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Time base corrector needed?
- Thread starter waloshin
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I never needed one, but its been years since I captured VHS tape and I had good quality tape. When you say good quality, it is VHS.... 
Transferring to DVD isn't going to improve the video quality unless there is a defect or two you want to correct along the way.
Transferring to DVD isn't going to improve the video quality unless there is a defect or two you want to correct along the way.
I never needed one, but its been years since I captured VHS tape and I had good quality tape. When you say good quality, it is VHS....
Just some tapes I have tried to transfer has wavy lines going through them. Usually white wavy lines example:
Depends whats causing the lines...some VHS movies started adding some sort of copy protection in, professional decks had the ability to turn off the auto gain crtl to fix it. Otherwise a TBC would work.
If you have worn heads, then it wont help at all.
I should clarify, I never needed a TBC for home movie tapes. And that may be the copy protection stuff you would see on some commercial tapes. They use to sell inexpensive copy protection remover/video processing boxes that would remove it before it gets to the capture box. I wouldn't call that processor a time base corrector, however. Off hand I don't recall much detail.
That looks like it could also be a tracking error. Do you have a manual tracking adjustment?
Regarding a TBC... some VHS/S-VHS decks had a built in TBC, but they were almost always limited as far as how much (number of lines) correction they could perform. An external was always a better choice.
Regarding a TBC... some VHS/S-VHS decks had a built in TBC, but they were almost always limited as far as how much (number of lines) correction they could perform. An external was always a better choice.
I don't know about the lines problem but what I do know is VHS tapes I tried to transfer to my iMac suffered audio sync problems. It only happened on long 3 hour tapes and usually after half way but it was very noticeable.
I bought a Canopus ADVC110 for 100 quid off eBay and it did the trick beautifully. The Canopus is ideal for Apple kit as it uses Firewire (not so great for non Firewire newer Apple kit of course!) which I have on my 2009 iMac.
I bought a Canopus ADVC110 for 100 quid off eBay and it did the trick beautifully. The Canopus is ideal for Apple kit as it uses Firewire (not so great for non Firewire newer Apple kit of course!) which I have on my 2009 iMac.
could be that the physical integrity is now showing signs of being compromised and is no longer producing a faithful signal. Eventually this is the fate of all video tape, especially if not stored at low temperature and is exposed to high humidity.
I recently transferred a bunch of SVHS and VHS tapes to Final Cut. I was using a professional Panasonic VTR. The video had clearly degraded and I was worried they would be toast. I added a Fora TBC to the signal an it was night and day. I think a real TBC could go a long way to help any control track issues causing display failures. It made a world of difference for me! In 2000 I would have said a TBC is a waste of time....in 2016 with failing magnetic tapes...it was necessary.
Time base corrector is used when you need to synchronize two or more video sources so the fields will fall in place when switching from one source to the other, lets say two ANALOG video cameras, or you can have a video switcher with TBC incorporated and it will do the sync itself.
The problem that you have is field related but no something a TBC can resolve.
While that is true, most modern TBC's also included DOC (Drop-Out Compensation). This basically corrects flaws from video tape drop out. It uses the previous frame to correct the image. Some had a frame sync function that would hold the current frame if the next frame was damaged. But that was a very costly function and is not on most TBC's as there were stand alone devices for that specific purpose. It won't fix tracking issues but can sometimes fix control track problems caused by drop outs which would stabilize the image.