Reccomendation for the Panasonic AG-1980?

[sunsetandgower]

Hi there - I am some questions in regards to the purchase of a prosumer vhs deck for a very large project I am currently underway with.

I have several hundred vcr tapes (recorded in ep mode for the most part) that I am making digital copies of. I am not converting these to dvd, I am running my vcr through a Caonpus ADVC-300 and into imovie, and then making copies that can be played through my itunes/ipod setup. The idea is to have as high quality as possible versions of what I recorded off of broadcast tv in the 80's and 90s. (none of this is available commercially on dvd and it is for my own private use).

The problem I am going to encounter is that a good amount of these tapes were recorded with a vcr that I no longer have, and there are tracking problems on quite a bit of them. What I am hoping to do is purchase a vcr unit that will help to stabilize the picture, and I am hoping will help with making the tracking issues as minimal as possible.

I don't mind spending a couple of hundred dollars on a machine that will help me with this, if indeed such a machine exists. From the research I have started doing, it sounds like this machine may be able to help me with the stabilizing of the tapes. Would anyone have an opinion as to if I am going down the right path here?

thanks!

[Deter]

I am no expert because I am trying to do the same thing. You need to talk to lord smurf cause he is the expert on this.


Every VHS tape will have different issues, I think you need a few decks for playback. You will also need other hardware to help in this process. The better you can get your playback the easier it is to work with & fix later.

You also need to check your recording/capture devise for the analog blocks in the picture, than when you capture your VHS to your computer and somehow put back on DVD, you need to check the picture and make sure it looks normal and not all computerized.

You are going to have to deal with bad broadcast signals, crappy tapes, tapes that have aged, noise in the picture. It is a hell of a lot of work.

I am at the point were I am just about sick of it to be honest. It has been like going to school and right now I am in the 4th grade...

Stabilizing the tapes is easy with the TBC, it is all the other issues.

[sunsetandgower]

Thanks for your reply!

I have a feeling that I'm not quite as picky as your are about your rips - also I'm not transferring to dvd, I am ultimately storing these in mp4 files. I will always have the vhs as source tapes.

I do indeed have several vcr's, for the tapes that have the tracking issues I have some vcrs that read then ok, and some that read them terribly. I did end up purchasing the 1980, and it should arrive I hope by the end of the week.

My tapes don't have any audio issues, the only issue I think is that for a couple of years I was recording daily on a vcr that was misaligned and didn't discover the problem until many years later when I no longer had the vcr. So, the damage unfortunately is done. But the rest of my collection is in pretty decent shape.

I don't have an actual tape count, but I wouldn't be surprised if my collection was over 1,000 tapes. I had been taping a daily show for about 20 years, plus all the other series that I used to tape as well. It's quite the collection, and realistically I dont' think that I will ever be done.

[classfour]

I've actually seen an improvement on some tapes played on my AG1980 - well above what I was seeing with the old JVC. You could tell a difference on a 50 inch plasma between DVD transfers from each.

[Bix]

The AG-1980 has done wonders with some tapes, removing weird noise and distortions that were present on all other VCRs.

The ideal situation is to have at least a AG-1980 and a higher end JVC SVHS VCR (or a JVC or Mitsubishi D-VHS VCR). Maybe also an '80s VCR with a manual tracking wheel (I never had a problem tracking anything on the Quasar I used as the player in my dubbing setup for years, which that type of tracking control). You'll cover more ground as far as tracking and such this way.

[Deter]

Good clean tapes on this machine are great. Some of the bad ones it also fixes. My tapes with major problems, this is not the machine for them.

[sunsetandgower]

I am playing the tapes on an old Sony Wega from 2003, so I wonder if that makes a difference as well in quality perception. These tapes will never be played on an HDTV of any kind. I really just want the annoying tracking lines to go away

[Deter]

Some of the other factors is how you recorded the video, what mode. What kind of blank tapes you used. For the most part I purchased the higher end blank tapes, and hardly ever recorded in SLP. However out of the massive collection that I have some did end up in SLP mode and on cheap tapes.

Cleaning ???? I do a few things.

1) I cleaned out the inside of the machine the best I could, pulling out as much dust as possible.

2 Advanced (Don't do this if you dont know what you are doing) I cleaned the heads of the VCR manually not using a cleaning tape.

3) I clean the heads on the VCR with a cleaning tape, maybe 1 time a week.
(I have two different cleaning tapes for this)

4) I dust off all the tapes and clean the outside of them really good.

5) Before I play a tape, I put it in another machine and forward the tape than rewind. I do this 2 times.

For tracking issues on the AG1980 if you press both the tracking buttons it will default back to normal. You can play with the tracking going up and down. Sometimes on the tapes the tracking gets messed up during play back or recording. I than stop the machine, pull the tape out, rewind, fix the tracking and go back to recording.

On some of my bad tapes, which have horrible tracking, this machine does not fix it. It all depends.

Like I said before about the tracking on this machine, it picks up Audio Tracking really fast, you will get the problem I wrote about above. To fix this you need to turn off both L+R channels. Now you are left with a massive hiss in the video. I only use this on recording that have really bad cracking through the entire film. If it is only like a minute. I dont care, I can fix that later. (I am not a video guy still learning but with Audio I am pretty skilled)

[sunsetandgower]

The machine has arrived, and I wanted to report in - I am just blown away here. It's like watching completely new tapes - for the most part my tracking problems have seen to have dissapeared! The color and the sound is sharp, I am so pleased I don't know where to begin. Even the most stubborn of my tapes are playing with very minimal tracking issues.

I love love love love this machine - thank you to everyone who has posted over the years recommending this, as all that reading is what convinced me to spend the money on this. It is without a doubt the most I have ever paid for a vcr, but boy does it do the trick!

[sunsetandgower]

One more question - can this machine act as a master with component video out? I have a problem here that my other vcr's do not have svideo in and I have no way to copy from one tape to another unless I am missing something here. I am able to get audio, but not video on the slave vcr.

[sunsetandgower]

Actually I got it working now - as it turns out my vhs/dvd recorder has svideo out, and between that and using my Canopus as a pass through, I can both record on vhs and capture to my computer now at the same time.

Just took a bit of time to figure things out.

[lordsmurf]

The AG-1980P doesn't have component, only BNC (composite) and s-video.

[sunsetandgower]

The AG-1980P doesn't have component, only BNC (composite) and s-video.

My bad, I meant to say composite, not component.

However I figured out how to run the S-Video through my vcr/dvd combo and into my Canopus, so everything is working properly. I absolutely love this machine, it was completely worth the money.

[Bix]

sunsetandgower:

Get this and you can take the extra machine out of the chain.

[Deter]

After I got a SVHS JVC machine the AG1980 was put on the bench.......

[classfour]

Deter: Must be a nice JVC. I replaced a JVC with the Panny AG1980 and saw a definitive improvement on the same tape. BTW: For what the Panny's are bringing on ebay - were it mine I might would sell it, LOL

[Bix]

I'm glad I bought mine before people figured out that some listings were written as being for the AG-1980P. Most prospective buyers didn't seem to realize that at the time, so I got mine for around $50-$60.

[Deter]

The AG1980, sizes the picture up different than the JVC VCR's. With the JVC machine it has a noise reducer filter, which cleans up the picture.

JVC, made a lot of VCR's, however you need to get one with a Time Base Corrector. The sound is much better, you don't get that tracking hiss you normally get on the AG1980. (Talking about the HI-FI sound)

I would say this, with the SVHS JVC player to the right recorder, you get almost DVD quality, at points it is hard to tell it was a VHS tape. With the AG1980, the picture is good, but because you have lots of noise in the picture & bleeding of the colors you can always tell the source was a VHS tape.

I wouldn't get rid of it, on some tapes this is a good machine.......

[sunsetandgower]

Just wanted to check in - I love love love this machine, it plays tapes like nothing I have ever seen.

I've re-started my project (again!) because I didn't like the quality I was getting from my rips, so I'm in a better place now.

This vcr was without a doubt - next to my new computer - the best purchase I made.

[Seeker47]

Just a couple quick comments on this. You may want to check out various posts on this general subject by Orsetto. I have no experience (so far) with the AG-1980 or top JVC models, but I would agree that a variety of different decks are best for dealing with tracking issues. Your mention of many tapes being in EP mode could be the most problematic issue, as that tends to be pretty bad quality. One of the decks I would always want to have in my roster for dealing with EP (if it was something I just had to save) would be one of the better 6-head Toshiba models.

Unfortunately, there is a huge salvage project like what you described, for a very large tape collection, that I only began a few years back, and then let lapse. I'm going to have to get back to it, but time is not an ally with this stuff.

One of the major problems I was running into, even a couple years ago, is that it's become very hard to find capable repair options for these decks any more. Even in the major cities, it seems that the places that can do this are going - going - gone. Parts may be scarce too.