Current status of ld-decode / vhs-decode (true "backup" of RF signals)

[lollo]

Brad, for conventional workflow use ATI 600 USB if you can

[nicholasserra]

Also on my list to do this comparison. I dove in a month or so back but did not get good results from the capture. Very large rabbit hole to go down

[Brad]

Also on my list to do this comparison. I dove in a month or so back but did not get good results from the capture.

Turns out, I'm also getting bad results attempting to RF capture from AG-1980.

The amplitude is just awful except for a retail release I tried (Beast Wars tape 4). More importantly, all of the captures feature the famous crosshatch issue prominently.

I'm not particularly interested in spending time solving this, since I'm already getting clean captures from other VCRs.


@dellsam34 Would Mitsubishi HV-BS890 count as high-end? It includes DNR and "629TBC" seemingly licensed from JVC.

[nicholasserra]

I need to crank up the gain on the DDD and try again. It's all sitting right here on my desk but too many other tape projects keeping me busy

[lollo]

@dellsam34 Would Mitsubishi HV-BS890 count as high-end? It includes DNR and "629TBC" seemingly licensed from JVC.

Why do not make a comparison between the capture of the Panasonic AG-1980 + ATI 600 USB and the capture of VHS-Decode with a VCR of your choice (it does not have to be the Panasonic AG-1980)?

[dellsam34]

Mitsubishi HV-BS890 should be good, Can you use it for both methods? I read about 629TBC feature, Anyway, don't you have to compensate for the Japanese IRE levels when playing back US NTSC tapes?

[Brad]

I'll try to tap the HV-BS890 then. And I can include the AG-1980 conventional as a third source.

don't you have to compensate for the Japanese IRE levels when playing back US NTSC tapes?

Nope. Similarly, if you play an NTSC-J tape in a US VCR, it won't have US levels.

@nicholasserra My DdD is always at max. But it is possible to swap out resistors for additional gain, if you want to modify your DdD and can handle surface-mount soldering.

[vhs_cap]

Now then,

After having done research for considerable time and read through vhs-decode wiki a couple of times I still got some unanswered questions, I’d be very glad if someone could answer them as I’m not a VHS, electronics or signal expert. And please, no ”it depends” or ”test by yourself” to every question.

THE TAP SIDE:
1 – Is the usual test point location fine or is direct head tap the ”Holy Grail”?
2 – Can tap points be tested before soledring with a simple ”clamp-to-BNC wire” and USB SDR stick? Of course bandwidth will be limited but my plan was tap the decks now and build the capture hardware later?
3 – Can or should you tap a Sony-DuPont deck with a soldered tap?
3- Will there be any harm if I put a capacitor on RF tap ”just in case”?
4- Do linear and HiFI audio have different tap locations or will a single tap do? Or can/should linear audio even be RF tap’d?
5 – Pre-amps, yea or nay? There seem to be many options from off-the-shelf options (ADV8367 & general SDR amps) to full custom ones (Rene Wolf amp). Is there a strict SNR dB value where you should or should not use one?
6 – At the moment I have only SCART decks, do I get better reference capture quality if I do a ”RCA tap”?

THE CAPTURE SIDE
1 – Are CX card mods necessary? How much do I gain in quality if I do the BNC mod, C31 mod and 40Mhz crystal mod?
2 – Can I somehow sync audio without (drift) issues without clockgen mod from RF audio capture or should I just capture only RF video and use audio track from conventional capture?
3 – Is there any point capturing head switch singnal with third capture card?
4 – Do I need a expensive & hard-to-find CRT monitor to check tracking or can it be done in some other way?
5 - There seems to be some new USB RF hardware in development, will it be worth the wait aka considerable upgrade to CX cards?

Oh, one more, don't laugh at this, I haven't touched a VCR in 20 years: I have some "non-important/whatever/dontcare" tapes which I'd like to capture but I'd also like to keep them recordable by not breaking the tab, can I trust my VCR & VCR operator skills to not record over them in capture process? (I said, don't laugh!)

Thanks in advance.

[harrypm]

Now then,

After having done research for considerable time and read through vhs-decode wiki a couple of times I still got some unanswered questions, I’d be very glad if someone could answer them as I’m not a VHS, electronics or signal expert. And please, no ”it depends” or ”test by yourself” to every question.

THE TAP SIDE:
1 – Is the usual test point location fine or is direct head tap the ”Holy Grail”?
2 – Can tap points be tested before soledring with a simple ”clamp-to-BNC wire” and USB SDR stick? Of course bandwidth will be limited but my plan was tap the decks now and build the capture hardware later?
3 – Can or should you tap a Sony-DuPont deck with a soldered tap?
3- Will there be any harm if I put a capacitor on RF tap ”just in case”?
4- Do linear and HiFI audio have different tap locations or will a single tap do? Or can/should linear audio even be RF tap’d?
5 – Pre-amps, yea or nay? There seem to be many options from off-the-shelf options (ADV8367 & general SDR amps) to full custom ones (Rene Wolf amp). Is there a strict SNR dB value where you should or should not use one?
6 – At the moment I have only SCART decks, do I get better reference capture quality if I do a ”RCA tap”?

THE CAPTURE SIDE
1 – Are CX card mods necessary? How much do I gain in quality if I do the BNC mod, C31 mod and 40Mhz crystal mod?
2 – Can I somehow sync audio without (drift) issues without clockgen mod from RF audio capture or should I just capture only RF video and use audio track from conventional capture?
3 – Is there any point capturing head switch singnal with third capture card?
4 – Do I need a expensive & hard-to-find CRT monitor to check tracking or can it be done in some other way?
5 - There seems to be some new USB RF hardware in development, will it be worth the wait aka considerable upgrade to CX cards?

Oh, one more, don't laugh at this, I haven't touched a VCR in 20 years: I have some "non-important/whatever/dontcare" tapes which I'd like to capture but I'd also like to keep them recordable by not breaking the tab, can I trust my VCR & VCR operator skills to not record over them in capture process? (I said, don't laugh!)

Thanks in advance.

1. Direct Head Amp tapping is the most direct so the most signal potential, however some decks don't play nice with it due to the signal draw, very much so if your not using an impedence matched amplifyer, but how drastic this diffrance is between the test points and the head amp directly thats a deck to deck basis situation and anyone who say's diffrent is talking about a single deck or single line-up with same exact RF path internal hardware or just has no clue.

2. Yes, you can use probes but it has worse electical potential and is less secure signal and ground connection, your touching metal instead of welded to it.

3. You can solder or use DuPont cables, personally as my taps go to bulkheads I just solder its not going anyware and its the same known quality RGxxx cable.

(But this does not mean ignore the potential of the headers solder joints being weak or cracked, alongside any of the drum path always reflow these joints and paths to ensure a solid connection, even serviced decks people don't check and reflow all the joints inside the connectors for head amplifyers and this has a massive diffrance in SNR and does not affect standard untill in a really bad state, pre-emptive maintenance matters! this is why lower end modern decks with less parts and joints can have less issues lol)

4. Yes, they are diffrent signals one is baseband (Linear) either stereo on pro decks or mono on consumer decks, and one is FM modulated and this is HiFi, but for context baseband is the same as whats comming out of the back of the deck so you can always add a RCA or two for dubble mono linear when there is also HiFi on the tape, but some decks may disable the Linear audio feed when there is HiFi present.

5. The ADA4857 amplifyer is the go to standard now and should be deployed if possible so your bulkheads on your tapped deck are pre-amplifyed and impedence matched at the input end and the outbound end for your capture device.

(For example @20nicholasserra used a DdD at way too low gain level, that results in a poor capture and not the full potential of the signal being saved, the decoders can only work magic if there is signal to work with in the first place.)

Now the Black SNR vlaue is a rough outline of the real signal to noise ratio of course 44-50dB is golden range but most VHS tapes will only be around 38-44 dB max for Video8 I have seen 45-50dB on 1990s and 2000s tapes, but visually human inspection wise can be more accurate then the sampled lines for bSNR as its not based off the entire signal frame and is affected by dropouts from the tape.

6. No diffrance, just adding a BNC bulkhead for CVBS Output and or Input is handy and a cheep upgrade from crappy adapters or adaper cables if you have a pro monitor or kit with BNC cables it saves using RCA cables and is snag proof compared to RCA.

I will note I like HORSA cables, but I think things like BlueJeens are well a bit of a scam when users are not even going over and reflowing solder joints on the RCA connectors that the cables connect to in the first place to ensure a solid signal path.


--------------


1. They are easy and improve RF level SNR, you want as much as you can get out of these, now the RCA mod is perosnal but C31 is an always at this point.

2. Why do you think we have the clockgen mod? it was 100% built to remove this issue and it also came with more benfits like software setting the hardware crystal rate, and baseband audio capture added with it on that same clock, this also neatly is 1 command capture with scripts or vhs-capture-server now.

(if you cant afford it, yes of course you can do everything 100% manual with a refrance capture thats how everything prior was done, but hardware sync + audio audio align saves hours of effort and is a more technically correct capture and archival workflow.)

But yes the C31 mod is a 100% always do it thing now.

3. Just to clarify for readers NO we don't capture headswich with a 3rd CX Card. We have a input on the Pi Pico do it with the clockgen mod and its light version even, adding it to the audio file.

(Its a useful bit of archive refrance data but not used with current software decoding, but can and might be used later so its worth the few extra MB of space archive wise.)

4. You don't 100% need a PVM or BVM CRT hell anyone will tell you an easycrap can do but a GV2-USB is a hell of a lot better for view/refrance of runtime/sync but any basic consumer CRT to view the live feed unaltered is always the best way to monitor analog captures, as you will catch SNR shifts and headcloging very fast. (If you CAN get a broadcast style unit I would, they are very nice and well built mostly and have H/V shift to see the VBI space)

5. The MIRSC is on rev V2.1 with 4ch audio built-in and is a working device, however its not got a finalised data interface and capture app, as the FX3 is a pain in the ass to work with. So today I would stick to the clockgen mod which with the new amplifyers is more then aduquite for colour-under formats for archival grade captures and total setup is sub 120USD with cards + tooling and the new ADA amp.


PS: Just remove or disable the decks record button easy idiot proofing or put a box latch on it or disable the erase head and or record paths lots of ways to go abouts this, but always good to have broken tab test tapes, if anything cheep commerical release tapes (spiderman is used a lot for the NTSC folk) are sort of the go to standard.

[Brad]

Oh, one more, don't laugh at this, I haven't touched a VCR in 20 years: I have some "non-important/whatever/dontcare" tapes which I'd like to capture but I'd also like to keep them recordable by not breaking the tab, can I trust my VCR & VCR operator skills to not record over them in capture process?

Just break off the record tab to prevent accidental erasure.

If you later want to record on any tape that has no tab, put a piece of "Scotch tape" on it.

[Alex9876]

Hi! Please help, is this video surveillance board suitable for VHS -decode? Video capture controller TE-104C-E PCI 4x chip CX25800-11Z . This board has 4 composite video inputs, and one audio input. Can you tell me where I can see suitable boards (except for the white CX) ?

[Attachment 82476 - Click to enlarge]

[harrypm]

[QUOTE=Alex9876;2751964]Hi! Please help, is this video surveillance board suitable for VHS -decode? Video capture controller TE-104C-E PCI 4x chip CX25800-11Z . This board has 4 composite video inputs, and one audio input. Can you tell me where I can see suitable boards (except for the white CX)

This is a supported IC, although not seen a big & PCI card like this with it before, new varient found!

CX White CX25800 card order links were just updated yesterday as a few stores collaped there listings and made new ones.

Link 1 / Link 2 / Link 3

They are still in that 16~30 USD range of cost too.

[Alex9876]

Thanks for the reply and links! colleagues at the forum informed me that very cheap old TV tuner cards based on CX23880, CX23881, CX23882, CX23883, CX25800 chips are suitable for VHS-decode. For example, VideoMate Compro X30, VideoMate X500. There is no point in buying this garbage for a lot of money. I already bought VideoMate X500 for the price of a bottle of milk))

[dellsam34]

Harrypm do you have any available MISRC boards? I want to get one to actually repair an ED Beta VCR with a weird noise pattern that I can't figure out what's causing it, I want to make sure the video heads and RF board are ok so I can continue with fault tracing. The scope can't help here, I need something visual.

[harrypm]

Harrypm do you have any available MISRC boards? I want to get one to actually repair an ED Beta VCR with a weird noise pattern that I can't figure out what's causing it, I want to make sure the video heads and RF board are ok so I can continue with fault tracing. The scope can't help here, I need something visual.

I currently have only my personal V1.5 board, alongside a pile of PCBs that were cost sunk for the BNC adjustments.


There has been some updates to the MISRC platfrom overall however:


[Attachment 83422 - Click to enlarge]


The FX3 USB board has now been changed out for the Tang Nano 20k + MS2130 capture cards (U3 labled ones) and thanks to the new misrc_capture this marrys the work put into hsdaoh and misrc_extract together to make a plug and play USB 3.0 platfrom for virtually any ADC modules. It was that data interface side was the biggest pain factor, even the DdD hardware could be ported over cutting its cost to 150USD or there abouts.

(On a side note the DdD now has 100% windows stablity there was an announcement about it on r/vhsdecode but it has a new app with a complete rewrite of the USB interface code, proper control of the buffering)

Although the V1.5 board is now up on PCBway with the FX3 to Tang Nano 20k adapters available for people that want to test and develop it more for the software end and of course implementing audio boards.

(I will note the Tang Nano 20k switch over means the v2.1 and v2.2 prototypes need to be re-worked, hence why these are not on the main repo.)

The V1.5 today is in an effective soft launch state with the publishing of v1.5, it will be about 260-300USD if ordered currently although I hope to fabricate them for much lower costs in the future with a PnP machine.

As it is a soft launch of the platform there are more things to adjust, but we have real-time unpacking and FLAC compression with misrc_capture application that currently has support for Linux and MacOS but we need Apple X86 and Arm series testers but this should also work with Windows too in the future.

[dellsam34]

Thanks for the update. Would the HDMI route have a legal video stream or just data to be unpacked later?

[harrypm]

Thanks for the update. Would the HDMI route have a legal video stream or just data to be unpacked later?

It's data over YUV frames thats then unpacked and compressed in real-time, there is zero processing the Tang Nano is just a buffer/converter for that 24-bits of ADC data + the 6 aux bits so we can use 3-bits each for 2 audio ADCs.

Heres a single PCM1802 hooked up for example, with just a quick bodge wire tap to the 5v filtered line on the back of the PCB, as the headders on the adapter PCB are not dubble length on this one I quickly soldered up.


[Attachment 83423 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 83424 - Click to enlarge]

[dellsam34]

So why USB to HDMI and then HDMI to USB to computer? Can it just go from the board to USB straight to the computer? Am I missing something?

[harrypm]

It's "data" over YUV not video streams we are hijacking the HDMI system for its bandwidth in the YUV lossless mode, its very easy, very simple, and 75% of the work was already done and all open-source.


There are a couple of reasons we ditched the FX3....

- FX3 is more expensive and goes out of stock easily.

The FX3 is 45USD + shipping the Tang Nano 20k + MS2130 (or MS2131) based capture cards are under 35USD shipped from AliExpress.

- FX3 is a total pain in the ass to work with without a standard FPGA so it's a 2 part system with higher costs.

The DdD only uses it due to Simons's stubborn mentality to push through and it also uses a higher-end FPGA so it's manageable, it was the best you could do in 2015-17 era hardware.

- FX3 firmware licencing is a mess.

- Sigronk was not ideal for what we needed/wanted and it was all we could use foundation-wise without expressly writing something a lot more complex.


The FX3 is built for more commercial-style development, it's not a shit chip it's just built for production products with people that know the architecture to build hardware around it, but for what we need it's just not fun to deal with, and it being BGA and meant for 4-6 layer PCBs means making our own dev boards is not cheap.

Stefan_O already built a high-performance cross-platform 32-bit word extraction tool for the data stream, this is faster than real-time so it was simply a matter of building off the code that was already there for hsdaoh for a capture app, this was done in a couple of weeks of an hour here and there work.

So the data over YUV stream is from Steve M's hsdaoh which was seen as an idea with a lot of flexibility, but it took a couple of months for the idea to click "oh we can just use this"...

After seeing the generic platform this offers to use super inexpensive FPGA chips which can output HDMI signals to send raw data it made sense there are too many alternatives on the market to ignore this is the path of least resistance.

So ensuring both cost and ease of replacement the only change is the firmware (per FPGA device) the rest is virtually plug-and-play with adapter PCBs and the macro silicon generic capture IC's are sold by over 50 re-branded clone vendors so they won't go poof they are Elgato Camlink killers they will be around until superseded by an 8k able chip.

You can also use this with generic ADC modules with just a 15USD PCB with some basic parts, cool for SDR users and we can play with a lot of "dev board" stuff on the China market that's like 10-200USD from audio stuff to 12-bit 60msps or faster chips.

The only downside to this method is it's a 1-way data link, which is fine as we don't have any digital control like an SDR would for adjusting the frequency/input filtering range or sampling modes it's fixed on a hardware level with DIPS.

For the V3.0 we could integrate it all into one PCB with just a single USB-C or Type-B for data and power, but for ease of firmware updates and tinkering having it in 2 separate devices is fine it keeps costs down, also if something fails or gets bricked in testing we just replace that one part.

[dellsam34]

Wow, that's a huge trajectory change, I hope everything goes smooth with this one. I really hope to see one day the decoding part is being put on board and full frame YUV raster and digital audio is output via USB3 or on an internal removable SSD storage.

[lordsmurf]

What I find amusing is how the project has finally turned in the direction of relying on hardware -- something I've said from the very beginning. But I was always criticized for daring to suggest that it would take more than a thrift store VCR, a Aliexpress CX card, and Linux scripts. Didn't work as planned, eh?

There's a lot of people that could have helped further this project long ago, but immature/ego/attitude kept them away. Pretty par for the video course, actually. Doom10, KVCD, etc? They had a fad, a good following, lots of promises -- then POOF, gone, erased from the internet, vaporware.

vhs-decode has indeed changed trajectory as of late...

... but immature/ego/lies/hate/etc, still has to exit the building for it to succeed. Good experienced knowledgeable people don't partake in that toxic environment, especially not for hobby. I've been online for 30 years, I've seen this before. The project has a choice to make. I wish Harry would grow up, take this all seriously, rather than waste his time and energy with trolling others.

When the constant flurry of changes finally ends, or when there's a decently long lull in the feverish changes, then perhaps it'll be worth diving in. I'm not a fan of testing software/hardware, then being told "oh that's old, try this now!" (and buy something again), and it's only been 2 months. That means it's far too buggy and beta for production. Or, perhaps, that never happens, and it gets doomed to being vaporware (like a lot of alternative OS that never escaped development hell).

The term "vaporware" really grates on Harry, not sure why. But you can't succeed without SWOT.

Take care all ... even you Harry.

[harrypm]

What I find amusing is how the project has finally turned in the direction of relying on hardware -- something I've said from the very beginning. But I was always criticized for daring to suggest that it would take more than a thrift store VCR, a Aliexpress CX card, and Linux scripts. Didn't work as planned, eh?

There's a lot of people that could have helped further this project long ago, but immature/ego/attitude kept them away. Pretty par for the video course, actually. Doom10, KVCD, etc? They had a fad, a good following, lots of promises -- then POOF, gone, erased from the internet, vaporware.

vhs-decode has indeed changed trajectory as of late...

... but immature/ego/lies/hate/etc, still has to exit the building for it to succeed. Good experienced knowledgeable people don't partake in that toxic environment, especially not for hobby. I've been online for 30 years, I've seen this before. The project has a choice to make. I wish Harry would grow up, take this all seriously, rather than waste his time and energy with trolling others.

When the constant flurry of changes finally ends, or when there's a decently long lull in the feverish changes, then perhaps it'll be worth diving in. I'm not a fan of testing software/hardware, then being told "oh that's old, try this now!" (and buy something again), and it's only been 2 months. That means it's far too buggy and beta for production. Or, perhaps, that never happens, and it gets doomed to being vaporware (like a lot of alternative OS that never escaped development hell).

The term "vaporware" really grates on Harry, not sure why. But you can't succeed without SWOT.

Take care all ... even you Harry.

Oh Kevin old chap now your just bating and rubbing in the small victory from the spam report attacks on r/vhs I do tip my hat, but I still own r/digitalfaq and I know that must hurt, but not as much as the last damage control mess, nobody listens to you but newbies and suckers.

Now get back to doing the work you were commssioned to do, rather then spending time on the internet trying to stir a dry pot, in a fourm where your post can't be just downvoted into oblivion.

Decode won years ago nothing has changed, just expanded and you just keep on acting just more and more deluded, your kinda now the "sleepy joe" example of the digitisation world to steal a term from your side of the pond.

Now I have hardware to work on, and also clients that have deadlines that I adhear to

[dellsam34]

It shouldn't get this personal, let's just focus on the technical discussion.

[lordsmurf]

It shouldn't get this personal, let's just focus on the technical discussion.

Indeed. But again, sadly, the project is helmed by immaturity, ego, hate, lies, etc.

nobody listens to you but newbies and suckers.

You're a 22-year-old that started with video capture only 3-4 years ago. YOU ARE THE NEWBIE!
And you sure don't listen.
I have T-shirts older than you.

Now get back to doing the work you were commssioned to do

You refer to a Reddit post where the person was fearful of payment methods he'd never used (and yet have been mainstream for a decade now). That's it. It was an extremely complex project involving mold, misaligned recordings, sticky shed syndrome, and physically damaged tapes, followed up by Avisynth work. The tapes were in dire shape.

- If you weren't such a video newbie, then perhaps you'd know how challenging such projects are.
- If you had any professional video experience, then you'd know that sometimes projects do take years. You have to be extremely careful with tapes that problematic, while you test and troubleshoot. You can't just throw a tape in, and see what happens. Because "oops" is often what happens. People don't send me the easy projects, I get the work that others screwed up.

And that project started in the middle of a pandemic! Both myself and the client suffered losses. Perhaps someday you'll reach the age where you lose family and friend. Maybe then you can look back on how you act now, at 22, and realize what a wanker you were/are.

Decode won years ago

Amusing. No.

Overall, you're pretty oblivious to the "real life" needs of most people, especially time. Perhaps someday you'll move out of mom/dad's house, get a job, get family, a mortgage, etc, and understand all this.

vhs-decode is a neat little fun project, but it's not something that will ever be as mainstream as you seem to think.
- From a business perspective, it has negative ROI vs. existing methods.
- From a general user perspective, it's overly complicated, and not cheap either.

It's a tinker project. It's for a person that likes to take apart toasters, not the person wanting to make toast for breakfast.

[Gamma_Man]

My "knowledge" of VHS decode amounts to this. A VHS VCR has to be "tapped" to access data direct from the video head and bypass the VCR circuit boards and external TBC. I saw this photo:-
https://www.videohelp.com/softwareimages/vhs_decode_1907-2.jpg
If the Doomsday Duplicator device is taken out of the equation, what does the other side of the cable connect to ? There seems to be mention of a BNC connector, but I don't think capture cards take BNC connectors ? Also, the same question for audio, does it go from a VCR tap point to...a phono connector(s) direct into a capture card ? Then just download the software and good to go ?

[harrypm]

My "knowledge" of VHS decode amounts to this. A VHS VCR has to be "tapped" to access data direct from the video head and bypass the VCR circuit boards and external TBC.

Always go to the wiki for images, information and current details will not be kept updated on this thread we have moved to r/vhsdecode.

It's the FM RF Archival workflow, it captures the source FM RF signals from the headswitch/tracking stage or directly after basic pre-amplifcation, the output of the VCR is baseband, there is baseband video such as composite and there is audio, but if its linear its direct if its HiFi its FM modualted so its processed, the capture workflow captures these FM signals before they get converted.


The "data" on file is just like audio files from a microphone in PCM digital samples, you can littorally open it in a audio DAW and see each field and frame of the signal.


[Attachment 85022 - Click to enlarge]

Then its software time base corrected, sampled to 4fsc so the full signal frame all 625-lines for PAL or all 525-lines for NTSC including any data such as closed captions, timecode teletext anything and everything is saved and presented for post-processing, and the video can be then converted to YUV digital video files with tbc-video-export with a nice range of properly flagged FFmpeg profiles ready for anything standard tool wise.

Now the RF Tapping is fairly simple for VCRs they all have standard test points. (read the hardware install guide on the wiki for full context here)

It's just signal off the test points or head amplifyer module, and then ground to standard VCR ground.


[Attachment 85023 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 85024 - Click to enlarge]

-------

And it is stupid simple for Hi8/Digital8 camcorders and outher decks with headders.


[Attachment 85025 - Click to enlarge]

It has been expanded on thanks to dedicated amplifyers which levels out that diffrence between decks even more so.


[Attachment 85026 - Click to enlarge]


Now for context, this is mainly combined into a streamlined workflow today called the clockgen mod, and the MISRC that superseeds the DomesDay Duplictor for usage on formats like VHS for example, which is a multi channel format 2 RF paths for Video/HiFi, ware as Video8/Hi8/LaserDisc however are a single channel capture format for there Video/HiFi audio (in simple terms, there is factors to each format) so we have with current capture 2x RF and 2x Baseband for your RCA auidio output for Linear and or for a hardware output copy of the decoded HiFi audio, on pro decks this expands to 4x baseband for 2x linear and 2x hifi support.


All setup and done, the capture workflow is as simple as one comman to use for the CX Cards a 120USD or less setup on linux, but the CX Cards and clockgen now work on windows too.

./local-capture.sh --add-date --video=0 --hifi=1 --convert-linear TAPE-NAME-HERE

*Hit Enter* and then *Hit q* to start and stop, then its off to decode workflow.

Same for the MISRC capture workflow (Windows/Linux) for 2x RF automatically compressed to FLAC and 1-2 ADCs on the AUX lines for normal audio capture.

misrc_capture -p -f -a video_rf.flac -b hifi_rf.flac -x baseband_audio.bin

[aramkolt]

There's a new video description of the process by ShortCircuit which is a Linus Media Group channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOq7BRDHPBs

I still think there's a possibility that the DD gives top tier results , but then they proceed to use an AG1980 (which to me doesn't look to be appropriately refurbished as there's lots of chroma noise that is typical for an AG1980 needing a recap), and they also compare it to a composite capture when the machine supports S-Video. Looks like they did that composite capture with an Elgato video capture that is starved for bitrate (I think the default is 2.3Mbit/s). They then also display it in the wrong aspect ratio when they show their very short test samples.

So needless to say, I'm generally unimpressed by the comparison which is not a fair one. You'd think with all those millions of dollars and subscribers that they could make a better comparison video than that.

I'd post a response video of a traditional capture of the same scene of Mrs. Doubtfire with a refurbished AG1980, but it wouldn't get any views haha. The loudest voice with the most followers is the one that gets heard.

[dellsam34]

Well let's wait for the MISRC and go from there, I will post unbiased comparisons if I get one.

[Brad]

I'm back, with an initial comparison!

These were captured simultaneously.

The vhs-decode toolchain defaults to 10-bit 760x488. I exported 8-bit 760x486 instead. I could have manually adjusted the levels and hue a bit before exporting, but I decided to share the automatic output.

Both files are FFV1, to save as much server space and download time as possible. They can be opened with VirtualDub2.

Mitsubishi HV-BS890 should be good, Can you use it for both methods? I read about 629TBC feature, Anyway, don't you have to compensate for the Japanese IRE levels when playing back US NTSC tapes?

Here are the available picture settings, BTW.

画質 = gashitsu = Image Quality

• modes are:
  • 標準 = hyōjun = Standard
  • ワイド = waido = Wide
  • ダビング = dabingu = Dubbing
  • NR

色ずれ = Color Shift

• choices are:
  • 標準 = hyōjun = Standard
  • 1 through 5, both positive and negative

Settings for this sample:

• Image Quality: Standard
• Color Shift: Standard
• 629TBC: On
• 3DNR: Off

Avisynth script to help compare them.

JP  = LWLibavVideoSource("ReBoot Medusa INTERPOL - HV-BS890 =YC= ATI 600 (110-32-64-32-0).mkv").ConvertToYV24()
DdD = LWLibavVideoSource("rebootmedusa_hv-bs890_minicoax_smabnc_gain3_snr40.5.mkv").ConvertToYV24().Crop(1,5,-0,-1).AddBorders(0,0,4,0).LanczosResize(720,480).Levels(6,1.0,245,0,255,coring=false,dither=true).Tweak(sat=1.1,hue=4,coring=false)


Interleave(JP,DdD)
#StackHorizontal(JP,DdD)

[lollo]

Finally the first serious attempt to compare VHS decode and our standard flow. I'll take all the time tomorrow to check. Thanks Brad for sharing you expertize with us, highly appreciated!

edit: I could not resist tonight and start watching briefly rigth now. On the text part I prefere the ATI USB 600, on the CGI the vhs-decode seems sharper, and with "more defined" details, maybe recoverable on the USB 600 capture with some AviSynth filtering. I'll have a better check tomorrow.

Can you also provide a comparison using "standard" material and not animation? Thanks as always!