TBC or high end jvc vcr

[lordsmurf]

Forget the JVC 99xx VCR. Buy a Sony TRV-460 camcorder. With a cheap VCR, it handles all of my old 10-15yr old tapes taking maybe two or three frames to resync itself after signal glitches. I have a 9901 and haven't used it since I bought the Sony.

I find this hard to believe.

That's just a little digital camera thing.

Not evenly remotely the same thing.

Get the VCR if you really want to help the playback of VHS tapes.

Playback errors cannot be fixed by a Hi8/DV thing.

[The_Doman]

I find this hard to believe.

That's just a little digital camera thing.

Not evenly remotely the same thing.

Get the VCR if you really want to help the playback of VHS tapes.

Playback errors cannot be fixed by a Hi8/DV thing.

That "little digital camera thing" works extremely well with VHS playback!
I use a sony (PAL)D8TRV-120 as passthrough and it works perfectly for me.
It stabilizes the incoming (VHS) signal with some form of a (simple) TBC.
Also no problems at all with glitches and/or signal drop.

[lordsmurf]

But it is NOT the same thing.
You cannot compete with filters that happen DURING playback, with a DV device that intercepts the signal AFTER playback.

Your opportunities to correct the video are greatly reduced the farther you remove yourself fromt he tape. By the time the camera gets it, two steps (at least!) have already happened.

Not the same.

Not even close.

[The_Doman]

But it is NOT the same thing.

I did not say that! It just gives me and a lot of other people very good results! Not everybody can/wants to buy a full featured TBC thingie. Lot's of people have now a digital DV camera around. It's always worth to try it out if possible before buying other stuff. You really can be surprised with the results.

[ZAPPER]

I got to go with Lordsmurf on this one (kind of anyways) The original post was about getting a VCR or a TBC. The first real issue is getting the most off of the old tapes. To do this it takes a nice VCR deck to read and do a little clean up and then the output. Now comes the question of what to do with the signal that is comming out of the VCR. How do you want to convert the analog to digital and where do you want to do some more refinements. A stand alone TBC will do a better job of this than say a cam passthru. However if you are not going to be doing enough tapes to warrent or the quality is not your biggest concern, a cam could be a better choice for you. Hang on, lets back up a bit. For the money a good TBC is cheaper than an average cam. For versitility(SP) the cam will be a better buy. You can get good passthru TBC with a cam, if the source is not too bad to start with. And you can work out just about all video issues with software alone, but why? A stand alone TBC will do most of the dirty work for you and convert your analog to digital too.

[The_Doman]

A stand alone TBC will do most of the dirty work for you and convert your analog to digital too.

Ah ? Must be something more then a TBC then?
A pure TBC will just stabilize the videosignal. Nothing more.

[ZAPPER]

A stand alone TBC will do most of the dirty work for you and convert your analog to digital too.

Ah ? Must be something more then a TBC then?
A pure TBC will just stabilize the videosignal. Nothing more.

OOPS my bad, so sorry I was thinking along the lines of ADVC 300. I'll bow out now with saying that my sony cam does a good enough job for what I need. It has on at least one ocassion helped me get video into my pc that locked up my ATI AIW card

[lordsmurf]

But it is NOT the same thing.

I did not say that! It just gives me and a lot of other people very good results! Not everybody can/wants to buy a full featured TBC thingie. Lot's of people have now a digital DV camera around. It's always worth to try it out if possible before buying other stuff. You really can be surprised with the results.

You're off topic. Read the first post.
I've seen the results. Many times. Not impressed at all.
Nothing can compete with a good VCR.
No amount of magic from a DV box will work instead of the VCR.

[Jester700]

I have 3 of Sony's TRV Digital8 cams. They do not TBC the analog passthru. The TBC circuit affects the analog 8mm/Hi8 playback only. There is also a noise reduction circuit that MAY affect passthru, but I was under the impression it didn't. In any case, smurf is right - I have a JVC 7900 VCR as well, and its simple TBC does far more that whatever's in the Sony to help out VHS tapes.

[DaveS]

colt4523 - if you're not already convinced (or did you already buy one?)..the JVC would be a great investment...the TBC will correct the timing signal, but that's only one type of error that it will correct (albeit very well)...the filters, separation, (and even line TBC) on the JVC's are excellent in my experience and do a great job in getting the very most out of the signal off the tape..it's really quite amazing what they can do to clean up the signal for what is relatively speaking not a lot of money (it is, but in the scheme of things considering what some of this equipment can cost, it's not). I can tell you that my JVC has only 2meg of memory (not 4 which would be full frame), and even w/ that, it does great..and, the jitter reduction can help too (although I think you can choose either that or tbc/noise reduction, but not both at once). Anyway, add one strong vote for the JVC.

[colt4523]

I have definitely made my mind about getting the vcr first but of course ecost does not have any of the refurbs in stock. With my budget I do not want to buy a new one ($374). So it looks like I will have to wait some more to start my conversion process

[GreyDeath]

Heh Colt,

May not want to wait too long as the stampede of technology will probably phase out the VCR's we're talking about.

As for the different setups that people have with camcorders or VCR's, speaking from experience, the setup you have is fine... until you hit that one tape that makes you buy the next piece in the chain! It's a sickness I tell you! A sickness!

Hell, I started with an AIW Radeon and TMPEnc, and wondered why my video looked like crap, after doing research and reading this forum, I bought the ADVC-100. But it captured slightly darker and saturated than the original (through the course of transfering my ST:OT LD's to DVD). Not satisfied I bought a Sima Color Corrector, which was, IMO a bad investment, and too fiddly to use.

I then tried the DAC-100, which cleared up the brightness/saturation problem, but had a slight ghosting and half-tone dot effect on oversaturated colors like console lights, etc. So I went back to the ADVC-100 and bought Vegas to color-correct since I used Video Factory before and liked the intuitive GUI.

It was smooth sailing until I came across some tapes that weren't so bad, but the fields were slightly shifted from one another which caused the video to look fuzzy. That got me to buy the JVC-9911 with the Line TBC and the darn thing works wonders for me!

All was hunky-dorey when I was given a batch of tapes from a friend to transfer that was an udder-crapfest of video glitchyness that even the 9911 couldn't fix (yah, I'm a saint). Taking on the challenge resulted in me investing in the Full Frame TBC-1000. It doesn't make the tapes look any better, but it stops the video-crap giving the rest of my tranfer chain seizures.

Yeah, I know this is long and drawn out. My point being, use what works for you, if you come across a problem, then it's time to evaluate and change. Video transfer is more Art than Science, IMO.

(Or as in the famous words of Charles De Mar, "Go that way, really fast! If something gets in your way--Turn!")

[lordsmurf]

Video transfer is more Art than Science, IMO.

Wise words. Totally agree.

[ZAPPER]

GreyDeath:
Well put! I got to agree. There is no magic bullet that will do it all. And what works for one may not work as well for the other. Any hobby can start to get addictive (reads as expencive). And video is no differnt. What needs to be understood is that to do it all you will need a collection of tools to do the work. Just as you have differnt screwdrivers for differnt screws so will you need differnt programs and hardware to handle the differnt types and methods of video work.

More people need to catch on to the concept that there may be a need to lay out a little money to acheive their goals. Yes I can drive a nail with a rock, but a hammer does a better job and a nail gun is better yet. And so, yes I can capture from my VCR to my ATIAIW, but useing the cam passthru to convert to DV is way easier for me. Nobody get me wrong please, I do know about the lack of money concept. But it is a matter of what you want to do and how much you want to do it. The best part about video, as far as the money goes, is that most of what you buy is tangible. I mean that it is something that is not going to be thrown away when you are done with it. You can keep it forever or sell it off when you are through with it and recover some or all of your orginal cost.

[nixie]

I have the JVC HR-S7900U S-VHS vcr and it does a great job of smoothing out the colors on old VHS tapes. It also staightens out jagged lines. The difference is very noticeable. I'm glad I bought the 7900 before I started tranferring my old tapes. I got it on Ebay for about $100.

My 7900 doesn't always lock in on every tape when the TBC/DNR is on. Vertical jitters appear on some tapes. It works ok on about 90% or more of my tapes. For the rest, I have to turn off the TBC/DNR. Then the picture is stable but the colors don't look as smooth.

An advantage of a TBC/DNR built into the VCR is that it sees the raw video data coming right off the tape heads, whereas a stand-alone TBC/DNR has to take apart the video/sync and put it back together again. It makes sense to do TBC/DNR all under one roof. If the built-in TBC/DNR can't handle the job, then one is forced to go with a stand-alone unit.

As far as results per price, it's hard to beat my 7900. A stand-alone would work too, but it wouldn't be easy to find one that does as good a job for only $100.

[colt4523]

Hopefully I will be able to land a top of the line jvc soon on ebay. My dial up connection is not helping me. I might have to break done and buy a new one. Would everyone recommend the older jvcs (9500,9600, and 9800) to the 9911? I assume the older ones are made better.

[lordsmurf]

For NTSC:
HR-S7800
HR-S7900
HR-S9600
HR-S9800
HR-S9900
HR-S9911
SR-V10U

[nixie]

Here's the JVC archive. You can browse through it and see which ones have DigiPure. Or search 'Digipure' on that page.

http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD4602000&PathId=49&archive=true

[kenmasters83]

just remember an excellent svhs deck is as only as good as the tape you use..

personally i wouldnt use anything less than jvc-ehg's lineup it produces excellent picture quality and the tape itself is very high quality.

you can buy them in bulk for 99cents a pop..

or if want the best svhs tape try out the fuji svhs tape its an excellent tape to use too.

[lordsmurf]

Here's the JVC archive. You can browse through it and see which ones have DigiPure. Or search 'Digipure' on that page.

http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD4602000&PathId=49&archive=true

"DigiPure" is only one piece fo the puzzle.
That list is too big and lots of crappy equipment is one it.

There are more features to consider.

[nixie]

DigiPure is a prerequisite. There's useful info about the VCRs on that page.

The 7500 and 7600 also had the DigiPure and were good machines. I went with the 7000 series instead of the 9000, as some people I know said they were having trouble with the tape transport mechanism on the 9000 series machines but never had any trouble with the 7000 series.

[awhitney]

nm

[gshelley61]

nm

The retail prices of all VCR's have come down sharply in the last few years. Plus, the 7600 is a much better built machine than the 7900.

[colt4523]

Well I finally scored a refurbished Hr-s9911u from amazon. It should arrive in the next couple of days. If anyone is still looking for a 9911, seeing that ecost does not have any refurbs and on ebay they sell for around 300 used, you can pick one up for $221 shipped from ebay from a dealer.