[awolfoutwest]

Originally Posted by sabkisscrue

Im sure youd agree with me as you been doing this since 2004, that not all tapes should have the tbc/dnr engaged. I use the 9800, and it works with some tapes and some it doesnt.

Yep, I've found that as well. I just cut & pasted that capture chain data from a recent release that employed it.

Originally Posted by sabkisscrue

Which ones do you use? Id really suggest you try the very affordable Acoustic Research PRO II Series. Youd be very pleased.

I have Acoustic Research PRO II cables as well, and I do indeed like them

Originally Posted by sabkisscrue

In my research, I dont believe pro equipment is the way to go, it was suggested pro svhs decks were the best, that turned out to be false. It should be about what works BEST, IMO.

Any blanket statement like that is bound to be flawed. I agree with the last statement about what works best, but you'll find arguments for both sides of the pro vs. consumer debate depending on the specific make & model of equipment you're discussing.

I also have a Panasonic DMR-ES10 DVD Recorder, but I never use it for capture. I never knew it had any filtering or pass-thru capability, because it was just a replacement for the old home theater VCR. It does have an adjustable record length function, so you can optimize bitrate. I did do a side by side comparison of record quality a couple of years ago, but my PC capture blew away the standalone so I never gave it a second thought.

My preferred method is to capture to avi, spend some time looking at different filter results, then encode with the best processing I can determine for that video. I look at the video through software Vectorscope and Waveform Monitor apps to see how the color ranges conform to broadcast standards, then tweak black level and other proc amp stuff as needed. I wouldn't want to rely on a solely hardware chain because I can't go back and tweak things later.

Many folks who transfer to PC use a DV-based NLE program for capture, editing and encoding. For me, even the intermediate compression of analog > DV is to be avoided. DV is a lossy codec, even though I've seen assertions of DV being lossless more times than not. Digital video is more like 248600kbps for uncompressed RGB, 165800kbps for uncompressed YUY2, around 50000kbps using HuffYUV lossless YUY2 codec (my method), DV-AVI (Sony Digital Video standard) is 25000kbps, and DVD standard allows for 10080kbps. Sony DV is often thought of as lossless, but it is actually very lossy. (Note: all video numbers above based on a resolution of 720 x 480. PAL video would be approximately 20% larger.)

Here is a restoration sample from my latest release (141MB). The section from 1:20 to 1:40 has raw cap to final processed video side-by-side. Remember when watching this clip on an LCD monitor it will likely appear dark. I do my color correction using a calibrated CRT. Most consumer LCD monitors are unreliable for color. LCD monitors with accurate color representation are available, but quite expensive last I checked.