• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Capturing VHS/SVHS to Final Cut Pro via other decks for TBC.

  Posted by Chris Tomkins on November 16, 2010 at 4:52 am

  Hi all

  First up, please let me assure you I have tried to find some answers here and on other forums – I understand this question gets asked a lot, but I have a twist on it.

  I have several VHS/SVHS tapes I need to capture. They are of varying quality.

  I have a pro SVHS deck with SVIDEO out, which I am running directly through my Panasonic camcorder to FCP – pictures come through fine and I can use capture now…

  However, I am having a lot of trouble with the audio going out of sync when there is a dropout. I understand this causes timing problems and I need a Time Base Corrector.

  The guy who own the edit suite I work in said I should run the video through their Digi Beta deck or DVCPRO 50 deck.

  When I do this (via composite inputs) the DVCPRO 50 deck picture flashes green every few seconds, and the DigiBeta deck does a really slow “roll” creeping up a pixel at a time every few seconds.

  Is there something else I should be doing here? Should I be trying to feed the TC-OUT from my SVHS deck to these other decks? Or the SVHS deck has a SYNC output – does that do anything?

  Any suggestions?

  Cheers
  Chris

  Chris Tomkins replied 15 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Bj Ahlen

  November 16, 2010 at 4:48 pm

  I didn’t think there were any SVHS decks without TBC, but then I recalled there were actually less expensive decks that cost a few hundred instead of the $1800 I paid for my AG-1830 SVHS deck back in 1998.

  You did adjust the tracking, right? That sounds like it could be your first problem.

  Find a post outfit that can do the transfer for you, shouldn’t cost much.

  Then you would get the TBC and a 4:2:2 transfer to say DVCPRO50 instead of the miserable 4:1:1 (DV25 I presume) through your camcorder.

  A post house may also have a deck with better heads that can pick up poor tapes better.
• 

  Chris Tomkins

  November 18, 2010 at 1:40 am

  Hi – thanks for replying. Yeah I’m adjusting the tracking – unfortunately these are family videos and there is about 200 hours of footage and I have no budget. I’m not wanting to edit them into anything, just to protect them from tape degradation over time.

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