best dvdr for vhs transfert

[ramjam]

Hi all,

I have a ton of sport games on tape that I want to put on VHS. Mainly I’m looking for a stand-alone recorder that uses ram-disc and that can deal with old VHS tapes to provide the best reproduction.
It’s a big headache to figure out which ones do it the best. JVC or Panasonic, Pioneer… that seems a never ending debate involving too many details for my knowledge. I already own a dmr-ES10. It’s a nice machine that runs well but I would like something better for my most important tapes.
I would like to know whether I should buy an external TBC.
Has anyone had a good result with their old wrestling tapes or fast action sports?
thanks

[lordsmurf]

Wresting and sports from VHS, you need filters and an effective encoder. JVC will give the best experience. Others, not so much.

The external TBC is not going to help here, not for those two things. It may help in other areas, errors you've not considered or experienced yet, but likely will.

The ES10, however, is a great pass-through device, it fixes certain errors too, although it is a heavy filterset that can show posterizing and ghosting trails. But those side effects are still better than unstable video.

[jamiemark]

LS is right on the money. I've found myself, even with a great recorder like the JVC DRM-100S, trying to cram over 2 hours of wrestling footage (especially from older LP or EP mode tapes) on one disc is never going to look as good as you may like. For something from a sharp, clean source (like satellite), the 3 hour mode is more than acceptable. To try to fit something sports related that's anywhere from 3 to 4 hours long, I'm afraid using dual layer discs may be the only way to go. Those sure are expensive blanks though.....

[DVWannaB]

Depending on teh quality or lack thereof in your tapes I would suggest the JVC or Toshiba. The Toshiba higher models have built in TBC.

I too had a Panny ES-10 for pass-through, but I recently picked up a Toshiba DR-4 to provide the same service the ES-10 was doing and the Toshiba does a better job doing pass-through. As smurf said, the ES-10 has a tendency to sharpen too much whic causes that posterizing/ghosting effect. This happens when whether sharpen is on or off.

If your budget is restrained at this point (whose isnt) then I would say go Toshiba DR-4 or DR-5. I love the JVC, but their mahines seem to be more costly and does not compensate for proper black-level, which gives video a sort of washed-out look. Blacks or not true black and colors arent sharp.

If your budget is less than constrained, I would say get a JVC and a device to help with the black-level. A SIMA Color corrector is one such device. Or you can use the ES-10 as a pass-through to the JVC, which should restore the proper black level and brighter colors.

[ramjam]

Thank You for your informations, this is useful. I will have to check for a JVC and start to make test.

[robjv1]

I've done a lot of wrestling VHS -> DVD transfers myself and Lordsmurf is right on the money by saying (I think in a previous thread) that it's one of the most difficult things to encode. Even some of the commercial, popular wrestling DVDs released for shows from earlier then about 1997 from original master sources show problems with the image -- and these are on dual-layer, two sided discs encoded at very high rates.

I would say if your sources are fairly high quality to high quality and if you are really a stickler for quality then you should spread those three hour shows over two discs instead of one. I like the JVC for this because most tapes run about 2hrs and 40min, so you can split this and use FR80 or maybe even FR75 and fit the whole show on two discs pretty much filled all the way and waste no quailty. I used to use a LVW-5005 for these shows and record them on SP and while it looked great when nothing was happening, any super-fast movements caused the faces of the wrestlers to turn into macroblock mush. The JVC does a much better job at SP (and especially below it) at handling this type of video in my experience.

[jamiemark]

[quote="robjv1"]I've done a lot of wrestling VHS -> DVD transfers myself and Lordsmurf is right on the money by saying (I think in a previous thread) that it's one of the most difficult things to encode.

Actually, I think I said that about wrestling footage (LS gets enough props around here, LOL....). Even if someone doesn't watch/like wrestling, that kind of footage should be used to test the recording quality of any dvd recorder, just because it's so hard to get decent looking results.

[robjv1]

Sorry! I stand corrected. You're right too -- it is a good type of footage to test any DVD recorder out with. There seem to be some differences between each of them (pretty much just whatever the nature of the encoding (VBR/CBR) I imagine is the biggest factor). The Lite-On doesn't really turn the faces into macroblock mush as I said more then it almost looks like the faces seperate out and become a series of lines. You just can't even tell what you're looking at anymore, and it's VERY noticeable, where with the JVC I don't have those problems.