Recently, we borrowed a video camera, and filmed a total of about half
an hour of sgsk talking and being cute.

The video camera has been returned to its owner, but now we'd like to
make copies of this video for various relatives and so on.

How would we go about doing this?

20 responses total.

Is the tape you have a VHS tape?

Re 1.  Of course.

We have two VHS machines which can be yoked together to make copies.
There's some quality loss in this process; I don't know if there's an 
easy way to avoid that.  How many copies did you want?

The easiest way to deal with the quality loss is to make the highest
quality 1st generation copy - S-VHS or hi8mm, for instance.  Then, the
copies you make on regular VHS will be close to the best possible.  This
does mean you need a camera that can record the higher quality format,
and need to keep it, or a player, long enough to make the copies.  In
this case, it's probably too late, but for future reference...

So far as yoking 2 decks together, you want to send video between the
two decks, not an rf signal, if at all possible.  Sending rf between the
two decks requires more processing so will degrade the picture a bit
more, and there are also more ways to introduce noise.

If you want to do any editting as you make the copy, the recording deck
at least needs to have a "dub" feature where it can fairly seemlessly
append new video data on the end of existing stuff.  Cheap decks don't
do that, and there will be at least a jump or perhaps even a glitch of
static at each edit.  To do editting *right* you need some sort of time
base signal recorded on the tape and fancy editting equipment.  This
allows you to review your input frame-by-frame, make up an edit list,
and then get it all recorded in one go, getting *exactly* what you
intended.  This is pretty much all expensive non-consumer equipment.  It
may become more accessible when HDTV comes out and broadcast studios get
rid of all their present toys.

Not that it matters for this situation, but...it's not strictly necessary to
have time code to do glitch-free editing.  I used to work at a small cable
TV station that had control track editing equipment.  It kept track of the
hour, minute, second, and frame counts by counting the pulses on the control
track, just like the counter on a normal video recorder.  It was fairly
basic; you could do audio and video inserts and assemble edits, but you
could only program one in point and one out point at a time.  Also, there
was certain amount of error; if you went through two hours of tape it was
likely it'd miss a few pulses, so the frame counts were never quite
accurate.

The key to glitch-free editing is actually the video recorder's ability to
switch instantaneously from play to record mode.  When you edit with a
normal deck, it makes no attempt to synchronize to the video that's already
on the tape.  When the tape's played back, the discontinuity results in a
brief noise bar and rainbow effect on the screen.  (If you listen close, you
can actually hear the video head's motor briefly change speed as it resyncs
to the new signal.) An edit deck winds back to a few seconds or more before
the edit point, and starts playing so that it's synchronized with the video
already on the tape.  When it hits the edit point, it switches cleanly into
record mode between frames.

More than you ever wanted to know, I'm sure. ;)

Take the video and audio out of deck one and connect it to the video and audio
input of deck two.  Place master in one, place tape in two.  Press play on
deck one, and record on deck two.

simple.

yes there is signal loss, oh well...(boy, you ask a simple question....;-)

The tape is already made, so its quality is not available to be changed.
But the tape surprised us by looking pretty good.  Therefore I assume the
degradation of quality to a copy would be very severe, so that the copy
would inevitably be full of static and "ghosts"?

Damn.

Not necessarily.  Copies could be quite good as well, assuming decent decks,
direct video/audio connection (common feature), and clean heads.

Grex tends be loaded with technical perfectionists.

        Get yourself an I-mac with the I-movie editing feature.

I've got a shiny new VCR... feel free to call sometime and we can knock off
a couple copies.

If the tape copy you have looks "very good" it's probably recorded in
standard play mode, which trades off better quality for using more tape,
& it was probably played back on the same unit that recorded it, so head
alignment would not be at all an issue.  The copies you make won't be
quite as good.  They'll almost certainly be quite viewable, and may even
be better than what you could record of the air (if you don't get an
optimal signal), but there will be a drop in quality, which may be
noticeable if you know what to look for.

The kind of quality loss you're looking at here *is* different than what
you're dealing with in broadcast TV.  The real loss will be a smoothing
effect, but only in the horizontal direction.  In a multi-generation
video copy, this becomes obvious as things have a sort of "underwater"
look to them; features that oriented vertically will be particularly
distorted, while horizontal features will likely still look sharp.
Colors may also look a bit odd; one thing to do is to look at the
picture up close and see if the even & odd scan lines are different
colors.  VHS is designed so that if the tracking is off a big, the
errors caused to colors will go in opposite directions on even and odd
scan lines, so will tend to "almost" cancel out.  You shouldn't see
static unless the heads are dirty or the connection between the decks
isn't of good quality.  You shouldn't see ghosts unless you have a
really lousy connection, and you have a strong signal in the local area
that's competing for attention from your tuner.

RE #9: If all he's doing is copying, that'll result in *worse* quality than
going straight from one deck to another.

If the VCRs you use are any good at all, you won't lose much quality by just
connecting the video and audio outs on one deck to the video and audio ins
on the other.  The difference will be obvious if you compare the two tapes,
but not to people watching the copy who haven't seen the original.  I've
done copies this way many times and the results are usually perfectly
acceptable.  I suggest recording in SP if you don't mind using the extra
tape, to minimize the quality loss.

I have several...umm....<checks for feds>  tapes like this.  And I can tell
a difference later.  But I'm more happy to have the video.  If I want to do
more quality v. quantity (like I did with a copy of <checks for feds again>
the Matrix) I'll go for the SP rather than SLP on the tape.  <shrugs>  I guess
it depends on how much you need it for and how perfect

I have a dual-deck vcr.  As long as your original tape is not in hi-fi stereo,
then copies made on my machine will likely be as perfect as any you'd want.

I can bring my machine to the board meeting on Monday, and you can return it
to me at UMS at some convenient time thereafter.  (I'm not getting much use
out of it lately.)

Oh yes, the sound will also get distorted in a multi-generational copy.
But the largest problem with be that, unless the camcorder had an
external "boom" mike, it will have picked up camcorder noise in the
first place.  In general, sound recorded in "stereo" on the tape should
fare better than sounds that is recorded in "monophonic" mode (even if
the sound only has one track).  "Stereo" sound is recorded across the
entire tape "under" the video.  "Monophonic" sound is recorded in a
narrow track to one side of the video.  Because more tape is used to
record "stereo" sound, it has more bandwidth and potential cquality.  On
the other hand, because it's "under" the video, dirty heads will affect
the stereo sound pickup first.

I've never seen a consumer-grade stereo camcorder, but I suppose they
probably exist.

I know the camcorder I have is capable of recording in stereo, even
though it only has a monophonic microphone.  There's an add-on for
external microphones, which I really should find and buy.  It's an hi8mm
camcorder from quite a while back, so I don't know how that relates to
what's on the market today, especially for VHS.  So far as that goes, I
don't know if 8mm even has separate stereo and mono sound tracks like
VHS.

        8mm has separate tracks for left and right channels.

There's actually two forms of stereo for VHS, I think.  Hi-fi stereo uses
helically-scanned tracks, which result in much better frequency response but
introduce some head-switching noise.  There are also VCRs that can record
two linear audio tracks, but you don't see that much anymore.

Incidentally, have you ever noticed that the RF outputs on stereo VCRs are
usually monaural?  It's kind of annoying.

Now linked to the video conference.  Your conf for all things video both
digital and analog.

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