Kitchen-table digitisation station: cable soup question re: U-Matic/VHS rig

[lemur-av]

I am writing with some equipment questions that have come up through a digitisation project I am starting up at a library in England. I've been doing some work kitting out a basic workstation for the conversion of some old magnetic tape collections: at the moment we're looking at VHS and U-matic, with the eventual goals of finding a Beta deck to add to the setup. For now everything just about fits on a single desk: a Mac Mini for capture; an A-D converter (BlackMagic UltraStudio Mini); a nice old Sony PVM monitor in good working order; and two high-end playback decks - a Sony BVU-800(-P!) U-Matic deck, & a Sony SVO-5800P for video. I've also rescued a consumer-grade deck that I hope will come in useful as an alternative & when confronting LP tapes. I have loved following some of the discussion on VideoHelp & DigitalFAQ, especially around TBCs - I think if it wasn't for some of the guidance here I'd have sunk some of our limited funds into some kind of pseudo-corrector that wouldn't help with U-Matic signal decoding, & instead I've got some eBay watchlist tips to keep an eye on. I am very grateful to be able to eavesdrop on everyone's best practice discussions.

I am struggling to get our machines fully kitted out with the cabling they'll need for connection between the hardware (monitor -> VHS/U-M) as well as connections to the converter & computer - I'm OK on the equipment side, & can't wait to start fine-tuning our capture, but always feel like I'm short of the Electrical Current Math necessary to tell apart different cables, or correctly identify what I want while looking through cable catalogues. I've had great help from the Cable Bible online, & no trouble running the machines into the monitor through a BNC -> RCA cable (with adapter on the monitor end), but hoped someone could provide some guidance on the connectors I'd need for the following pathways, mainly with BNC outs (pictures of the decks are attached below!):

1. U-Matic out to BlackMagic - we don't have a dub cable, so I think this is likely a single BNC out (from the UM 'Video Out 1' socket) that splits into a three-jack component cable.
2. VHS out to BlackMagic: triple BNC out, triple BNC connectors to the BM
3. Audio out between the same machines (UM -> BM; VHS -> BM): there is two-channel audio input on the BM, so I'm assuming I'll need two separate XLR outs from the decks, with whatever kind of jack fits the BM.

I have been going round in circles on some (British) cable websites, looking for cables that fit the bill - could anyone point me to a link for these leads? It doesn't have to be UK based, but knowing the specific model or spec I'm looking for would help so I can track one down over here. If I can use separate BNC -> BNC cables instead of glued-together 3:3 composite cables, I have some 75 ohm coaxial leads on hand.

Extremely grateful for any pointers, & enormous thanks from the UK for building up such a body of knowledge here.
Mark

[dellsam34]

I'm not too sure if you are making the right decision with that BlackMagic UltraStudio Mini, Yes it has a thunderbolt that might work with MAC if it is a data port and not a display port but as far as VHS and uMatic sources I don't know if it was designed for those signals since it lacks TBC, You could always try if you already have the card. I think since you are based in the UK it is easier for you to find one of those Snell & Wilcox analog to SDI boxes, It has all the features that make the capture of any source stable, such as 3D comb filter for composite input, line TBC and frame TBC, DNR ...etc. I'm not too sure about MAC as a capture platform either, though never used MAC.

[orsetto]

One crucial point that might need to be confirmed:

The stock Sony SVO-5800 was not sold with the component video outputs actually operational: while the three component BNC connectors are pre-installed on all the 5600/5800 VCRs, the internal video circuitry required to actually produce and feed the component signal to the component connectors was offered as an optional feature on an accessory daughtercard that fits into the rearmost dedicated expansion slot of the unit. The vast majority of surviving Sony 5600/5800 do not have this optional component circuit board installed, and it is impossible to find now as an accessory.

If you have not already done so, check to be certain the optional component video daughtercard is installed, and you are getting a signal at the component taps, before investing in a triple cable for that connection. If you do not have that component daughtercard inside your 5800, the best stock connection it has available would be the S-Video output. If you do have the daughtercard installed, it doesn't require a dedicated joined triple-wire BNC cable: you can use three ordinary BNC cables. A joined cable might be more convenient to handle, but isn't a technical requirement.

For the audio outputs you might need XLR balanced to RCA phono (or 1/4", 1/8" or sub-mini phone plug) unbalanced passive adapter cables if your capture device does not have XLR inputs. I find the 5800/5600 outputs compatible with most decent-quality passive adapter cables: I've never noticed any audio quality degradation that would prompt me to try more complex active adapter cables. Note the 5800 does not have an audio output switch: you must connect directly to the audio jacks that tap into the audio tracks you want to capture (HiFi or linear). The two back panel XLR pairs are labeled as HiFi and HiFi/Linear: the HiFi set will only play the HiFi track, the other pair is connected to linear by default but can be changed to an extra pair of HiFi taps by changing a setting in the VCR function menu.

[dellsam34]

S-Video (Y-C) is the highest he could get in terms of quality from tape formats, Processing Y-C to get component in the analog domain is an extra step that could lead to further signal degradation especialy with the age of that machine and the state of the capacitors in it, I would actually remove the compoenent board even if it's there.

So for the S-VHS machine he would need a 4 pin DIN S-Video to BNC cable, for the uMatic composite just a straight 75 ohm BNC to BNC, Audio depends on the 1/4 sockets on that black magic box, If they are balanced (2 sleeve, one tip) he needs two 1/4 "B" to XLR cables, If they are unbalanced (1 sleeve, one tip) he would need two 1/4 "U" to XLR cables.

Links are for presentation purposes, not a recommendation.

[orsetto]

S-Video (Y-C) is the highest he could get in terms of quality from tape formats,

Agreed, but as lemur-av requested buying advice for cables to use the 5800 component outputs, I just wanted to prompt confirming that the component feature was actually enabled before pursuing that path. The PAL versions of Sony SVO-5800 and SVP-5600 tend to have aged in surprisingly good condition vs similar contemporary Panasonic and JVC models: its rare for the capacitors etc to be bad on these. Sony seems to have opted for more carefully chosen caps at the time, and included an updated but bog-standard frame TBC vs the (in retrospect) overly ambitious, multi-featured, but horribly unreliable electronic proc amp TBCs deployed by Panasonic/JVC. The maintenance "gotchas" of the Sony 5800 are more mechanical in nature, i.e. the pinch roller wears out rather quickly but is inexplicably tedious and difficult to replace.

The spec pages for BlackMagic UltraStudio Mini are a bit convoluted and confusing. They claim both XLR balanced and 1/4" unbalanced audio in/out pairs are included, but illustrations show only a single set of in/out 1/4" phone pairs on the back panel and a solitary XLR mic input on the front (there seem to be several model configurations, perhaps I'm looking at the wrong one).

[oln]

S-Video (Y-C) is the highest he could get in terms of quality from tape formats, Processing Y-C to get component in the analog domain is an extra step that could lead to further signal degradation especialy with the age of that machine and the state of the capacitors in it, I would actually remove the compoenent board even if it's there.

For direct output that is true. However if that is true here depends, the TBC will demodulate the color to digital component internally, so if the Component comes directly from the TBC unit (which it might), Y/C from the same place would actually involve more conversions.
EDIT: Anyhow that doesn't seem to be the case here so Y/C is probably preferred.

[lemur-av]

I am delighted to read all of this - thank you to you all for such prompt & comprehensive responses. Orsetto, I had no idea about the component card, despite having looked through some of the contemporaneous catalogues of extra boards you could trick out your unit with (I seem to remember this was the easiest way to smuggle a TBC into one of the similar models). I'll check to see whether there's a daughtercard next week - happy to proceed with S-Video regardless but very curious to see how it's set up, it's wild thinking the ports maybe just don't connect to anything. I really appreciate the extra notes about the 8500 more generally, envisaging it might not be too long before we have to confront maintenance & repair; I'm still slightly kicking myself for picking out a BVU-800 instead of a -950 when searching for U-Matics, having heard similar praise about their extra solidity & various perks, but it's great to think the 8500 might be sturdier than some of the other decks that are still circulating.

Thank you dellsam34 for the notes about S-Video & the incredible cable recommendations - this is exactly what I was hoping for, having previously come undone trying to cover the competing possibilities of one- or three-pronged out cables feeding into the two- or three-jack BlackMagic ports. Too many combinations!, for me at least. I'll try to get setup today in the hopes I can get everything connected next week (the most exciting purchase during this process has been some eBay-sourced Disney VHS to facilitate further calibration - apologies in advance for my next post & its Fox and the Hound copyright infringement content). There will be another round of problem solving once I'm at the signal capture stage, with time correction on the U-matic being something of a concern with no Sync device & no TBC (TY for your 2¢, Oln - I'm definitely wary of getting too ambitious running the signal through too many steps), but I'm excited to have everything wired up with all your help.

Have to agree about the slight fuzziness with the BM documentation - there are a few similar models with slightly different components, but it isn't easy to tell which is which; if I end up with further queries I'll send a snap of the actual interface. I'm very interested to hear about the Snell machine but am feeling OK, fingers crossed, about proceeding with the UltraStudio once it's set up - for what it's worth I'm following in the footsteps of a few other Library digitisation stations that have sprung up in the last five years, like the DCPL Memory Lab, with its generously transcribed list of equipment, & leaning on a few other Library/Archive-published documents like this one from UCLA. It has been a good learning experience so far & I'm hoping we can shift some of our unique content off its carriers before it's too late.

[dellsam34]

Those are among the best equipment for such a task in those two links, I can summarize workflows into 3 categories depends on the gear used:


[Attachment 60633 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 60634 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 60635 - Click to enlarge]

[orsetto]

I really appreciate the extra notes about the 8500 more generally, envisaging it might not be too long before we have to confront maintenance & repair

My remarks about the 5800 maintenance quirks were not intended to cause anxiety over impending breakdowns: apologies if I gave that impression. My aim was to highlight the fact the 5600/5800 electronics (caps esp) have proven notably more durable vs same-era, similar Panasonic and JVC studio models (for that matter, the 5600/5800 are significantly more reliable than other Sonys, too). Every mfr occasionally pops out a model or two that is better designed and built than usual: in Sony's case, the 5600/5800 was their high water mark in SVHS. Those of us in the VHS game for decades were a bit astonished by this, as generally Sony VCRs are not what anyone would describe as "reliable".

The "mechanical" maintenance considerations can be a bit ambiguous when using the 5600/5800 for transfer work today, vs the studio work they were intended for 23 years ago. Sony had unusually strict, near-draconian maintenance advisories for these VCRs (recommended parts replacement cycle for pinch roller and head drum was at least twice the rate of comparable VCRs). The trick is parsing those strict advisories in terms of how they apply to practical use of the 5800 today.

The official Sony service intervals are designed to keep the 5800 at its theoretical peak of performance, which when playing good quality tapes can be extraordinary indeed (I've never seen better). But that peak performance envelope was optimized for studio use with professionally produced video, not the sideshow circus of hugely varying recordings we're typically trying to archive today. For our purposes, the difference between a 5800 operating at 100% vs say 85% would be undetectable. 100% performance can only be sustained for a short period of time before an expensive overhaul is required to retain it, while once the deck settles down to 85% it won't degrade further for a very long time. And a 5800 performing at 85% still outperforms many other VCRs at 100%.

In any case, parts and service for this type of pro VCR are near impossible to find now so the point is effectively moot. One occasionally sees new head drums offered for sale, but I've rarely spotted a pinch roller or belt. I would say much depends on the condition of the 5800 when you received it. If it seems clean inside, the drum odometer in the function menu reads fairly low (2000 hrs or less), and video performance is satisfactory: you probably need not worry about tuning it up for quite awhile, perhaps until your project is finished.

If the odometer reads high (more than 5000 hours), the pinch roller seems out of round, or the video shows intermittent tracking issues or other symptoms, your 5800 might need a tuneup or parts swap before your project is completed. Use your own judgement to evaluate performance: no two VCRs are the same. I've seen low-miles minty 5800s with mediocre performance and beat-looking 5800s that have clearly never been serviced, with 9000 hrs ticked over, that play beautifully. If you feel your works well, use it and be happy (that's what I'm doing).

[lordsmurf]

Another thread created due to using the wrong tools. Let's tell you where you went wrong...

NO= old pro/broadcast VCR to play consumer VHS tapes
YES= prosumer S-VHS VCR (best with line TBC) to play consumer video tapes

NO= Blackmagic for VHS
YES= Blackmagic for HD (not SD consumer tape formats)
YES= SD card for SD consumer tapes like VHS

@dellsam, where did you get, or where/how make, those workflow images? Those images need some massaging (ie, difference between line/frame TBC), but could surely add to a workflow, so show people what "complex" actually means (ie, those workflows you shows are really very basic, nothing fancy)

[dellsam34]

They meant to be very basic diagrams that represent general ideas of workflows, There are dozens of hardware manufacturers and model numbers, there is no need to be specific.

[orsetto]

NO= old pro/broadcast VCR to play consumer VHS tapes

Usually true, but it depends on the recording quality of the tapes, the specific "broadcast" model in question, and whether having a good built in frame TBC is is more practical/affordable/attainable than a good working external frame TBC. Some "pro" VCRs in the JVC BR-S line have exclusive features like HiFi switching noise elimination that may be more critical to some tapes than the standard features of our default non-pro JVC VCRs. Of course a "pro" SVHS deck will not usually suffice as the sole VCR in a capture system: their SP-only limitation shuts out LP and EP tapes. If they break down, timely repairs can be impossible to obtain. Visual defects common to many consumer-recorded tapes do require the specialized line TBC and DNR corrections of a JVC DigiPure VCR or Panasonic NV-SF200. But at the right price, some "pro" models can be useful additions to our VCR racks.

The Sony 5600/5800 are not "old": they're among the last generation of studio SVHS offered. The color circuitry is exceptional, detail retrieval vs noise ratio outstanding, HiFi and video tracking abilities match the Panasonic AG-1980/FS200, the built-in frame TBC is so much more transparent than our usual external DataVideo option that going back to the DataVideo is disappointing. While somewhat scarce, occasionally these Sonys pop up in good condition for one-half to one-fourth the cost of a DataVideo TBC-1000 alone: for transferring a collection of SP-only tapes that aren't borderline quality, one could do a lot worse. But I would agree lemur-av will also need a JVC consumer PAL model with line TBC + DNR like HR-S8965EK: the JVC would be the workhorse, with existing Sony 5800 as alternative choice and backup VCR.

[lemur-av]

Thank you all for the extra info - it is great to have a sense of the slightly different equipment profiles suitable for different workflows. We are trying to split the difference as much as possible given the fairly wide spread of material we expect to deal with: on the U-Matic side we needed a backwards compatible player to accommodate a few different generations of tapes, & with video I'm sure we'll be switching between the Sony for tapes in better condition to one of our backup decks for the LP tapes we'll inevitably end up dealing with. I appreciate the diagnosis on the best gear for each scenario!, even if we've diverged from what makes the most sense - we won't know how suitable the gear is til we're done surveying what we have (which has been one of the biggest holdups on getting started with Beta - I know there's a very nice all-format Beta deck that crops up on eBay but at the moment I have no idea if our stash is Beta/Betamax/DigiBeta/MPEG IMX...). Extra shoutout to Lordsmurf for jumping in here - the most conspicuous gap in our workflow, per Dellsam's diagrams, is a dedicated TBC; this is still on our eventual equipment wishlist & I am incredibly grateful for the resources you've put together over at DFAQ to guide us through the decisions. DPC scarcity has been probably the gloomiest part of the process so far, just a very grim landscape for someone looking to acquire equipment in 2021, & I'm slightly pessimistic about what our options will look like if we end up with anything more serious than cosmetic friction between the signal & the receiver.

Thank you to Orsetto for the perspective - I promise this wasn't too sobering!, it's just easy to overthink what were for us quite large purchases (FWIW we managed to cover the decks - UM, pro-VHS & two backup consumer grade decks for under £1000). Your analysis of the service landscape & long-term maintenance horizon is incredibly helpful & I will keep it in mind - I don't want to run any of our machines into the ground but am looking forward to giving them some playing time. As soon as I'd hooked our U-Matic deck up to the monitor & got a good image on the other side I was thrilled to have at least found a working machine, which didn't feel guaranteed having waded through a lot of eBay ads with minimal description ("Condition: Used"). I am filing this under using the machine & being happy - if we can get some good transfers it will all be worth it. Keep you all posted as things progress!

[dellsam34]

Reach out to Colin on YouTube he is in the same business, he does the repair of his own equipment by himself, he use to work on designing video equipment IC's back in the day according to some of his videos.

[energizerfellow]

U-Matic

You'll want a Dub Optimiser from Keystrobe for those U-matic tapes.

Also don't forget to set the skew control on your U-matic tapes. This is what the H/V offset/delay controls are for on a PVM/BVM, if you ever wondered.

S-Video (Y-C) is the highest he could get in terms of quality from tape formats,

Unfortunately the UltraStudio HD Mini only seems to support YPrPb component, near as I can tell. No YC S-video, nor CVBS composite. If the analog front-end chip was something like the ISL51002 or TVP7002 that wouldn't be surprising. Input labels on the box itself seem to indicate this as well. Almost certainly useless for anything older than super clean Betacam SP tapes.

And that's even before you get into the fact that all Blackmagic products across the board have lulz bad support for anything analog and/or interlaced and/or with unstable timing. See things like Amazon and B&H reviews where people take vectorscopes to the Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4K's analog input/output and prepare to laugh/cry at how bad they are. That's even before getting into how Blackmagic's devices (poorly) handle unstable sources, generally speaking. They don't even sell a TBC at all, of any kind, company-wide. Blackmagic as a company seem to treat analog as a line item checkbox filler and seemingly puts zero engineering effort into it.

Depending on how serious the quality goals and budget are, you're probably better off looking at Magewell or AJA and probably a separate 4/8-channel audio interface too (From somebody better than Behringer. If you got the budget for audio hardware from RME...). If you got institutional money, might as well end-game it with something like the Grass Valley ADVC G1 A or one of the big boy Kudos boxes with analog inputs on it. You'll also need an external sync source for these TBCs to reference from and correct to, which should also be run into the VCR/VTR and capture card if they have external sync inputs.

The spec pages for BlackMagic UltraStudio Mini are a bit convoluted and confusing. They claim both XLR balanced and 1/4" unbalanced audio in/out pairs are included, but illustrations show only a single set of in/out 1/4" phone pairs on the back panel and a solitary XLR mic input on the front (there seem to be several model configurations, perhaps I'm looking at the wrong one).

The confusion I think comes from 1/4" jacks/plugs being close to a universal format for balanced vs unbalanced. If you plug an unblanaced TR plug into a balanced TRS socket on the receiving end you'll just be pulling the minus side of the +/- balanced pair to ground, which is the proper way to handle the single-ended to balanced anyways. Female XLR to TRS male are the cables you want here.

[dellsam34]

Grass Valley took over Snell & Wilcox, Not sure if the ADVC G1 A is based on the previous half rack formats such as the TBS800 or it's their own design, It does support the SD version of the SDI not just 3G SDI as written in the spec: Output color format: YCbCr 4:2:2 10 bits (ITU-R BT.709/601) 10 bits (ITU-R BT.601 is in SD resolution), Which is good. Those can be had very cheap used on online auction sites.

[lordsmurf]

And that's even before you get into the fact that all Blackmagic products across the board have lulz bad support for anything analog and/or interlaced and/or with unstable timing. See things like Amazon and B&H reviews where people take vectorscopes to the Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4K's analog input/output and prepare to laugh/cry at how bad they are. That's even before getting into how Blackmagic's devices (poorly) handle unstable sources, generally speaking. They don't even sell a TBC at all, of any kind, company-wide. Blackmagic as a company seem to treat analog as a line item checkbox filler and seemingly puts zero engineering effort into it.

Good summary.

The most damning aspect is dropping frames, and not reporting the drops. You're putting blind trust in the BM card, and that trust is misplaced. You'll get random black frames, if not dropped. It's an afterthought feature, and piss-poor at that. Worse yet, it still drops frames, and gives issues, even with a frame TBC to stabilize the signal. WTF?

I still remember when the BM card was announced at NAB, as seen in Broadcast Engineering (I had a sub for many years), and I had high hopes for it. These problems were caught almost immediately, many years ago, and yet people still cluelessly (stubbornly?) buy them. The card was a lost cause.

At one point, BM support was outright telling people to not use it for consumer analog formats. I guess the support desk was swamped with calls. (It reminds me of ATI, and their lousy ATI MMC defaults. They told callers to visit my site, and crashed it! At least the ATI AIW cards had a path to quality captures. With BM, you're just screwed.)

[dellsam34]

BlackMagic is only good for one task and that is converting digital SDI to USB 3.0 or thunderbolt, that's it. They became known to screw analog ingest (or they just don't care) from their Intensity Shuttle a $300 piece of junk.

[orsetto]

we won't know how suitable the gear is til we're done surveying what we have (which has been one of the biggest holdups on getting started with Beta - I know there's a very nice all-format Beta deck that crops up on eBay but at the moment I have no idea if our stash is Beta/Betamax/DigiBeta/MPEG IMX...).

Consumer Beta can be trickier to deal with all these years later vs VHS: despite its rapid decline in the mass market, Sony continued to flog that dead horse with additional format variations long after there was any significant demand. Some of these later variations were exclusive to NTSC regions, so wouldn't be a factor today in PAL regions like yours unless your project involves a stash of NTSC Beta tapes imported from other countries. If you eventually verify all your Beta tapes are PAL format, you won't need an "exotic" ED Betamax model: any common SuperBetaHiFi PAL model should suffice. If some of your Beta tapes are NTSC, you'll need a separate NTSC model Betamax, where again a common SuperBetaHiFi NTSC model should do it unless you're unlucky enough to be sitting on a stack of ED-Beta NTSC tapes. For more details, see this recent thread on the subject.

The separate "professional" Betacam formats veer off into their own multiple recording system variations (incompatible with consumer Beta vcrs) and two cassette sizes. If you identify any of your tapes as Betacam format, it may be best to farm those out to a commercial transfer service (unless you have a great many). I imagine you've already perused the Wiki listing the almost endless variations of Betacam: hardware acquisition may be challenging if your project spans more than a couple analog/digital/HD generations (never mind analog PAL and NTSC). While some later Betacam decks are remarkably backwards compatible, that compatibility isn't 100% for each model, and the most recent may be hard to find, pricey, or difficult to get serviced. Your plan to hold off on this part of the project until the very end seems wise.

[dellsam34]

Betacam HD decks are bloody expensive and the people holding onto them won't let go for reasonable prices, For SD Sony J3-SDI or J30-SDI should cover all SD Betacam formats. The difference between the two is that the 30 has a useless DV port, Both decks are equipped with digital SDI which is the preferred port for capturing, It has a nice line/frame TBC for analog tapes.

[energizerfellow]

Grass Valley took over Snell & Wilcox, Not sure if the ADVC G1 A is based on the previous half rack formats such as the TBS800 or it's their own design, It does support the SD version of the SDI not just 3G SDI as written in the spec: Output color format: YCbCr 4:2:2 10 bits (ITU-R BT.709/601) 10 bits (ITU-R BT.601 is in SD resolution), Which is good.

The Grass Valley ADVC G1/G1A boxes are the spiritual successor to ye olde Canopus boxes (GV also bought Canopus). They're pretty simple ADC utility boxes with just enough timing and scaling correction to keep modern SDI workflows happy. The newer "A" models have a consumer line-level audio input sensitivity setting and configurable dropout behavior, unlike the original pre-A G1.

GV's big rackmount Kudos MC/LC boxes are much more feature rich with things like proc amp, legalizer, 4+ audio channels, motion-adaptive scaling/rate conversion/deinterlacing, timecode, closed captioning, tons of DNR settings, detailer, Y/C alignment, etc. AviSynth in a box, basically. Kudos LC350 would be the modern replacement for the TBS800?

Depending on how much you want to do in post, you may be ahead to go with an AJA Kona LHi and its matching rackmount breakout box for a project like this if cost isn't much of a concern. The breakout box prevents mechanical wear on the card and breakout cable, plus the ease and mechanical support of a rack (you'll probably want at least a half-height rack for this project). These AJA capture cards also have RS-422 for VCR/VTR control, which AJA's Control Room supports, and is a major convivence on batch jobs (Control Room even has scripting support).

Otherwise you're looking at Magewell's cards like the Pro Capture HDMI / Pro Capture AIO, which are a bit of a DIY affair software-wise, The Matrox MXO2 line in its various forms is another option, but they've been out of production for some time now and don't have official driver support past Windows 8.1 / macOS 10.10.

I imagine you've already perused the Wiki listing the almost endless variations of Betacam: hardware acquisition may be challenging if your project spans more than a couple analog/digital/HD generations (never mind analog PAL and NTSC). While some later Betacam decks are remarkably backwards compatible, that compatibility isn't 100% for each model, and the most recent may be hard to find, pricey, or difficult to get serviced. Your plan to hold off on this part of the project until the very end seems wise.

As far as I know, all regular SD Betacam decks, up to and including MPEG IMX decks like the MSW-M2000/MSW-M2100**, can play/record all prior SD Betacam versions (Only some special cost-reduced variants were exceptions to this?). It's the HDCAM decks that dropped analog support and typically required option cards to support prior digital formats.

Only real downside to the newer digital decks I'm aware of is that the A/D circuit in them can freak out on certain analog tapes if they're rough enough. You'll want to keep around a classic analog deck or two for those, e.g. the the Sony UVW-1800/UVW-1800P.

** Add "P" for PAL. Later digital Betacam variants were NTSC/PAL switchable, but analog units were fixed NTSC/PAL. Video99 has a bit about what NTSC/PAL mismatch looks like and how to fix it.

For SD Sony J3-SDI or J30-SDI should cover all SD Betacam formats. The difference between the two is that the 30 has a useless DV port, Both decks are equipped with digital SDI which is the preferred port for capturing, It has a nice line/frame TBC for analog tapes.

Good option, but do be aware they can only play any two audio tracks at once, even over SDI, unlike the full-size VTRs that can do all 4/8 tracks in one shot. You can do multi-pass capture selecting different audio tracks each time and fixing in post, however. The Sony J-30SDI is also newer.

[energizerfellow]

Another thing to consider is sticking to PCIe and Thunderbolt. Your hardware options are better, bandwidth is better (deep color, etc), better reliability, etc. If you're planning on sticking with macOS or a laptop, Thunderbolt enclosures are in your future (I suggest Sonnett's Thunderbolt offerings). USB is the land of pain and tears for video, plus limited to only 8-bit color in virtually all cases due to the bandwidth limits of USB itself.

You'll also want to watch Video99's Brain dump from video transfer business: Tape problems & what can be done.

[dellsam34]

SDI to USB 3.0 or thunderbolt adapters are good too, less bulkier than enclosures. Yah I havn't done a USB 2.0 capture in years other than occasional testing.

[energizerfellow]

Other than the now-discontinued Blackmagic UltraStudio SDI and Intensity Shuttle USB 3.0, I don't know of any USB capture devices that can do 10-bit color, for instance. Lots of laptop users also like to use hubs, so you run into situations where they buy the USB hub instead of the Thunderbolt one and wonder why things stop working and/or behave oddly when they plug in a bunch of stuff (due lack of uplink bandwidth).

But yes, use SDI. It's worth seeking out VCR/VTR versions with SDI built-in to get the A/D conversation as soon as possible in the signal path and only do the A/D conversation once. Well, unless it's DV/HDV, which is better brought in over IEEE 1394 to avoid transcoding (and yes, Firewire adapters are still a thing in 2021 and work in current OSs, including Windows 10).

[dellsam34]

With everything moving to the new USB4/Thunderbolt3 looks like USB 3.0 will be soon legacy, The sucky part is that it is not passively backward compatible with USB 3.0, meaning that there are no direct cables that connect a USB4/Th3 device to a USB 3.0 port without active conversion of the signal, The good news is Black Magic already made a new SDI-USB adapter so using the SDI workflow will never go obsolete if using new computers that lack USB 3.0 port.