[Chris Detjen]

Thought I’d add this. It is another response from a different AJA rep concerning whether the KonaLH has a TBC.

“The Kona-LH’s frame buffer will clean up jittery video however it is not a full TBC. Since you have a lot of VHS tapes I suggest getting a TBC just to be sure. Or, if you have a analog VTR with a TBC (i.e. betcam SP) then loopthrough the VTR and then connect VTR video out to the Kona video in.

The symptom of a VHS video signal outside the lock range of the Kona-LH is dropped frames on capture.

–AJA Video Technical Support”

[Chris Detjen]

Thanks again for the information!

[Chris Detjen]

After a B&H rep said that the Kona LH had an interal TBC, I did the same–reviewed the user manual. I saw no mention of a TBC. That prompted me to get official word from AJA. I emailed customer support, and soon received a detailed reply (posted above). Good customer support I should say. Based upon replies in this post, and from AJA I agree that the best way to capture VHS would be playing out of a professional grade SVHS deck with all the benefits of TBC, drop-out compensator, noise reduction. The issue is finding a reliable one that fits our budget and timeline. We are in a crunch to get started capturing soon. A frame synchronizer is the most important component, since we can get by without noise reduction that a pro VHS deck might offer. I’ll look into the DataVideo TBC 1000.

Anyone familiar with the AV Toolbox AVT-8710 Multi-Standard Time Base Corrector and whether it would be good for this job?

Thanks again for the information.

[Chris Detjen]

Below is information direct from an Aja customer support rep. It echoes some of what has been stated above about pro SVHS decks being best suited for playing back VHS:

“To answer your question it is true, the KONA LH, LHe and LHi have a built in time base corrector. However, given the fact you will be digitizing VHS footage I would recommend if you can, get your hands on a professional S-VHS machine to use as your source deck. These machines have a built in TBC and with digital noise reduction capability will make your VHS footage as good
and stable as it can get. VHS is inherently a very “noisy” signal and the digitizing process does an excellent job of enhancing picture noise! In addition, there are mechanically induced errors, due to the video heads hitting the tape and other idiosyncrasies in the tape path of the machine an internal TBC can correct where an outboard device has little or no effect. Some machines have drop out compensation as well to reduce the number of white flashes
caused by the oxide falling off the tape.

I offer this as a suggestion so you will be ingesting the best possible picture from your VHS source. With a KONA card you will have the best quality video I/O but we can only do so much to improve the picture.”

[Chris Detjen]

Thanks for the information.

I was looking at the AV Toolbox AVT-8710 Multi-Standard Time Base Corrector. That might be the TBC for this job.

[Chris Detjen]

I did forget to list the specs of the footage. We discussed the color limitations of HDV in pre-pro and chose to shoot with the native DVCPRO HD 720p30. In addition for our workflow, we transcoded the footage needed for compositing into Sheer RGB 10bit in order to retain the color and gamma when going from a FCP to AE (PC) and back to FCP.

[Chris Detjen]

We did try both Firewire ports and different cables. Also rebooted both the computer and camera multiple times. The only time the camera was seen by FCP, Dual 2.7GHz PowerPC connected via Firewire, was when we captured a test DV clip recorded with the camera. Able to capture HDV from a Sony deck fine, but JVC HDV playing back on the JVC 250 was problematic.

[Chris Detjen]

Camera: JVC HD250u
Settings: 720p 24p
Editor: Final Cut Studio 5.1.4
Box: Dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5
Issue: FCP fails to recognize camera.

Set up camera to output Native (720p 24p), tape format set to HDV, camera firewire output toggled to HDV. FCP settings: Easy setup for HDV 720p24.

Tried several attempts with various settings and the only time FCP recognized the camera was when the camera was playing footage recorded in DV mode.

Solution 1: Connected to camera via SDI output into AJA Kona LH card. No time code and no audio via SDI alone. Acquired audio from the RCA outputs of the camera. Captured in FCP with noncontrollable device control setting.

Solution 2: Connected camera via FireWire in our main edit suite (Dual-Core Intel Xeon) and FCP (v. 5.1.4) immediately recognized the camera after FCP’s Easy Setup for 720p24 was set.

[Chris Detjen]

Thanks for the advice. I guess I was in the ball park. I used the Light Rays filter to create the light beams and applied the prism blur to add a subtle enhancement. The reveal of the door was a simple fade behavior from black to full color. I’ll continue to experiment with filters to enhance the look.

[Chris Detjen]

short explanation on how to export DVD video with SteamClip:

Copy the TS folder from your DVD to your computer’s HD. Open Stream Clip. In StreamClip select Open Files. Find the TS folder of your DVD. Within that TS folder you will see various files. Look for a file named “VTS_01_01.VOB” (or similar name). Select that file and click on OPEN. If you selected the correct VOB file, you will see the complete video from the DVD in StreamClip’s viewer. You can mark In and Out on the timeline. Then choose “Export to Quicktime” from the file menu. Adjust the export settings as you need. To retain the best quality choose an uncompressed compression.