Replaced Old DVD Recorder with New Combi, Issue Transferring VHS Tapes...

[shabi-ul]

Hi
Right, I'll keep this simple! I had for about 2 years now, been transferring some of my old VHS tapes by connecting my old Panasonic VCR to my Panasonic DMR-ES20 DVD recorders and the transfers were great. I recently sold my old VCR and the DVD recorder and invested in a new Panasonic DMR-EX99V a few days ago. After fiddling around with it for a bit and checking all the functions and settings, i finally decided to try out a VHS transfer and oh my god... there was NO time base correction like in the older model and therefore instead of fixing juddery tapes, it was dropping some of the bad frames! I tried various VHS tapes which I had already successfully transferred with the previous recorder and it almost always fixed the signal and juddering. This new combi isn't doing it? Is it just the built in VCR or is there no time base correction at all in this machine? Have I invested in a more expensive but worse machine?
Also I wondered if maybe there is a TBC but its only for input from external devices? I don't have my old VCR anymore to try this but, if someone can confirm that inputting from a separate VCR will fix the juddering, then PLEASE let me know (hopefully good news).

Thanks

[DB83]

The external device would have to have a TBC to correct this. Combis do not have a TBC.

[shabi-ul]

Right, so for some reason those 3 VHS tapes I tried were just bad I guess, because I just tried some tapes which the old DVD recorder struggled with and used to make them flicked in green and black weird artifacts and this new combi DOES seem to have a time base corrector because its actually fixing those tapes, and cleaning up the juddering on these tapes and every other tape I'm trying. I'm guessing it just didn't like those 3 tapes, however just to confirm, it does indeed have a time base corrector and actually does a better job at most tapes than the old DVD recorder

Thanks anyway guys!

[DB83]

Well there is nothing in your description of the issues with the tapes to sugget that a TBC has corrected them.

Your old recorder could have had worn heads, drive-belt issues etc. A new recorder will always make some difference..... for the time being.

But combis are not the ideal way of transfering VHS. They are a quick 'n dirty method.

[sanlyn]

But combis are not the ideal way of transfering VHS. They are a quick 'n dirty method.

"quick 'n dirty" is a good description.

Don't discard your tapes.

[shabi-ul]

Hi, so I borrowed my bro's VCR and connected it directly to the TV and yeah, the tapes play bad just like with my old standalone VCR, bad as in the picture is wavy, fuzziness, and some picture rolling and bouncing. These tapes seem to be completely cleaned up when I play them through the combi, as in there is no more waviness or fuzziness and also the picture rolling stops, just a nice stable picture...
I mean if its not a TBC, what else could it be? Also, as almost ALL VHS tapes when played, show that little horizontal line of distortion right at the bottom, playing them through this combi also straightens that distorted area out!

But anyway, you guys know a lot more than me and say its a cheap and dirty way, so I mean what would be the best way? I have a capture card... I did try capturing to PC a few times, I used to get dropped frames at bad areas. I also bought a TBC, which I still have somewhere, the AVT-8710 which was honestly a complete waste of money as it did NOTHING to compensate the bad frames, it just dropped them before sending them to the capture card. This combi fixes MOST of the bad frames.

Thanks

[sanlyn]

The AVT-8710 is a full-frame TBC -- exactly what will not solve most VHS playback problems, which requires a line-level tbc. A full-frame TBC does solve some problems (notably stripping away most forms of Macrovision) but is designed to correct frame-synch, not line-sync.

Likely your combo unit has an onboard line tbc of some capability, although today's combo units aren't nearly as talented as separate player/tbc/recorders of yesteryear. It's a shame you sold your ES-20 -- it has a line tbc that can be used as tbc pass-thru to a capture device from any tape player, and when used as a pass-thru device it usually defeats Macrovision as well (but it won't record copy protected tapes directly to itself). Combo units of today cannot be used for tbc pass-thru AFAIK.

The "best" method usually recommended is to use a VCR/tbc combo or quality VCR with a line tbc pass-thru, fed into a capture device that captures to lossless YUY2 AVI (usually using huffyuv or Lagarith lossless compression to save disk space). Working with lossless media, use something like Avisynth or VirtualDub to clean up the usual tape noise, dropouts, rips, chroma noise, dot crawl, oversaturation, dct ringing/halos, ghosting, and blown-out luma and chroma levels (i.e, all the good stuff that comes with every VHS and which gets permanently encoded as artifacts when recording directly to DVD), do some color grading and general image spiffing-up; then encode it with something like HCenc for DVD or x264 for BluRay or AVCHD, author with a nifty disc authoring program, and burn the results to disc or store on a hard drive. Does it make a difference? Yes indeed. Is there a learning curve? Yes indeed. Do you need an MIT degree to do this? No.

Anyway, good luck.