AT MY WITS END!! VHS capture device

[Why]

“ The above poster's problem could be tape format differences, VHS-C tapes are recorded in a different format than full size VHS cassettes because maybe the VHS-C tapes were shot abroad with a different camcorder”.

No, I was the one who did everything in the past, and nothing has changed as regards devices.

I had only one camcorder, this one in question. It is a JVC GR-FX11. I was the one who shot the videos.

In fact I have two VHSc of 30 minutes, but of the same type, and I wrote one just to simplify the situation.

As I wrote I have 6 VHSs, 4 of them were recorded in SP mode, 2 of them in LP mode. The latter two were a sort of backup copies.

And as far as I remembered the contents were always directly copied from
these 2 VHSc using RCA cables between the camcorder and VCR. But now I started to wonder whether I bought the VHSC-VHS adapter just to use it for the copy process from VHSc to VHS.


Does it make a difference if I copied directly from the camcorder to VCR, or I copied using 2 VCRs?

Right now I have one VCR, which is a combo of VCR+DVD player, JVC HR-XV32E, so this one in question now.

Afair I had another VCR, which was thrown away when I moved, but it was something of worse quality, and maybe had been bought before I acquired my JVC VCR. So I guess even if I used that one that had to be the source and not the destination during an eventual VCR-VCR copy process.

[Why]

From the other thread:

My idea was to shot a short video with this old camera (so I have to literally take it out from the dustbin where I yesterday threw it into), and repeat the copy process from the camera to a never-used VHS which I still have.

So did I and the video appeared both on TV and my laptop.

I decided to test all the old 6 VHSs just to be sure that I had not missed something.

And voilá, video of 3 of them appeared on my laptop. Note: so even if I had tested three VHSs I was unlucky (or amateur) and I am going to explain why.

From the other thread:

These 4 VHSs are TDK HD-X Pro, so even if they are 15-22 years old, they were and maybe still are of relatively good quality. Moreover I have 2 backup VHSs which were almost never played back.
[B]

CORRECTED: only 2 of them are TDK, the other 2 are Sony Excellence V. As regards the backup VHSs, 1 TDK, 1 Sony.
See also my later, separate post about what I figured out during my additional tests.

The problems are only with TDK VHSs, but there is no problem with Sony VHSs.

Either I place one of the three Sony VHSs recorded in SP or LP, has it been played back dozen times or almost never, the video is ON on my laptop.

Either I place one of the three TDK VHSs recorded in SP or LP, has it been played back dozen times or almost never, the video is OFF on my laptop. The exact phenomenon is typically blue screen, then a picture or a video of less than one second, then either a frozen picure, or a frozen blurred picture. Sometimes nothing, not even a picture.

You could say that maybe TDK is of inferior quality, but I also went through thes content of 6 VHSs using my TV, chose some video parts of relatively worse quality on Sony VHSs, and some video parts of relatively better quality on TDK VHSs, but it does not count.

Even if I say that hmmm this part of TDK should appear on my laptop it won't, if I say that hmmm this part of Sony is so blurred and fallen apart that it won't appear on my laptop, it will do.

Do you have a logical explanation? The High Definiton Extra in the name of TDK VHSs is just a sort of marketing bullshit or might it count for some mysterious reason?

And again thanks for your time being spent on reading my story.

[DB83]

The TDK's are high quality VHS but still VHS.

Did you say, I do not wish to re-read all again, if these VHS do appear on your tv.


There is one possibilty since you confuse the issue either here or in the other topic by mentioning more than one vcr. Tapes recorded in LP mode have a tendancy not to play properly on a vcr that was not the machine they were recorded in. So the signal could be so weak at the point of an analogue to digital transfer that you do get this lack of signal (btw I did test my capture system changing the video standard but all PAL were accepted). Whereas vcr to tv is more adaptable since it is all analogue including circuitry to ignore mv (which is not a factor here)

[Why]

Deep apologies for confusing the issue by mentioning the other VCR too late.

Maybe I should NOT have mentioned it at all, because - as I wrote - I never used the other VCR for recording at all (just it may have been a source sometimes putting the VHS-C into it via the adapter).

Even if the possiblity you mentioned is not viable, because there are no more than one recording VCR, I do appreciate that you shared your knowledge and experience with me. It may help me at aanother time in another issue.

[oln]

Ok this is a bit confusing - so, tapes played back in the vhsc camcorder play back fine on both tv and capture dongle, but tapes played in the VCR only show on a TV?

Capture dongles are often somewhat picky about the signal being clean so it tends to take less to give them issues than most TVs. Maybe the recording VCR had some slight issues or something hard to say.

Did you try enabling the "Video stabilizer" feature on the VCR? That may or may not help.

If the videos do show up on a TV, passing the video via a dvd-recorder (or TBC but those are rare and expensive) to stabilize the signal as discussed a million times here on the forum may help to get them captured and/or make it easier to see if there is any vcr issue.

[Why]

“ Ok this is a bit confusing - so, tapes played back in the vhsc camcorder play back fine on both tv and capture dongle, but tapes played in the VCR only show on a TV?”

Not exactly.

2 pieces of VHS-c tapes: played back fine on both TV and capture dongle, independently whether you played them back in vhsc camcorder or in VCR.

3 pieces of VHS tapes, brand Sony: played back fine on both TV and capture dongle (evidently you can play them back only in VCR).

3 pieces of VHS tapes, brand TDK: played back fine on TV, BUT NOT on capture dongle (evidently you can play them back only in VCR).

2 SONY tapes are recorded in SP, 1 in LP.

2 TDK tapes are recorded in SP, 1 in LP.

I swear all the 6 VHS tapes was recorded with the same JVC VCR,
I swear their sources were directly the VHS-c tapes,
but I cannot swear that during the copy process my VHS-c tapes were always placed in my camcorder, it may happen that in some cases these VHS-c tapes were placed in another VCR.

I hope it was structured enough.


“ If the videos do show up on a TV, passing the video via a dvd-recorder (or TBC but those are rare and expensive) ”

Yes, I have been advised so by other experts already. Fyki my camcorder has TBC, but I see no way to exploit it, because its only input are its lens.
And my JVC VCR seems to not have TBC circuit inside just other features like B.E.S.T.

Both devices have picture stabilizer, and this feature has been switched on for a long, long time.

[dellsam34]

Yes. I appreciate that these are broadcast standards but still I wonder how that broadcast get on to a tape and is thus 'vanilla'

And I ask this specifically since, if the above was true, that tape from a tv broadcast I once received from a friend in Brazil should have played correctly in my own vcr without a standards conversion.


Of course with a commercially recorded tape we just have the three.

PAL-M in Brazil and PAL-N in Argentina are among the hybrid formats I mentioned, They use a resolution and frame rate of one system and a chroma subcarrier of another, Commercially vs home recorded differs only before they get recorded by a VCR, Once recorded it becomes a VHS standard and no longer a broadcast standard. Name calling can be confusing sometimes, I've seen VHS tapes labeled NICAM Stereo, or Digital Sound, Yes they were recorded from a NICAM decoder or a digital source but when it's recorded on VHS it becomes FM HiFi stereo, the same goes for video, Different broadcast standards made for bandwidth management over the air but when they land on the video tape they are all the same within the same VHS standard.

[dellsam34]

“ Ok this is a bit confusing - so, tapes played back in the vhsc camcorder play back fine on both tv and capture dongle, but tapes played in the VCR only show on a TV?”

Let's make this less painful for you and the members, From now on forget about the capture device, forget about the tape brand and use only one working VCR for your tests hooked up to a TV. With your phone or digital camera take 30 sec of video of the TV screen while the VCR playing back a tape of each category of problems and post it here so we can look at the type of noise pattern.

[Why]

“ Ok this is a bit confusing - so, tapes played back in the vhsc camcorder play back fine on both tv and capture dongle, but tapes played in the VCR only show on a TV?”

Let's make this less painful for you and the members, From now on forget about the capture device, forget about the tape brand and use only one working VCR for your tests hooked up to a TV. With your phone or digital camera take 30 sec of video of the TV screen while the VCR playing back a tape of each category of problems and post it here so we can look at the type of noise pattern.

Sure and thx in advance.

But first I need a couple of days to process all those tapes whose video are properly visible . But I'll be back.

[Why]

“ Ok this is a bit confusing - so, tapes played back in the vhsc camcorder play back fine on both tv and capture dongle, but tapes played in the VCR only show on a TV?”

Let's make this less painful for you and the members, From now on forget about the capture device, forget about the tape brand and use only one working VCR for your tests hooked up to a TV. With your phone or digital camera take 30 sec of video of the TV screen while the VCR playing back a tape of each category of problems and post it here so we can look at the type of noise pattern.

Dear dellsam34,

in the meantime I spent a great deal of time to digitalize those VHS casettes I had thought they were fine, but I realized that if I played back a very same tape from the "good cassettes" group then videos 'A', 'B', 'C' could be properly captured, then they are followed by some videos "D", "E", "F" which could be not, then again some which could be etc. So even if all of them had been recorded by the same camcorder, and had been copied to the same VHS.

So my whole story seems to be much more complicated than I thought previously.

Sometimes I must have used some functions. and sometimes not, either during the primary recording on the camcorder (some functions like picture stabilizing) or during the secondary recording to VHS on my VCR (some functions like B.E.S.T.). These functions are just examples, maybe they have nothing to do with it, but something I must have done, because I find no other logical explanation.

Anyway I decided that I would be grabbing all my VHSs and visit a video restorer, because it makes no sense any longer to kill any additional time for "this journey".

Thanks for your offer anyway.

[Why]

I made a last try before going to the video restorer and I figured out that it was only the damned Video stabilizer function of the VCR which killed the visibility of the playback on my laptop.

I do not know why it has an effect on some portions and why not on the others, but switching it OFF before starting the playback made all my contents visible thorugh my videograbber.

A lesson to be learnt!

[Eric-jan]

Could it be, that the VHS-C cassettes were recorded on a camcorder sold in France ?

[Why]

Mine two were definitely bought here in Hungary around November-December in 2000.

[oln]

I made a last try before going to the video restorer and I figured out that it was only the damned Video stabilizer function of the VCR which killed the visibility of the playback on my laptop.

Yeah it's a useful feature in some cases but it can make the signal slightly non-standard and thus trip up many capture dongles.

[etsat]

Jumped into this forum hoping to give a couple of hints around August VGB100.

At first it didn't work properly but I wasn't using the provided cables - I already had a Composite cable but I had to use the original. That worked.

On the second setup I made I was using the exact same laptop (Windows 10) and the exaxt same software - the most recent - downloaded from https://augustint.com/en/

But it wasn't working.

It turns out that opening the Software on my 4k monitor doesn't show any image but both image and sound are captured and recoreded. Just by moving the software window to the laptop screen again, the image was displayed.

Hope this helps someone as this USB video capture device is still available for sale (I got mine on ebay) and at least I was able to get it working. On top of that this is a video capture device that works with SECAM video format which was what I was looking for. The majority of devices only offer PAL and NTSC as input formats.

Cheers

[Alwyn]

On top of that this is a video capture device that works with SECAM video format which was what I was looking for.

The IO Data GV-USB2 also has many SECAM options. I also have a VGB100 but don't use it because it was too finicky with Win 10.

[Eric-jan]

On top of that, There were two SECAM versions in the EU… with France it's SECAM-L (SECAM west) and the rest (mostly) of europe SECAM east, (on tape) i know of one of my JVC vcr's does only SECAM east, Outside France, SECAM was mostly put on tape as MESECAM, because only little modification was needed to existing vcr hardware.

btw @Why: Hungary (migrated 1995–1996) from SECAM to PAL

[etsat]

On top of that this is a video capture device that works with SECAM video format which was what I was looking for.

The IO Data GV-USB2 also has many SECAM options. I also have a VGB100 but don't use it because it was too finicky with Win 10.

I agree with that. It's not "plug and play" it's more "plug and pray". Eventually requires some computer restart etc to get it to work. Anyway since the thread started with this VGB100 I was adding my experience. If I had to buy 1 interface now I would maybe give the IO Data GV-USB2 priority.


[UPDATE]
I've done a few more captures using the VGB100 and although it's possible to make it work, the quality of the conversion is sometime mediocre. Not sure about other cables out there in the market. I get glitches similar to the ones in this video on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFXVLeCly3I

[Subtitles]

A long time ago, I bought Pioneer DVR-540H which is a standalone DVD writer. It was the best way at the time to convert VHS to DVD.
It has also 160GB Hard Disk.
Once I had a DVD I was able to convert it to any other format like mp4 or mkv.
Perhaps you can find a used stadalone DVD writer on ebay or other sites.