Montreux 1984 - Radio Ga Ga complete

DepeX wrote:

Bob, I'm in Italy but I can do it,
PM me if you want

I appreciate the offer - but the Canada Post rates are outrageous. It has to be somewhere around here.

Yeah, I know. Anyway, I've sent you a PM for another thing

brians wig wrote:
Seriously!
I think I'd better dig out my VHS...
Damn QPL for putting out an edit.

Did you record this one yourself by any chance?

The Real Wizard wrote:
I have an old VHS with the Montreal 84/86 in excellent quality, and I'm pretty sure it's unedited.
Anyone in Canada or the US with a good VCR and the means to transfer to digital? I'll happily send my tapes to them.

Come on, this is a kind offer, surely there is a taker??

Barry Durex wrote:

brians wig wrote:
Seriously!
I think I'd better dig out my VHS...
Damn QPL for putting out an edit.

Did you record this one yourself by any chance?

No, but my ongoing quest to find the best quality clips inorder to produce some kind of year by year video scrapbook has resulted (over the last 7 years or so), in me obtaining 3 other peoples collections (and I'm talking fans who were collecting from the 70's onwards, as well as my own collected from 86 onwards) with one more collection to come in the next couple of months once that person gets round to it. One of them will have an off air, if not all three.

Once all these tapes (and there's nearly 200) have all been collated and captured into the PC (I have 4gb full already), I can then go through each recording of the same item and, where necessary, edit a complete version from however many sources it takes and then clean up as best I can before encoding the final output.
It's been a long job because life gets in the way - infact it's been a year since I had the time to capture anything as I do a full tape at a time and that can take up to day as I try to get the best out of each clip first because once a "fault" is inherent in the capture, it's generally stuck there.
The other good thing, of course, is Chief Mouse has proved that footage can be cleaned up afterwards as well, so the better the footage to start with, the better the post capture clean up will be.

brians wig wrote:

Barry Durex wrote:

brians wig wrote:
Seriously!
I think I'd better dig out my VHS...
Damn QPL for putting out an edit.

Did you record this one yourself by any chance?

No, but my ongoing quest to find the best quality clips inorder to produce some kind of year by year video scrapbook has resulted (over the last 7 years or so), in me obtaining 3 other peoples collections (and I'm talking fans who were collecting from the 70's onwards, as well as my own collected from 86 onwards) with one more collection to come in the next couple of months once that person gets round to it. One of them will have an off air, if not all three.
Once all these tapes (and there's nearly 200) have all been collated and captured into the PC (I have 4gb full already), I can then go through each recording of the same item and, where necessary, edit a complete version from however many sources it takes and then clean up as best I can before encoding the final output.
It's been a long job because life gets in the way - infact it's been a year since I had the time to capture anything as I do a full tape at a time and that can take up to day as I try to get the best out of each clip first because once a "fault" is inherent in the capture, it's generally stuck there.
The other good thing, of course, is Chief Mouse has proved that footage can be cleaned up afterwards as well, so the better the footage to start with, the better the post capture clean up will be.

Sounds admirable, I misunderstood when you said you need to dig out your VHS.
Who are these collectors then?

brians wig wrote:

Barry Durex wrote:

brians wig wrote:
Seriously!
I think I'd better dig out my VHS...
Damn QPL for putting out an edit.

Did you record this one yourself by any chance?

so the better the footage to start with, the better the post capture clean up will be.

Exactly. A lot of things can be fixed with software but there are some basic issues like time base errors (jittery image) which can only be corrected with a TBC while doing the transfering. With it you can stabilize the signal that's coming from the tape. If you don't do that, the signal comes out possibly distorted and is forever lost once you finish digitizing. It can't be corrected with no software afterwards.
So yes, making the best possible transfer you can squeeze out is of crucial importance and it helps a lot if post-processing is needed.

Yep. Have always used a seperate TBC. I learnt pretty early on that if a VHS isn't an off-air, capturing digitally can lead to frame drops.
My VHS machines (yes, have a few - some provide better pictures than others depending on the tape!) all have built in TBC option as well. Sometimes this can make a picture worse, sometimes better.
Generally they stabilise the picture and add solidity to colours, but can also then add those colour striations you get on old multigenerational recordings depending on the recording!
I generally have to play each clip while making manual adjustments to the input signal to get the best I can out of it before rewinding and capturing the clip.

Is the ''built in TBC'' you speak of the edit switch?
SVHS VCRs also have s-video output for better transfers (if the receiving end allows)
It's a shame that format was introduced so late in the day.
They are the best option for transferring standard VHS.

No. The edit switch is something else. I find it generally just adds "sharpness" to the picture which makes it grainy.
My machines are all SVHS: JVC HR-DVS2, Phillips VR1000, Panasonic VR HS 950 and another more basic JVC SVHS which is in storage.

I'm still using a Matrox RT2500 capture card and my external TBC is an A.C.E. Converter, all of which were cracking pieces of kit 14 years ago and are still more than adequate for capturing VHS to DV AVI files for editing.

Ironically, SVHS was the original VHS format, but it was deemed too expensive and so a cut down version (ie, VHS) was introduced first.
Shame really. So many 80's recordings could have been better quality if they'd just stuck with SVHS to start with.

Thanks a lot for sharing this Pittrek. I wasn´t aware that the video was edited in GVH2. Great to have it complete.

The Real Wizard wrote:

DepeX wrote:

Bob, I'm in Italy but I can do it,
PM me if you want

I appreciate the offer - but the Canada Post rates are outrageous. It has to be somewhere around here.

That is so true. I don't know why everything is always more expensive here in Canada than elsewhere.

RafaelSomma wrote:

The Real Wizard wrote:

DepeX wrote:

Bob, I'm in Italy but I can do it,
PM me if you want

I appreciate the offer - but the Canada Post rates are outrageous. It has to be somewhere around here.

That is so true. I don't know why everything is always more expensive here in Canada than elsewhere.

Because we have a lot of land mass with less than 40 million people scattered in a small percentage of it. Costs add up. Imagine how much groceries cost in Yellowknife !

.... and there is a vast shortage of VHS players ;-)

Oh god no, not in pawn shops. They're everywhere !