Does a Standards converters do the job of a TBC

[ric9887]

I have some old bad VHS video's which I am attempted to encode. I have read that TBC's can often improve wavering pictures. I have a Snell & Wilcox CVR22 standards converter, and although I do not need to actaully standards convert, I am wondering if this will perform the task of a TBC.
I do not have and can not find documentation regarding the CVR22, although I can find documentation about a CVR45 (which is similar) - which does list it as capable of TBC.
The CVR22 does allow me to control croma/luma and other picture quality things, so I can tone down the picture, but it doesnt appear to rid the picture of the wobbles.
I am wondering if a TBC inline before it hits the CVR22 would improve this, or if the VHS recordings are just so bad that they are doing TBC's as much as possible, or if the CVR22 is not touching this, and an additional box will help.

Regards
Rich

[filmboss80]

Snell & Wilcox made some very great standards converters. In general principal, the conversions themselves lay down new blanking signals and stabilized frame signals; so, yes, there are similarities to TBCs. However, I don't know if that particular standards converter will permit you to manually adjust luminance, chrominance, etc. (Do you need those features?)

Something I'm unclear on: are you converting from one standard to another, or maintaining the same standard and simply using the Snell & Wilcox unit as a TBC? I have never done the latter, and cannot say how much correction it will do if it does not have to actually convert from one video standard to another.

Regardless, some VHS tapes are so old and bad that no amount of signal processing is going to help.

[victoriabears]

Just try it, my experience is the practical sometimes confounds the theory.

[ric9887]

Thanks guys for your comments. The CVR22 does have all of those adjustments, which are a big help in balancing the picture.
I am not actually standards converting, and on some VHS tapes (through the S&W), the picture still disappears and rolls etc, and it is very hard to tell if this is simply because the tapes are just so bad - as you say.
I will experiment some more, and try to play some of the bad tapes on a TV and see how bad they look.

I believe now that it must be doing some kind of TBC job. I am encoding using a Hauppage HD-PVR (h284 hardware encoder).
When I initially tried encoding directly from the VCR, I got an audio delay in the encode.
When I encode through the CVR22, the audio delay has gone. It has been spoken about on the Hauppage forums that this unit suffers by intruducing audio delay when it loses video sync (which is what happens when the picture rolls etc. (I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explaination why this happens, but I am not sure what it is).

All in all, I think the CVR is doing a good job, and performing some kind of TBC.
I am thinking that my VCR (a Mitsubishi B82) is perhaps more sensitive to bad tape that other VCRs. Unfortunatly I stood the CVR22 on top of a Panasonic AG-W1 (which was great at playing these bad tapes), blocked its vents and I think it over heated, although it could just have been old age. The result of which turned out to be no video out any more

[lordsmurf]

No.
And yes.

The issue here is that not all TBCs are the same.
Read this: What is a TBC? Time Base Correction for Videotapes

Like a DVD recorder, some filtering may need to take place.
But how much really depends on the device.
In general, anything that "also" includes a TBC is only doing partial processing.