that I'm testing with it are misaligned at the top of the video, as shown in the photo. Even with the stabilizer on, I noticed the image shaking. These are tapes with flaws, so they require VCRs with good video stabilizers. But this player isn't working well.

When I press the tracking button marked below four times, the video stabilizes completely, but this doesn't work well on EP tapes, only with SP tapes.

What should I do now? I know I need an oscilloscope.

But would using this tactic of pressing the tracking button four times to align the video be a good option for using this player?




[Attachment 88063 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 88064 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 88065 - Click to enlarge]

[Sharc]

Before you conclude that the player is misaligned you should test it with a tape which is in good/reasonable condition.
The player will usually do autotracking. By pressing the track key repeatedly you overrule the autotracking by your manual tracking. May be necessary for really poor tapes though.
EP tapes are biests anyway. It might be difficult to find a player which will plays your poor EP tapes flawlessly .... almost a hit and miss probably.

[Litaiff]

Before you conclude that the player is misaligned you should test it with a tape which is in good/reasonable condition.
The player will usually do autotracking. By pressing the track key repeatedly you overrule the autotracking by your manual tracking. May be necessary for really poor tapes though.
EP tapes are biests anyway. It might be difficult to find a player which will plays your poor EP tapes flawlessly .... almost a hit and miss probably.

This VR999 doesn't have automatic tracking.

I left this example in a comparison video.

Notice that at the top of the video is the VR999, with me sometimes using manual tracking, pressing that button 4 times, and sometimes leaving it in normal tracking, without touching anything.
In normal tracking, the screen shakes and there are these distortions at the top.

At the bottom of the video, the VR788 does an excellent job of stabilizing the video from a bad tape.

I've already tested a tape in excellent condition, without any problems, and the VR999 still causes distortion at the top of the video, unless I press that marked tracking button four times.

Okay. What do I do now? I can't use it like this to convert tapes. But it would be a great help if this device were working normally.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-Bz-ptrB03Y3Y9k7lIY3awzcOFFbgYc

[aramkolt]

Not sure what your budget is, but some of the older/higher end VCRs that don't have auto tracking could be your friend here. These would typically be units with an actual physical potentiometer for a tracking adjustment. My guess is those tapes being as stretched as they are will confuse auto tracking and that's part of the issue here. While most machines that do have auto tracking can be taken out of that mode by pressing the channel up/down buttons on the machines or whatever the tracking adjustment buttons are assigned to, it can get kicked back into auto tracking mode without you realizing it. This usually also happens when a tape is ejected and then either the same or a different one is re-inserted.

EP tapes is your other problem since most of the high end machines I can think of with physical tracking knobs only will play SP tapes. The one that comes to mind in case you were wondering is the SVO-5600/5800 from Sony. It does have a built in TBC and proc amp, but only will play SP tapes. They also are not cheap.

Also could be that one of your machines is also causing some of those tape wrinkles too if it is misaligned enough. The gold standard would be to look at the RF envelope with an oscilloscope for ideal tracking. Also wouldn't be a bad idea to see if it'll put wrinkles into a tape that didn't have them going into the machine.

If you've tried all you can on a certain particularly bad tape, you could send it to me and I can tell you which of the variety of higher end machines I've got does the best with it. PM if interested. I've also got a VR988 to see if it does as well as yours so your sample size saying that it plays them better than average would be more than 1.

Also, most Phillips machines of that vintage are JVC clones or rebadges, so it's likely the 788 has a roughly equivalent JVC model, but could be there's a firmware change that gave it an improvement - maybe.

[Litaiff]

Thanks @aramkolt for your reply.

I have good news about the Philips VR999, which may have misaligned guides. I recently thoroughly inspected the gears; it still needed to remove some greasy debris from the guides, the underside of the head drum, rollers, etc.

Now, with tapes in SP mode, the stabilizer is practically working fine now, after the new cleaning.

Something interesting, which I hadn't noticed before, is that the right guide roller, shown in the photo, the white part, was a little stuck when it should be rotating. I added a little isopropyl alcohol, rotated it back and forth, and now it's flexible and rotating again. Could this be causing these image distortions?

Of course, I didn't change the guide alignment; I know it's calibrated to the millimeter at the factory.

The only problem now is that the tapes recorded in EP still tend to have a slight wobble at the bottom or top, but not all of them, I will test with a few more tapes.


I left two examples, of a capture of the same bad tape in SP mode and now being stabilized, and a good tape also in SP.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HIyGncBMf3tCpD9Qm_iJXmVWE-tAlNKy



[Attachment 88081 - Click to enlarge]

[timtape]

Congratulations. In cleaning the VR 999 tape path and freeing up the rotating guide you have just given the machine part of a normal service. See my post #2!

If you are dealing with tapes with more than normal dirt, mold etc you will need to be cleaning your VCR tape paths even more frequently than normal. Cleaning the full tape path thoroughly and without doing damage can take some time and careful concentration.

But you still may not have cleaned the full tape path. There is the capstan shaft and pinch roller. There is the automatic head cleaner (grey foam ring just above and to the left of the guide in your photo). In fact every part of the tape path should be checked and cleaned properly. This is not advanced VCR repairs but some of "the basics".

Why not read up from the manufacturer's Service Manual how to clean all the different parts of the tape path with the right supplies and techniques.

[Litaiff]

Thanks for your reply @timtape


All the tapes that play in my devices undergo a thorough analysis beforehand. If they have any problems with dirt, specifically fungus that penetrates the magnetic strip, I spend hours just to get the tape working properly. I don't play them in the original case; I always use a standard case that's already clean.

I'm thinking of removing this automatic head cleaner; I don't think it's useful; I usually remove it from the devices I own. I've already cleaned the other parts as much as I can; perhaps I'll take to a friend who's a technician for a thorough disassembly and cleaning of this VCR.

Another thing, I did several tests with other tapes; I left two examples on Gdrive (link below).

The only type of tape that plays normally now is a VHS tape in SP mode. Now this one plays normally after cleaning parts and unlocking that guide. The video stabilizer works perfectly now, but only on these VHS tapes in SP.

But tapes recorded in Super VHS, even in SP, and any VHS recorded in the EP system, whether small or large, experience what's shown in the video. Some EP tapes don't show this oscillation as much, either at the top or bottom, but it does appear anyways. Others VHS EP are like the video I show on Gdrive.

Question: Could this problem of oscillation of tapes recorded in EP or Super VHS be caused by the heads of this device or more likely some misalignment of the guides?





https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S-nM10rjwg8vlD4D_-29s0Iz7wrmcSQz

[Litaiff]

Hello there. I found a new problem I didn't notice before with this Philips VR999. The stereo audio isn't working properly. Sometimes, for long parts of the conversion, only the left side of the audio is captured. Something is happening during the conversion that makes the right audio disappear. I've already changed the audio cables, but it didn't work. It could also be the defective tapes causing this, but this audio failure is only occurring on this device. Any tips for solving this problem?

[timtape]

Hello there. I found a new problem I didn't notice before with this Philips VR999. The stereo audio isn't working properly. Sometimes, for long parts of the conversion, only the left side of the audio is captured. Something is happening during the conversion that makes the right audio disappear. I've already changed the audio cables, but it didn't work. It could also be the defective tapes causing this, but this audio failure is only occurring on this device. Any tips for solving this problem?

As usual please upload some sample audio, including where the audio changes.

[lordsmurf]

Also consider not posting in bold.

[rgr]

Hello there. I found a new problem I didn't notice before with this Philips VR999. The stereo audio isn't working properly. Sometimes, for long parts of the conversion, only the left side of the audio is captured. Something is happening during the conversion that makes the right audio disappear. I've already changed the audio cables, but it didn't work. It could also be the defective tapes causing this, but this audio failure is only occurring on this device. Any tips for solving this problem?

Different devices behave differently in these situations. You can try adjusting the tracking, and that's it. Until you test it on several tapes, it's hard to say for sure.

[The_Doman]

Hello there. I found a new problem I didn't notice before with this Philips VR999. The stereo audio isn't working properly. Sometimes, for long parts of the conversion, only the left side of the audio is captured. Something is happening during the conversion that makes the right audio disappear. I've already changed the audio cables, but it didn't work. It could also be the defective tapes causing this, but this audio failure is only occurring on this device. Any tips for solving this problem?

You can switch to the mono linear audio track.
If suitable, keep/copy only the good left audio track?

[Litaiff]

[Attachment 88006 - Click to enlarge][/QUOTE]


@The_Doman

This problem of not capturing audio on the right side only occurs when the tape has this problem on the sides. I believe the audio head on this device is misaligned; I'll try to align it. All other VCR models I own capture stereo audio without any issues when I play tapes like this.

[timtape]

[Attachment 88006 - Click to enlarge]

@The_Doman

This problem of not capturing audio on the right side only occurs when the tape has this problem on the sides. I believe the audio head on this device is misaligned; I'll try to align it. All other VCR models I own capture stereo audio without any issues when I play tapes like this.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the photo. With that tape stretch damage on both edges, audio capture problems, including possible picture problems, should be no surprise. Are you surprised?

It's very likely that damage was caused by playing the tape in a faulty VCR. Possibly played in multiple faulty VCR's.
The tape damage cannot be repaired.

If other undamaged tapes play audio and picture well, I would assume the AC head is already reasonably well aligned. Only align the AC head if it actually needs aligning to the standard. But special alignment of the head to this tape cannot really solve poor capture of the edge information on a tape damaged in this way.

But with special technique sometimes the audio playback can be greatly improved. The technique is not new. In principle it is quite simple. It has been used for a very long time by some advanced tape transfer engineers but has to be executed very well.

[Litaiff]

@timtape

Well, this tape with the edge defects played normally on my Philips VR788, which also has a video stabilizer. (In fact, only this model and the VR999 were able to stabilize the video) among the VCRs I own.

Therefore, the VR788 was able to play this tape without audio or video issues. But this recently acquired Philips VR999, supposedly superior, was able to faithfully reproduce the video as well, stabilizing the image. However, this audio error on the right side keeps occurring.

I still suspect the previous owner messed with it and misaligned the audio head or the guides. It would be easier to fix if it's just the audio head, right?

[The_Doman]

@timtape
Therefore, the VR788 was able to play this tape without audio or video issues. But this recently acquired Philips VR999, supposedly superior, was able to faithfully reproduce the video as well, stabilizing the image. However, this audio error on the right side keeps occurring.[/B]

I still suspect the previous owner messed with it and misaligned the audio head or the guides. It would be easier to fix if it's just the audio head, right?

You could combine the good audio and video from the 2 captures?
Depending on the stability/quality of the captures it can be easily doable or not at all.
To make it easier you can split to separate scenes/segments and process/sync them separately.

[timtape]

@timtape

Well, this tape with the edge defects played normally on my Philips VR788, which also has a video stabilizer. (In fact, only this model and the VR999 were able to stabilize the video) among the VCRs I own.

Therefore, the VR788 was able to play this tape without audio or video issues. But this recently acquired Philips VR999, supposedly superior, was able to faithfully reproduce the video as well, stabilizing the image. However, this audio error on the right side keeps occurring.

I still suspect the previous owner messed with it and misaligned the audio head or the guides. It would be easier to fix if it's just the audio head, right?

We cant hear what you are hearing which makes this even harder. I invited you to upload an audio sample. Is there a reason you cant?

"Better and worse" audio gives no useful information for diagnosis. It's hard to be sure just from just a photograph but normally a sufficiently stretched tape edge will oscillate from clear to unclear many times per minute as the sinusoidal looking stretched tape edge passes the tape gap like a fluttering butterfly, touching the head and then not touching it. The tape is supposed to touch the head constantly and intimately. So on your good machine, is the sound clear and steady or is there pulsing in it, like a fluttering sound, coming and going?

Look closely at the tape passing the head, and at the same time listen to the live sound. What do you see and hear?

But whose tapes are these? Yours or customers'?

[Litaiff]

@timtape

Oh yes, I have a sample of a capture on VR999 where the right audio fades out, leaving only a hiss. I'll remember to edit that part and post it here later.

The tapes are from customers, and as I mentioned before, 90% of the VHS tapes that arrive here are in terrible condition. There's a type of insect here in northern Brazil that feeds on the mold and damages several percent of the tape. I have to deal with this and the magnetic strip restoration almost every day.

[timtape]

@timtape

Oh yes, I have a sample of a capture on VR999 where the right audio fades out, leaving only a hiss. I'll remember to edit that part and post it here later.

OK, please upload the same tape section from both machine captures to give us at least some sort of reference point.

The tapes are from customers, and as I mentioned before, 90% of the VHS tapes that arrive here are in terrible condition. There's a type of insect here in northern Brazil that feeds on the mold and damages several percent of the tape. I have to deal with this and the magnetic strip restoration almost every day.[/B]

Yes you've explained this early in the thread. Obviously damage caused in storage in that environment is not your responsibility.

[Litaiff]

@timtape

I did it now.

Two examples. Now I don't think the audio head is causing this; it must be something else. Because these two audio samples are from the same tape. I remembered that before thoroughly cleaning the gears and parts, including the audio head, I had done a test capture. Note that the audio is normal in File 01, but in File 02, after the cleanings, the audio problem show up, starting at 20 seconds.

I also don't know if it's related, but in File 01, I captured the tape without the video transcoder connected, while in the capture of File 02, the transcoder was connected, only for the Svideo cable. But in both cases the audio cables were connected directly to the VR999, without bypassing in the transcoder.


What a bummer! Back to testing again. I really want to use this Philips VR999, but these issues aren't helping. I appreciate anyone's help in resolving this audio issue.

I have to sleep now. See you later.

[timtape]

Thanks for the audio files.

Yes this will not be the audio head. The audio head is mono only.

This sounds like a poor audio connection, possibly in the right cable, plugs or sockets. Check carefully the audio connections from the VCR to your capture device. Try a different audio cable.