video EQ on Sony RDR-GX7

[piano632]

Can any owners of the Sony RDR-GX7 comment on how well all the video EQ'ing, noise reduction, etc. works with less-than-perfect recordings from tape. I have over 250 tapes I need to transfer to DVD, but so far I'm still not completely satisfied with the results I'm seeing with computer capture or Sharp DV-RW2. Since most of my tapes were made off cable TV, they have color noise/flicker, and I'm just wondering if all the video processing gadgetry on the Sony can clean this up better than the other methods I've tried. Comments appreciated.

[zanos]

Depending on how bad your videotape is the Sony will actually make the video worse. Especially if we're talking 5th generation and beyond. Images and lines start to buckle and produce this odd rippling effect on some tapes. Not sure what's it's called but the Sony actually magnify's the problem instead of tring to solve it. Even expensive consumer TBCs can't anything with it. As a matter of fact they barely do anything. But the ppl at panasonic have actually fine tuned their machines so that images are restored to it's original form. If the problem is really bad it will try and compensate but lines across will appear. However this is still better than watching images lose their "cohesion." Needless to say the low end dvd recorders will not have this feature and I doubt any company (Phillips, RCA, Pioneer, etc) has made an effort to replicate this feature.

[piano632]

Thanks for the reply.
My tapes aren't really "bad". Nearly all are 1st generation tapes made on high-end machines. The only problem is with the color intensity constantly flickering from frame to frame (especially noticeable with reds and blues). Strangely enough, the TBC on my JVC HR-S9600 will correct this color flickering problem, but no other TBC I've tried will fix it (even tried a pro unit). Most of my tapes are on Betamax format, so I just can't stick them in the JVC machine (wish I could at this point). That's why I'm wondering how good the Sony might be at fixing this. I also just noticed that Canopus is coming out with a new ADVC300 next month that looks interesting. It converts analog tapes to DV with TBC and all kinds of noise reduction and video clean-up. A bit pricey at $549 though.

[zanos]

TBCs are glorified video clarifiers. I'm sure they do serve a purpose but the cost grossly outweighs the benefit. I've never use a professional unit. The only one I've ever tested was the AVT8710 and the Datavideo 3000. They're both crap. As for the sony it doesn't get rid of screen flicker. You're really asking too much.

[piano632]

Why am I asking too much? If the JVC S-VHS can fix it, why can't anything else. I'm beginning to think it is the 4MB frame memory on the JVC that is doing to trick, not the TBC. So now I need something that uses frame memory like the JVC's do - the aforementioned Canopus ADVC300 sounds like it might work if I can afford it.