AG-1980P S-VHS Recording — Best Tape Prep, Tracking & Picture Quality?

[howardxt225]

Hey everyone, I'm looking for some advice from people who have experience making high-quality VHS and S-VHS recordings, especially using older factory-sealed tapes.

I'm working on a personal collection of around 70 movie recordings. My goal is to achieve better picture quality, cleaner playback, and more consistent tracking than commercially prerecorded VHS tapes. I'm not trying to create that intentionally degraded VHS look. I'm trying to get the absolute best recording quality the format can deliver.

**My equipment:**
- Panasonic AG-1980P, fully serviced, with another completely rebuilt unit on the way
- Sony DVP-NS315 DVD player
- Sony KV-27S42 CRT television
- JVC JX-S555 S-Video switcher
- VHS Is Life tape cleaning and winding machine

I'll be recording directly from the Sony DVD player into the AG-1980P through S-Video, using S-VHS SP mode and Hi-Fi stereo audio.

**I recently purchased two batches of sealed professional S-VHS tapes:**
- 11 Ampex 289 Master Broadcast S-VHS ST-120
- 10 Fujifilm H471S Master Quality S-VHS ST-120

I haven't tested either batch yet.

Here's my biggest concern. I've had terrible experiences with older factory-sealed VHS tapes. Almost every sealed tape I've played has initially had horrible tracking and unstable picture quality. Some were practically unwatchable.

This has happened on my serviced AG-1980P and other VCRs I've tested. What's interesting is that after approximately four complete passes and rewinds, the playback often improves considerably.

I'm wondering whether decades of sitting untouched might be affecting the tape pack, tension, or friction.

**My idea for tape preparation:**

I own a VHS Is Life cleaning/winding machine. I'm considering running the sealed blanks through it at a very slow speed before recording. No alcohol, water, or cleaning chemicals. I wouldn't even use cleaning cloths unless contamination was present.

The idea is simply to slowly exercise the tape and improve the tape pack before recording.

I would compare untreated tapes against tapes that received this preparation to see whether it makes any measurable difference.

**My questions for experienced VHS/S-VHS recordists:**

1. Have you had similar problems with decades-old factory-sealed blanks? Did exercising or repacking them help?
2. What preparation methods have actually worked for you before recording?
3. Have you used Ampex 289 or Fujifilm H471S recently? How well did they record?
4. Which S-VHS tape brands or formulations have given you the most consistently excellent results?
5. Are there particular AG-1980P recording settings, DVD source-preparation techniques, or other adjustments that made a substantial improvement?
6. What was your biggest Eureka moment when trying to achieve the best possible picture quality and tracking stability?

I understand that old magnetic media is a gamble. I'm expecting some failures, but I'd like to maximize my success rate before committing to another 40–50 tapes.

I'm especially interested in firsthand experiences from people who've done a substantial amount of recording, rather than just collecting tapes.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[dellsam34]

Just curious to what are you going to do with those recordings since you can just watch the digital source. Anyway, The big problem with recording modern contents to old formats such as VHS is the screen format, You're going to make some compromises here, I will list them from the best to the worst:

- Record in anamorphic mode, meaning take the 16:9 frame, squeeze it horizontally, record it into whatever SD analog format you're after, during playback on a widescreen panel set the TV to un-squeeze the frame and your video is restored to its original aspect ratio, albeit with slight loss of horizontal resolution, This is suitable for 16:9 screens.

- Record in letterbox mode, meaning add black bars to the top and bottom of the frame preserving the entire frame while loosing vertical resolution, this is suitable for old school 4:3 screens.

- Record in full screen, meaning chop off the left and right sides of the frame so the 4:3 frame can be filled entirely while losing almost half of the frame information, This is suitable for old school 4:3 screens.

- A distant 4th is to pan and scan, meaning editing the movie in a NLE software by analyzing the entire thing scene by scene and move the 4:3 frame horizontally back and forth within the widescreen frame based on the characters' location, it is time consuming and has a learning curve since you're going to learn how to use key frames to make some automatic panning and scanning by only assigning the initial position of the 4:3 frame at the beginning of the scene and final position at the end of the scene and the software takes care of the automatic panning.

Also for quality results, stay away from DVD, try to use better sources such as Blu-ray or digital media players built in hard drive, Use a high quality HDMI to S-Video workflow, I say workflow because you will most likely need to use multiple devices to go from HDMI to S-Video as I needed to, there is no such "problem free" stand alone HDMI to S-Video converter, Check out this post but feel free to read the entire thread.

Lastly, cleaning the blank tapes is a terrible idea, scrabbing the tape unnecessarily will just increase the amount of drop outs you will get in the future recordings. There is absolutely zero reason for that since the tapes are already sealed and clean.

[aramkolt]

It's possible that brand new tapes are sticky even if still sealed, but that wasn't super common for VHS - If I was you, I'd buy several brands of S-VHS tapes and see if any perform better. If you want, you can do a test fully fast forwarding and rewinding using a tape rewinder as that's unlikely to harm the tape stock.

I wouldn't use a VHS is life cleaner on a brand new tape. Any tape that is shedding or sticking when new is not worth bothering with.

Agree that application here matters and I wouldn't use DVD as the source to record from if you're going for the best quality.

You could use something like a Blackmagic 3G monitor (which outputs SDI exactly as it is in a Davinci timeline while bypassing any settings and can output interlaced content correctly) and then use an SDI to S-Video converter such as a Brighteye BE11. The brighteye line is unique in that it has full control of output video levels via the USB based Multiplatform companion app, though perhaps an SDI to analog Blackmagic converter could work, but there's no level adjustments possible.

Ideally you'd also combine it with an analog (composite) Waveform monitor/vectorscope once the signal is analog to make sure levels are actually correct (for NTSC, black at 7.5IRE, video level not exceeding 100IRE, vectorscope targets correct for colors etc). You can then play back the recording and look at the composite waveform monitor/vectorscope to make sure that the levels recorded are as similar as possible to what you started with. You'll be quite shocked how much just recording to VHS and playing back distorts compared to the source and it'll be very obvious on the vectorscope/waveform monitor when you go to play it back. CRTs in particular hide a lot of issues, but the scopes see right through that.

S-Video vectorscope/waveform monitors exist, but they are very uncommon, but if you can find one, that'd be fine to use as well.

When using vectorscopes/waveform monitors, usually you'd want to pass color bars as the test pattern to evaluate accuracy of levels.

[Sharc]

@OP: Are your current sources commercial DVDs? If so and if you can't (or don't want to) get these on higher quality Blu-Rays then use your SONY player with S-Video out as you suggested. The format is already anamorphic, so you don't have to bother with format and interface conversions. Also, with DVD players (brands) the S-Video outputs usually deliver correct and precise levels as per PAL or NTSC specs (at least on those I have tested the accuracy was nearly perfect) - provided the DVD has been professionally authored of course -, so you can usually trust to feed the signal into your S-VHS recorder without having to apply any tweaks.
Maybe this scenario sounds optimistic to some and you may want to follow a more elaborate route as already suggested. It depends how far you want to go.

[dellsam34]

The problem with consumer appliances is the Macrovision, I don't know much about the AG-1980 but most VCRs will not record from a consumer DVD/Blu-ray player over analog outputs.

[Sharc]

The problem with consumer appliances is the Macrovision, I don't know much about the AG-1980 but most VCRs will not record from a consumer DVD/Blu-ray player over analog outputs.

Darn, yes. Macrovision of protected DVDs triggers the SONY DVP-NS315 which may affect the AG-1980 recording (despite its TBC upon playback). Details depend on the exact model and type of protection signal (different opinions from the community). The OP should verify it with his setup.