Help for buying TBC

[Thermaltake]

Hi, I need some help in buying quality TBC. But I can't find anywhere in europe AVT or DataVideo. Can someone suggest some other one if it's any good compared to those two.

[aramkolt]

What kind of transfers are you doing and what's the rest of the capture setup?

I'm of the opinion if you have zero dropped frames and no audio sync issues without a frame TBC, you don't likely need a separate frame TBC in the chain. Many times, if the player has a line TBC, that corrects enough errors for many cards to tolerate the signal without dropping frames.

I would argue a line TBC is more important than a frame TBC as it'll help with frame timing to some degree as well, so if you don't already have a line TBC or similar in the chain, I'd start there.

If for some reason you are doing composite transfers (and not S-Video), it's kind of hard to beat the Brighteye BE5 for price and features (usually under $150 in the USA), but it is composite only. In Europe, the brand to look for would be Snell and Wilcox as they were more Europe based with most of their products made in the UK. Snell and Wilcox products with TBCs tend to start with part numbers CVR or TBS. The CVR ones are standards converters, but they do apply effects if not actually changing standards and most will accept S-Video via BNC connectors even if they don't have S-Video jacks and would be labeled Y and C.

[Thermaltake]

I have refurbished myself vcr's Panasonic NV-V8000, JVC S9850, JVC S7960E and dvd player ES10. All of those have great line TBC's, I didn't have any drops with USB-Live2, but had with Elgato in Windows. That's why I only use Elgato now on macbook, it works there without any issues, guess it's better optimized for macbook than for Windows. I use only S-Video. I am from EU so here I really can't find any decent TBC I mean I would order from US not a problem if there was one available. Do I need it ? Hmm I don't know I mean I digitise tapes for people, and sometimes even on few of my tape there were white snowy lines I think it's bad signal, because head and everything is clean and alligned properly, so I guess full time TBC would fix that.


P.S
I will upload photos of refurb. on those devices I documented almost everything.

[Thermaltake]

I think full time TBC would fix this problem


[Attachment 87465 - Click to enlarge]

[johnmeyer]

I'm not a TBC expert so I could be wrong, but I think those artifacts are not time-base errors. I say that because everything on the same horizontal line as the artifact is intact and not shifted to the right.

[dellsam34]

I'm not entirely sure a frame TBC would fix those line streaks, highly unlikely. If you don't have any frame drops or inserted, no audio drift, you're good to go. Those are probably baked in the recordings.

[Thermaltake]

No frame drop. Could be that is baked like that because tape is 35 years old. So you think there is no need for me buying frame TBC don't mean because of this tape, generally speaking.

[Sharc]

The picture looks progressive (deinterlaced). The original tape capture should be interlaced video. Is the artifact the same on both fields of the original capture? Sometimes one of the fields is less affected than the other, so one can base further processing on the healthier field.
The source seems to be pretty poor VHS quality anyway (no details, poor colors .....).

[Thermaltake]

It's like that all over the place on people hands, heads, corners it's random not always in same place. It is poor quality and details for sure.
It's captured like that originally without anything touched after capturing for now.

[The_Doman]

No frame drop. Could be that is baked like that because tape is 35 years old. So you think there is no need for me buying frame TBC don't mean because of this tape, generally speaking.

You could just recapture the problematic parts several times and compare the captures.
If the same problems appear on the the same spots it is indeed "baked in" on the recording.
And then if your ES10 can not can clean it up not much else can do any better i think.

[Thermaltake]

I tried now same tape on my V8000 vcr and there are almost no lines. On JVC's there are a lot of them all over the place. I always try tape in few vcr's to check the quality. It don't have a rule, sometimes V8000 play bad quality tapes better sometimes both JVC does.

[dellsam34]

Black streaks in white spots usually RF clipping, this happens for example with S-VHS recordings played on a regular VHS due to limited bandwidth in the processing circuitry or bigger video head gap, If one VCR plays it batter than the other it could indicate head wear or failing electronic components.

[The_Doman]

I tried now same tape on my V8000 vcr and there are almost no lines. On JVC's there are a lot of them all over the place. I always try tape in few vcr's to check the quality. It don't have a rule, sometimes V8000 play bad quality tapes better sometimes both JVC does.

Ugh, random black lines/streaks, after many many years i still remember that annoying symptom from my very first JVC S-VHS-ET HR-S6700 whenever a less quality recording/tape was played.

Because of these kind of situations it is always good practice to have different players available to try, including regular VHS too.

For this a good S-VHS TBC deck is then often the most preferred option but these days it is hard/expensive to find such good working machine.
For me, a good/excellent working regular VHS player combined with a DVD pass-though option can be a good (and sometimes better) alternative.

I have collected many regular VHS and some S-VHS players through the years from local sellers, used/thrift stores and have some similar experience as with this posting on Reddit when capturing regular VHS.
Reddit: For those who have S-VHS/Super VHS, is there a big difference in quality? And are they able to play regular VHS tapes?

I have a JVC HR-S5950 Super-VHS ET player, and a Sharp VC-MH741 VHS HQ player.
Still, with normal VHS tapes in good condition, the Sharp one wins every time. The picture is just sharper, no pun intended. With tapes in bad condition, the JVC, although it has a softer image than the Sharp, can clean up the image pretty good with it's "video stabilizer" and "B.E.S.T" functions, in a way that the Sharp can't.
So, best is to have more than one type of player if you're planning on doing any serious digitalization efforts.

I have both the named JVC HR-S5950 and Sharp VC-MH741 but i prefer to use one of my (many) Panasonic regular VHS models.

[Thermaltake]

Black streaks in white spots usually RF clipping, this happens for example with S-VHS recordings played on a regular VHS due to limited bandwidth in the processing circuitry or bigger video head gap, If one VCR plays it batter than the other it could indicate head wear or failing electronic components.

Believe me I serviced all of them, all electronic is good and serviced, heads are clean and have no problem on all my vcr's.
So I don't know really what the deal is here, all other tapes play without any problem just this one is doing this. But now from time to time on this tape when capturing on V8000 vcr, I got this lines for like half seconds random, sometimes thin sometimes a little thicker but I noticed them on JVC's capturing also, so it must be tape problem, maybe full-time TBC would fix that lines that pops from time to time.


[Attachment 87466 - Click to enlarge]

[aramkolt]

Black streaks on high contrast transitions I associate with either dirty or worn heads at the time of the recording or playback. Full line horizontal static or distortion is typically a line dropout and they'll look different from one VCR model to another as there is some significant variability in dropout compensation between VCR models, many of which aren't that good at concealing them. Lastly, it could be the tape itself has a small crease in it, though usually if that is the case, the same area of distortion will persist for many frames instead of just a single frame.

[The_Doman]

Believe me I serviced all of them, all electronic is good and serviced, heads are clean and have no problem on all my vcr's.
But now from time to time on this tape when capturing on V8000 vcr, I got this lines for like half seconds random, sometimes thin sometimes a little thicker but I noticed them on JVC's capturing also, so it must be tape problem, maybe full-time TBC would fix that lines that pops from time to time.

If it is really random, so not on the same spots and same time, you could do multiple captures and edit/join the correct parts together?

[johnmeyer]

Have you played around with the tracking control on the tape(s) that exhibit the problem?

[Thermaltake]

Have you played around with the tracking control on the tape(s) that exhibit the problem?

I didn't. I just capture it with V8000 vcr and it looks very good comparing it to JVC's caputre. So that few lines that pop from time to time are on tape because I rewatch the tape and they pop on every time on same place. So I guess it's worn old tape problem, maybe TBC could fix it but I don't have one so I don't know.

Black streaks on high contrast transitions I associate with either dirty or worn heads at the time of the recording

All other tapes play nice on my JVCs without any lines or problems so could be that camera which recorded that video was already bad, but some vcr's are better in reading those bad recorded tapes, some are struggling to reproduce it correctly.

I also noticed when camcorders or vcr's have misaligned heads and you record something with them and try to reproduce on various vcr's every single one of them will reproduce it differently. Some will have problems like my JVC's some like my Panasonic will reproduce it with minor interference or non interference at all.

[Sharc]

For this single critical tape I would probably take the best capture (from V8000) and try to fix this dropout/tracking error in post (filtering maybe, or replace the bad frame(s) by adjacent good frames, or substitute the bad frame(s) by motion interpolated frames. You can find examples and scripts for similar fixes the forum, or over at doom9.

P.S. And it is no surprise IMO that different VCRs will handle misaligned recordings differently. This is probably the reason why some recommend to play the tapes with the same device as it was recorded - at least in such "misaligned" case.

[dellsam34]

Don't keep your hopes up, A TBC will not fix that kind of problem, I'm 99% sure. If you want to drop several hundreds dollars on TBC for other purposes that's fine.
I would also check the ground brush for the head drum, When you remove the stator you should see a spring in a hole in the brass ring and a tiny steel ball at the bottom. This may not fix your problematic tape but may address some other static issues.

[Thermaltake]

Don't keep your hopes up, A TBC will not fix that kind of problem, I'm 99% sure. If you want to drop several hundreds dollars on TBC for other purposes that's fine.
I would also check the ground brush for the head drum, When you remove the stator you should see a spring in a hole in the brass ring and a tiny steel ball at the bottom. This may not fix your problematic tape but may address some other static issues.

Ok, thanks for the tip, that's what I thought too.

But if that's the problem it would appear on other tapes too, it only appear on this one.

[dellsam34]

Yes, that's what I said.