Sony SLV-R1000 prosumer S-VHS editing VCR

SLV-R1000 with panel open	SLV-R1000 with panel closed (bottom)
SLV-R1000 remote (left)	RM-E700 editing controller

The student television class supposedly used these to edit and broadcast before switching to computer NLEs and DVDs. The VCR is now used to digitize VHS and S-VHS tapes dating as far back as 1995. (the SR-DVM600 DVD recorder stacked above the VCR records the output of the VCR). The SLV-R1000 has 3 A/V inputs (2 rear and 1 front) and 2 outputs. Each I/O set has s-video, composite audio and stereo audio. Most of the deck's features are on the front panel as seen in the first picture. The OSD can be completely turned off, making them suitable for semi-professional uses.

These decks can be connected to a sony editing controller like the RM-E700 via Control-L. We still have one of these editing controllers but I didn't have the chance to take a picture of it, although I did find a fairly good picture on the internet. When connected to the controller, the LCD display on the controller will show the tape position (since there's no time code on VHS, this display shows the position of the tape relative to "zero", which is set by pressing the counter reset button on the VCR) and the VCR will respond to the buttons on the controller. I can't remember if the time display is accurate to the second or to the frame. I never tried editing with the controller because this VCR is the only SLV-R1000 left. The other ones were broken and ate tape so they were recycled.

The video recording quality is almost as sharp as DVD but noticably noisier. I never tried video insert and audio insert so I don't know how well it works.

I believe that the student television broadcasts would look more professional if they had more of these VCRs and used them for broadcasting because unlike the new consumer DVD players they're using now, the SLV-R1000 has all the controls built into the front panel and is free of OSD.

CKKS-FM 96.9 "FM97 Kiss FM" late 80s cassette recording

A random tape I found. It contains 1 hour of radio recording. I don't know if there's other stations on it but the only station announcement I hear on the tape is CKKS.

There's a whole nother world stored on these tapes. You just don't hear these songs on today's radio anymore. Have a listen: Mirror 1 Mirror 2

The tape appears to be recorded with dolby on but I couldn't get it to sound acceptable with dolby decoding on because of channel imbalance and freqency response issues. Fixing it would require adjusting potentiometers inside the tape deck and will probably mess up the deck so I left the dolby off. Try decoding it with Tape Restore Live! if you want. I don't want to risk messing up the sound.

JVC SR-DVM600 DVD/HDD/DV recorder

SR-DVM600 (top)	SR-DVM600 remote (right)

The SR-DVM600 is what we use to capture MiniDV tapes. As I've mentioned in the previous post, we use s-video to capture because the built in MiniDV deck is broken and the DV in/out port doesn't seem to work.

It has a built in hard drive and allows basic cut/join editing. The "flexible bitrate" feature allows the recording bitrate to be set to arbitrary values (the choices are presented in minutes of recording time. for example, FR150 means that the bitrate will yield 150 minutes of recording time on a single layer DVD.) However, it records mostly in CBR* and doesn't always allow bitrate fluctuations within the video. The recorder only records on -R/-RW discs. It can only read but not write +R/+RW discs.

It can dub between any 2 of the 3 functions (for example DV->DVD) but it can't dub from commercial DVDs or DVDs recorded on other recorders. It is also possible to use a function when another function is in use. (for example, watching a DVD while recording analog source to HDD). The HDD can play videos that have not finished recording (like the DVR from your cable provider).

There's a BNC composite output without OSD for professional applications like broadcasting. There are 2 sets of composite and s-video outputs. One of them is for HDD/DVD only and the other one can output HDD/DVD/DV

*The recorder only lowers the bitrate when the target bitrate cannot be achieved even with minimum compression, but it raises the bitrate above the target after (and only after) the bitrate drop when the video is complex enough to consume higher bitrates. This way, it can work like VBR when the video is fairly simple and the average bitrate will never exceed the target.. The downside is that if the entire video is complex enough the consume bitrates higher than the target bitrate the recorder will work in strict CBR at the target bitrate.

Recording a noisy analog source at 1hr mode.


Recording a less noisy analog source at 1hr mode. Note the bitrate increase after each bitrate drop.


Recording a live concert video without much movement at 2hr mode.

Sony DSR-1800 professional DVCAM deck

Here's a professional DVCAM deck at the school. It was donated to the school by Cut It Out Productions. (there's a label on top of it) We use it to dub MiniDV tapes through S-Video to a JVC SR-DVM600 DVD recorder. The DVD-RWs will then be copied to hard drives and imported into NLEs. If you ask my why don't we just use the MiniDV deck built into the SR-DVM600, it's because the built in deck is broken and eats tapes.

This deck accepts DVCAM-L, DVCPRO-M and Mini DV tapes. It plays tapes recorded in DVCAM and MiniDV SP formats and records only in DVCAM format. (It records DVCAM on MiniDV. "MiniDVCAM" can be played on some consumer camcorders.) An LP indicator lights up when MiniDV LP is detected but it doesn't read MiniDV LP properly. The picture is full of errors/pixelation and is unusable. There is no picture quality difference between the different sized tapes. The only difference is play time. We never tried playing a larger tape because we don't have any.

The dial on the right of the deck is a dual function jog/shuttle commonly found on professional tape decks. You can switch between jog mode and shuttle (variable-speed play) mode by pushing it. In jog mode, the dial controls how many frames to advance (kind of like frame-by-frame but more intuitive). In shuttle mode, it controls the playback speed, from full speed reverse (same as the rewind button) to full speed forward (same as the ff button). In physics terms, the jog mode controls displacement and the shuttle mode controls velocity.

The deck has component in/out, s-video in/out, composite in/out, 4-ch XLR audio in/out and a 1394 port for DV in/out. It also has a second video output with OSD for monitoring, a mono monitor audio out and a RS-422 remote control port. We never used the remote control because we don't have the l33t gear to do remote.

A nifty feature it has is the channel condition indicator. It shows how much error correction needs to be done to produce an error-free output. IMO it's a great way to tell when to back up the tapes.

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Hello. This is Vamp's Random Tech Stuff blog. I will post/rant about new and old technology and the way people use it.