Deter's AG-1980 Repair Service

[Alwyn]

I don't agree. Most of the tapes I digitise (home made and commercial) are all fine, they transfer well and look good on a big TV. Yes, you need a line-TBC thingee/DVD Recorder to straighten it up but otherwise, it looks good.

As for making VHS 16:9, why would you do that? I see plenty of "old" video played in 4:3.

Do you need to spend ~$1000 on a whiz-bang VCR repair? I'd like to see a comparison between a run-of-the-mill JVC and one of these refurbed jobs.

[Deter]

Obviously it is in the eyes of the beholder and at the end of the day a matter of opinion. However the trained eye is the most valuable asset to the video restorer and once you can see things, mainly spot the errors that is the 1st step to fix or to remove or mitigate the problem.

If you have a faulty car engine, your car is not going to run proper or run at all. You have to pay for the service and skilled labor to get it fixed. It than costs thousands of dollars and than your brakes don't work and your rotors are bad and you need new struts and shocks. You just ran up a massive bill at the car shop. You can repair it yourself or scream I have no problems with my Ford Focus why do I need a BMW X5.

With the AG Units Panasonic used a bad string of capacitors and resistors so overtime they need to be replaced and in most cases the Y/C needs to be rebuilt than you have many other maintenance related problems. Once you start messing with these boards inside these units it very easy to than screw them up and cause more problems and even permanently wreck the machine.

A run of the mill JVC deck does not cut it when it comes to playing these tapes back. If you use JVC you need top of the line.

If you are watching old boxing matches on YouTube, upconvert HD 16:9 full screen VHS or Betacam video recorded from a professional VCR with the overscan removed, looks a heck of a lot better on the computer than someones 4:3 crappy VHS recording with overscan lines on their $40 VCR.

[ShaneJensen]

I just looked at the listing again, I was mistaken about the heads. Little mandela effect here. The heads were not replaced. Here's the description.

Panasonic AG-1980 P S-VHS Editing Proline VCR TBC.




**** FREE SHIPPING ****

***Check my feedback on these VCRS***


This AG-1980 has been recently inspected and serviced:

Inspected/Cleaned re lubricated all moving parts

eg: capstan/pinch roller/loading motor coupling /mode switch

transport mechanism timed and phased for reliable

loading and ejection of VHS tape

All capacitors checked and replaced where needed on Main board,

All NEW PANASONIC CAPACITORS on Video board

Recapped Display board, BRIGHT DISPLAY !!

Color/Sound is excellent, Crisp Clear Vibrant picture quality!!

This AG-1980P has been tested for the following functions:

Power On/Power Off/ Play/Rewind/Fast Forward/TBC/

JOG (frame by frame)/ Pause/ Sound/Color and Load and Eject,

no other functions were tested

cosmetically in excellent condition, with a few light scuffs,

Note: a hairline scratch on the display len, (see photos)

no dents or cracks on this unit

included with purchase: power cord and BNC connector

this unit is a great buy at this price!!

FREE SHIPPING IN CONTINENTAL USA ONLY


***Check my feedback on these VCRS***

feel free to contact me with any questions

thanks for looking

The fellow made a private YouTube video for me demonstrating it and showing the serial number. I do understand your skepticism. I was as well, but I am also desperate to get this project finished. It was an older fellow. I'm thinking probably retired from the same line of work you're in, Deter.

All those quality details you mention actually make no difference to me. These are 30+ to almost 40 year old tapes of television recordings, most of them recorded with EP or SLP mode. A lot of these tapes have a lot of taring and ripples and other glitches anyway. There is no such thing as getting a perfect picture from these tapes. Any of those color shift, or blue shift, or whatever it was you said above... I'm looking over your messages again real quick, but can't find it again. (My stupid ADHD) My eyes do not notice that. I just go by what looks good to me, especially considering the source. I just want to digitize and archive what I have so that I can get rid of most of these television VHS tapes off my shelf. What I do notice is that the playback results are way better than any results I got with any other VCR. The players I already had were just terrible and had tracking issues that I have way less with this Panasonic.

I'll take what I can get.

Thankfully all of my home video VHS tapes were already digitized years ago.

Lastly, I'm not burning things to DVD or Blueray anymore. I just keep them as DV AVI files on my large hard drives and duplicated backup hard drives. Then I have the option if I want to render them to MP4 or not. But they play great on my LCD screens. Both TV and computer monitors. They look better than they originally did on my old players. At least that's what my eyes tell me. I don't think I can get any better results than what I'm doing. With 30+ to 40 year old television VHS tapes, it's honestly not worth it. I'm just saving them for reference. But the tracking issues with my other VCRs were unbearable. The cost and hassle of getting this Panasonic was worth it and seems to be working great.

But you bring up a lot of valid points, Deter. You are a professional and your opinions and advice are valuable. So thank you very much for your responses.

[Alwyn]

I reckon I know who that is.

[Deter]

The JVC MV5 has a mpeg2 soft coder so you basically get the best looking video that pretty much looks just like what was played on the VCR. In FR-80 mode you basically don't get macroblocking in the picture. No need to create AVI files or to deal with interlacing problems or massive file size. Lord Smurf taught me all this stuff 15 years ago.

I personally do not like the mp4 container even through that is what is pretty much used in streaming videos the mpeg2 ac-3 container has a much better end result if you max out the bit-rates and code to basically FR-80 mode which is 1h 25 minutes on a DVD.

All my videos from my I-phone's the final render is coded to mpeg2 never mp4. it is a night and day difference.

The quality loss in the picture is easy to spot once your eye is trained and than video digital artifacts as well.

Than again the mpeg2 coder or program you use is very important because some programs will render with lots of unwanted digital artifacts.

What does this have to do with VHS?

The end goal is to get very little to no loss of quality on your final render which if done correct will look like it is being played live on the VCR. If you are really good you are also able to jazz up the picture with video software adjustments or extra hardware equipment to even improve on that.

What I provided to this community was what Lord Smurf taught me early on. In digitizing VHS, you wanted the best playback of these tapes from the source. By fully fixing these AG-1980p units this part of the process can be done.

[lollo]

The end goal is to get very little to no loss of quality on your final render which if done correct will look like it is being played live on the VCR.

Then capture lossless, process the file, and render to h264 with low CRF. MPEG2 is way out inferior method. Although not needed, because everybody knows that, a sample of comparison here: https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/12740-current-capture-device-3.html

[ShaneJensen]

I'm definitely keeping the raw DV AVI captures from the Canopus ADVC-300 capture box. They are big files, but mostly lossless. Definitely better than the MP4.

[lollo]

I'm definitely keeping the raw DV AVI captures from the Canopus ADVC-300 capture box. They are big files, but mostly lossless. Definitely better than the MP4.

If you dot plan any restoration, being already (DV) compressed file you can keep as they are (but not all TV/Players can read DV).

If you pan to apply some processing (even for just masking/removing the head switching noise) you need to decompress the DV stream, so at the end of the filtering better to compress back to h264, much much better codec in term of quality than DV for the same bitrate (or lossless if size is not an issue for you, but same limitations for TV/Players as DV apply).

[Deter]

We are talking about VHS tapes, so why do you need an AVI file?

I went and looked at that thread from 2013 and only skimmed it but downloaded that weird church video. What is that of? For some reason I watched that before and have no idea why or were it was from.

The Mp4 h264 are not good quality renders in my opinion so I am sticking what is on the DVD's and that is mpeg2 and I have no idea what you mean by "is way out inferior method."

[lollo]

We are talking about VHS tapes, so why do you need an AVI file?

avi is just a container, what matters is the codec in use. A lossless codec is better/more appropriate for a VHS capture, especially if a restoration is planned.

The Mp4 h264 are not good quality renders in my opinion so I am sticking what is on the DVD's and that is mpeg2 and I have no idea what you mean by "is way out inferior method."

If you already have a mpeg2 file there is no point in converting it. The comparison is between a lossy mpeg2 capture and restoration versus a lossless approach

[dellsam34]

What does this have to do with VHS?

The end goal is to get very little to no loss of quality on your final render which if done correct will look like it is being played live on the VCR. If you are really good you are also able to jazz up the picture with video software adjustments or extra hardware equipment to even improve on that.

What I provided to this community was what Lord Smurf taught me early on. In digitizing VHS, you wanted the best playback of these tapes from the source. By fully fixing these AG-1980p units this part of the process can be done.

That was 20 years ago when MPEG-2 was needed due to HDD limited storage, but now with HDD storage is not an issue you want to capture lossless, De-interlace, crop or mask, resize to 1440x1080, restore if needed, all in lossless, Then encode to a much more efficient codec such as h.264 or h.265 for offline playback or archival. If you don't need the master lossless SD files you can delete them along the temporary HD lossless files to relieve HDD space. VCR playback and capturing is still the same, just the software side has improved.

In your particular case, you have to see if recapturing in lossless yields better results than the MPEG-2 files you have already captured when tapes were in better condition.

[lollo]

In your particular case, you have to see if recapturing in lossless yields better results than the MPEG-2 files you have already captured when tapes were in better condition.

Good point. The degradation of the tapes after 20 years must be low/insignificant, such that the advantage of a new capture with a lossless approach today is not cancelled.

[dellsam34]

I have a particular family video VHS tape that I have a capture of it in DV 17 years ago when it was pristine, I could not get any VCR to play it back today without a nasty frame roll, Sometimes it is not just about video quality, it's about stability issues too.

[Deter]

dellsam34, I am now an old-timer so I am set in my ways. However I shoot a lot of video from my I-Phones sometimes the videos have problems for whatever reason and I have to recode them. One of the programs I have is Mercalli 6, stand alone you have export to mp4 h.264, I notice the degraded video in seconds. Because I had motion problems and other problems with smooth video went to 60 frames per second to record stuff. Back to being an Old-timer, all my final videos are 29.97 frame rates. Yeah the mpeg 2 has some video artifacts it is not really too noticeable and these are all source HD videos.

On the VHS and Betamax stuff, the method which I developed which took me about 2 1/2 years to master, the results are as good as I need them to be.

[Deter]

This is a sample of what my VHS end products looks like.

[Deter]

The was an SLP tape from 1993 and it does have some picture tearing this broadcast was recorded from an AG-1980 back in 2012 and I used a Panasonic EZ27 as passthrough with the dark levels on and recorded it to a JVC MV5.

[Deter]

This one was duplicated from the master Betcam tape when your this close to the source this was pretty much what it looked like on TV back in 1977.

[dellsam34]

I totally get you, Sometimes the extra quality is not worth the hassle, I've also set a method described in post #161 which I got good at, It doesn't require a lot of my presence except when I set something up, then go do other things. I'm not a total nut though, I don't do a lot of restoration, I like the look of the original video, plus noise makes the compression algorithm work harder avoiding bending in otherwise smooth areas of the picture due to noise reduction and excessive smoothing.

[lollo]

If you are happy with the captures, fine; but they could have been better with a lossless approach, that’s the point

[Deter]

Here is an example of the 16:9 Slightly cropped HD Upconvert for PC and Online viewing aka YouTube videos.

Panasonic AG-1980p to MV5 to VOB2MPG v3 to DVDPatcher_v106 to Video Editor

[Deter]

This is the final example, everything is in sync you have no audio / video issues, nothing was done to this picture other than playing on the AG-1980 and recording to the MV5, the video also handles all the extreme fast past motion and you have no video artifacts. Finally this video uses my chroma keying cropping method which many of the purest around here don't like.

[Deter]

GoldenEye Promo 1995

[Alwyn]

You should at least have cropped that to 16:9; currently the actual video would probably display on 2/3 of the width of a normal/wide screen. So a re-encode would be necessary (unless you like using the TV zoom controls...).

[Deter]

Alwyn,

I recorded this today, if I wanted to watch the revised remastered HD version of Goldfinger I can rent it for $3.99 from Comcast. Using this video as an example and when I got to the cropping could have masked out the overscan or cut the overscan out. When your are dealing with youtube videos in my opinion, full screen VHS cropped out like this looks better than a 4:3 with overscan.

I built my own DVR years ago
TV VHS videos that are coded mpeg2 which are my final copies for me are always 4:3 with the overscan left in.

TV Zoom almost never gets it right.

[Alwyn]

Fair enough.

[johnmeyer]

Deter, those are some great captures! I have the Sunday Masters on in the background (Rory has it in the bag unless he duplicates what you showed in that Greg Norman clip).

One question: did you leave the sharpening function turned on? I think on most Panasonic decks you have to turn ON "edit" in order to turn OFF sharpening. I ask because on that Norman clip, there sure is a lot of white around the edges, something that is typical of how VHS sharpening circuits work.

[edit]Just after I hit "send," Rory blew the 4-shot lead. Yikes!

[aramkolt]

I do think MPEG2 is an interesting format mainly if you want something viewable with relatively small file size and limited steps after capture and if you treat it as its more of a space saving/delivery format. Jwillis84 used to post quite a bit about various DVD/HDD recorders and how he was rather impressed with the quality of certain machines. Since I value his opinion quite a bit, I've been diving into that rabbit hole recently. One of my main curiosities is how some of those HDD recordings do against say a lossless or ProRes422 capture that is then later converted to MPEG2 in software. Either way, I could see doing simultaneous captures with an HDD recorder at the same time as doing the more bitrate-intensive captures since there's really no harm.

I made a post yesterday on the topic over at digitalFAQ based on a capture from 2006 that someone did on the machine I acquired: https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/15077-hdd-recorders-quality.html

The sample there takes up roughly the same space as what an elgato video capture would. My guess is that viewing-and-listening-wise the HDD MPEG capture should look a lot better though.

Eventually I'll post comparison captures of the highest bitrate the XS34 can do (it's 8000kbps or 9200kbps depending whether using digital audio or not) against lossless, ProRes422, ProRes422 converted to MPEG2 at the same bitrate, and the Elgato video capture just for fun.

I hadn't really considered HDD recorders before because it sounded pretty annoying to have to go get files off of the IDE HDDs inside, but I came across some other threads that showed they often can be converted to using SATA drives or even IDE to SD card adapters in some cases and those are much easier to relocate outside of the case like the attachment shows.

[Deter]

johnmeyer, The Norman tape was from the 1993 PGA recorded in SLP mode but I do have 96 Masters 3rd and 4th rounds and yes Rory tried to self destruct several times. I listened to a Pádraig Harrington podcast after the event and he basically said Rory had to win the tournament like 3 times over.

That PGA tape had a lot of picture ripping & tearing and that was done like 12 or 13 years ago. Most of my early stuff is all Betamax which is a blessing and besides the oxide dropouts on many of my old tapes, Betamax has a much better picture.

[Deter]

Back to the AG-1980 repair jobs, I got 9 in the shop I can take on a few more but that is going to be it for the rest 2025. So PM my account if you want your AG 1980 refurbished, the window is going to close soon.

[johnmeyer]

Deter, I don't know how you have the patience to do the work. I just recapped the main board in a Sony 8mm camcorder, and dealing with those surface-mount caps is painful. I found, online, the trick of twisting them off, so that helped, and I had enough room that I was able to use regular radial caps for the replacements, which made soldering easier, but it was still a lot of small stuff in tight spaces. I'm getting read to finally fix the audio output stage in a 1962 Wollensak tape recorder and operating on that is like working in a gymnasium instead of a tiny kitchen cupboard filled with dishes.

Best of luck with your work!