Is S-VHS deck w/ TBC plus TBC stand alone overkill?

[woodmaven]

I've been using a TBC-1000 stand-alone with a standard SONY VHS VCR and the results have been good. However, I'm looking to improve video quality by adding a S-VHS deck with DNR. My planned setup is

S-VHS with TBC/DNR ---> TBC-1000 ---> ATI AIW 9800 Pro (desktop) or occasional Gigaport (laptop)

My questions about this setup are:

1. Is this overkill?
2. Are there any issues or problems with chaining the deck TBC with the standalone TBC?

Thanks

[yoda313]

Hello,
My guess is this might degrade the signal a bit. Any time you recompress video it degrades (or copy copies). I would imagine a straight connection from one svhs vcr to your capture device would be much better. Less conversions.
Kevin
P.S. It's just like tech buffs say to use the shortest cable lengths to preserve audio/video signal strength.

[Capmaster]

Hello,
My guess is this might degrade the signal a bit. Any time you recompress video it degrades (or copy copies). I would imagine a straight connection from one svhs vcr to your capture device would be much better. Less conversions.
Kevin
P.S. It's just like tech buffs say to use the shortest cable lengths to preserve audio/video signal strength.

I don't understand your statement about "recompressing" video. A TBC doesn't do any compression/decompression - it only buffers the frames, clears the old timing, then adds its own, clean timing.

[yoda313]

Hello,

don't understand your statement about "recompressing" video. A TBC doesn't do any compression/decompression

Sorry I should have been clearer. I was just getting the point across that doing things more than once doesn't always make it better. I know that svhs is better than regular vhs. It's just that chaining two probably won't help. I was referring to things like changing xvid to divx (no point in doing that).

Kevin

[woodmaven]

I read an entry in another thread that indicated that the TBC in the VCR doesn't work exactly the same way as the stand-alone. I also seem to recall reading that by selecting a certain filter on the VCR, TBC was automatically turned off. Finally, I read yet another thread that indicated the VCR TBC may not handle MV as well as the stand-alone.

If these are true, then it would seem reasonable to hook them in series routinely. However, I'm looking to those with experience that I lack. Will I be hurting quality, rather than helping it, by putting the devices in series? Or will I help quality the most by investing in a SVHS deck with TPC-DNR, use it solo, and only add the TPC-1000 when the deck alone is having problems?

I have a couple hundred standard VHS tapes, a mixture of commercial and homemade (both SP and EP) that I intend to back up.

[lordsmurf]

The last post hit the nail on the head. The built-in and standalone do not behave the same, and do not do the same thing. In fact, only the standalone is full frame.

I use both together at all times, because they complement each other nicely.

[piano632]

One thing that most people don't realize is that TBC's delay the video by 1 frame after the audio. So, if you use 2 TBC's between the source and destination then the result is you have video 2 frames out of sync behind the audio. Of course 2 frames isn't really noticeable when you have 25/30 frames a second, but it still makes sense to use only 1 TBC if possible (or none if not needed). The latest pro TBC's delay the audio track by 1 frame to match the video frame, but their cost is very expensive ($8.000)!

[lordsmurf]

I think that rule only applies to full-frame, not partial frame TBCs.

[woodmaven]

Thanks for the insightful and quick responses. I'm going to go ahead and pick up a JVC HR-S9911.

If I find problems with the setup using both the VCR and the TBC-1000, I'll be sure to post on the forum what I find. I'm getting addicted to this place!