Help on buying a new S-VHS VCR with TBC

[Rooster667]

Hi,

I'm trying to back up old home movies (on VHS) onto DVDs without loss of quality. One particular set of tapes is giving me trouble as in some places the signal is messed up (the audio comes and goes and the video is not smooth) which causes VirtualDub to start losing loads of frames and ruins my capture. Frames are only ever dropped at these specific spots on the cassette - I never get dropped frames from TV captures.

I was hoping that this problem would be solved with a VCR with TBC but I'd like to make sure before I buy. Has anyone else had this problem and if so was it fixed with a TBC? The model I'm looking at is the JVC HR-S8965 http://www.jvc.co.uk/product.php?id=HR-S8965EK&catid=48&lid=
. I'd appreciate any feedback as to whether this VCR should give me the quality of capture I want, along with my system specs below. My current VCR has composite outputs - the JVC model has S-Video outputs.

My specs:
2.5GHz Intel
512MB RAM
An empty 40GB partition
I use a Pinnacle PVTV Rave card for capturing, using VirtualDub to capture rather than the supplied program.

Thanks


P.S. I don't expect a new VCR to magically fix the bad spots on the cassettes - I'd just like to capture whole videos in one go.

[Offroad]

I recently bought a used JVC-7600 with 2mb TBC off of eBay.

One tape I was working with had over 1000 dropped frames without it and jittery video and light flashes at times.

With the TBC turned on I have only a few dropped frames when the video just goes away completly, no jitters, no light flashes and the color is more stable and true. Just going from a non SVHS to the JVC SHVS helped a little but the biggest difference is when I turn TBC on on the JVC.

You may not be able to use TBC on all tapes but so far I have.
It was the biggest single improvement I have made in my VHS captures.
A full frame external TBC like the Datavideo is supposed to be better but I couldn't be happier with the improvements from the JVC/TBC.

Go for it, I doubt you will be dissapointed if you have some weak tapes to capture from.

[Rooster667]

Thanks for the speedy reply! I can get the VCR cheap(ish) if I order very soon, so I was just looking for a second opinion and your post's done it

I'll buy the VCR by the end of the day and post my opinions on the capture quality next week.

[Barnabas]

Rooster667,

I own a JVC HR-S9911u, also bought off eBay. It has a TBC, Digital Noise reduction, stabilizer and lots of neat features. I also have a AVT-8710 TBC that is inline, after JVC. The stabilizer alone on the JVC is worth it, as some tapes with jitters, usually ep tapes will play great on it, but shake without it.

There are a few tapes that TBC will make worse, but I did a test on a tape that was 10 years old and was a copy of a tape recorded from TV. The movie was 90 minutes. With TBC on, only 14 frames were dropped, and most of those were at the start or the end. With TBC off, after 5 minutes, more than 200 frame drops had already taken place. You can't go wrong with a TBC.

[Rooster667]

I bought the VCR for €288 last weekend and I have to say that it was well worth it. My video captures are high quality (thanks to the VCR and btwincap drivers) and smooth thanks to the inbuilt TBC.

The particular areas of video which were giving me trouble - jerky video and intermittent sound - have been corrected by the VCR.

Thanks for the advice, I should have menu-driven DVDs and a lot more shelf space within a fortnight!