Time Base Corrector, Any Recommendations?

[tvcollector]

I found a great capture device to digitize home video tape recordings, now I'm looking for a good TBC recommendation.. Mainly need it for dirty/bad parts or tapes and area of tape where there's a loss of signal.. Digital capture devices tend to drop frames in these parts of video tapes.. And this would be for lower end armature home video recordings.. Something cheap that will handle it without adding other glitches and errors in the recordings... Let me know... Thanks

[Electronic M]

Some of the DVD-recorder/VCRs have nice TBCs built in for making a good DVD copy of a bad tape, some higher end S-VHS decks have digital frame buffers that correct sync timing and replace noisy/missing lines with those in previous frames similar to ones in DVD recorder/VCRs.

[kf4rca]

Check to see how many bits quantizing it is. Early TBC's were 8 bit. Later ones were 9 bit and the best were 10 bit. Quantizing is the process where an analog wave is chopped up into bits. An 8 bit box would give 256 levels of the video signal. A 10 bit box would give 1024 levels. Obviously more bits require more memory.
The SMPTE standard that was finally adopted (back in the early 80's) was 10 bits at 4fSC.
The one I liked the best was the DPS Phaser (I or II). But the tektronix and Sony are good too. Those are old broadcast units that you might can find used at a good price since all that analog system equipment is obsolete now. Good luck!

[tvcollector]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Some of the DVD-recorder/VCRs have nice TBCs built in for making a good DVD copy of a bad tape, some higher end S-VHS decks have digital frame buffers that correct sync timing and replace noisy/missing lines with those in previous frames similar to ones in DVD recorder/VCRs.

Hmmm... Not sure if I want to buy a DVD recorder just to use it as a TBC.. A few others in other places have mentioned that too... I may go that route..

[tvcollector]

Originally Posted by kf4rca

Check to see how many bits quantizing it is. Early TBC's were 8 bit. Later ones were 9 bit and the best were 10 bit. Quantizing is the process where an analog wave is chopped up into bits. An 8 bit box would give 256 levels of the video signal. A 10 bit box would give 1024 levels. Obviously more bits require more memory.
The SMPTE standard that was finally adopted (back in the early 80's) was 10 bits at 4fSC.
The one I liked the best was the DPS Phaser (I or II). But the tektronix and Sony are good too. Those are old broadcast units that you might can find used at a good price since all that analog system equipment is obsolete now. Good luck!

Nothing comes up in a eBay search for any of those...

I see stuff like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/TVOneTask-1...53.m1438.l2649

https://www.ebay.com/itm/FOR-A-FA-31...53.m1438.l2649

A bit on the expensive side for something that may or may not work..

I bought a OEM prime image TBC/Freeze, and it seems to be picky, not sure if it's got issues with bad caps, which I suspect.. Seems to produce color bars when I first power it on, and the better VCR i have it flickers like the vertical is out of sync at times

[Chip Chester]

I've got 'a few' Panasonic AG-7750 S-VHS machines with nice TBCs, and also line doublers. They do a great job on standard VHS, but only at SP play speed. No LP, SLP available. So it depends on what you're playing back...

Have a Microtime TBC attached to my BVU-800 3/4" deck, but haven't turned either on in a decade. Sadness...

[ppppenguin]

No need to worry about number of bits resolution when working with domestic or industrial videotap formats. The amount of noise on the recordings will be ample to act as dither for 8 bit digitising.

There was one early British TBC made by CEL that only used 6 bit ADCs. Yuk.