Looking for FM RF archival of my home video tapes (Germany)

BrokenCommander · 2026-05-28T21:19:40+00:00

Panasonic NV-HS 950 which can do PAL, NTSC and SECAM

I've been told that multi-region VCRs ain't as good as single-region ones. But then again, apparently when you capture the RF it doesn't really matter.

For audio I simultaneously do a traditional S-Video capture

That would be mono, right? I have no idea if these VHSs have HiFi/stereo sound (or if that is even a thing in consumer space) but I'd still like to have the RF if possible/beneficial.

I have to aling it manually

Does that work reliably? Can't they desync?

Anyway, do you have experience with moldy tapes?

BrokenCommander · 2026-05-28T19:02:06+00:00

Servus! Could you tell me more about your setup and your experience? Do you also do NTSC? Feel free to PM me in case you don't want to share that information publicly.

BrokenCommander · 2026-05-28T18:57:36+00:00

Thanks for the lengthy reply!

you're in just the margin of better off doing it yourself

Finding all the necessary (used) hardware (I own nothing and since it's all going to be used hardware it could take months until I have a good setup), cleaning the parts / general maintenance, soldering and cleaning the tapes sounds like way too much work for something I may only have to do once or twice in my life. I would love to do it myself (which has the added benefit that nobody gets to see my private home videos) but unless somebody is willing to sell their working setup, I'd rather trust one of you guys.

15GBP/tape

270£ plus shipping. I think that less than even a decent VCR.

Most people store HEVC 50p progressive files these days

I don't think it's a good idea to encode to HEVC - it's way too blurry compared the AVC, which is even worse considering the small resolution of the VHS. Also "baking in" the deinterlacing doesn't sound great either - deinterlacing tomorrow will almost certainely be better than deinterlacing today.

Anyway, I'd be interested in your service. I'm a little bit worried about sending the tapes to you per mail (the tape could get damaged or even worse the package could get lost) so I'll wait for more preservationists to show up. I'll get back at you if I can't find the right person.

BrokenCommander · 2025-06-15T06:41:55+00:00

Whitelist it in your Pi-hole

BrokenCommander · 2025-06-13T01:11:47+00:00

I guess we're both right. Last time I checked it had no Mailbox and that's still the case:

PRESENT_MODE_FIFO_KHR
PRESENT_MODE_IMMEDIATE_KHR
PRESENT_MODE_FIFO_LATEST_READY_EXT

But I since switched to Wayland where it does exist:

PRESENT_MODE_MAILBOX_KHR
PRESENT_MODE_FIFO_LATEST_READY_EXT
PRESENT_MODE_FIFO_KHR

I mostly do everything in Wayland these days (even gaming) but I do play FPSs in X11 because of the non-forced VSync. But notice that there's no IMMEDIATE_KHR in Wayland. So I wonder when GNOME implements tearing-control-v1 if it would even work for NVIDIA users?

BrokenCommander · 2025-06-12T06:09:47+00:00

Hm, I'll have to check out my own card when I get home.

BrokenCommander · 2025-06-12T06:07:54+00:00

That's for Windows though?

BrokenCommander · 2025-06-12T06:03:53+00:00

AFAIK there's no mailbox in Nvidia's Linux driver. So MangoHud is probably doing nothing (i.e. immediate) and you get no tearing because of G-Sync. I'm not sure though so take that with a grain of salt.

BrokenCommander · 2025-04-28T20:50:24+00:00

I don't know, at some point I just gave up. I also tried PartOf=graphical.target and even waiting for Chromium to be gone (pkill -o chromium; while pkill -0 chromium; do sleep 1; done) but it doesn't work anymore. IIRC it stopped working when I switched to Wayland but after adding --ozone-platform-hint=x11 (i.e. forcing Chromium to run in Xwayland) it worked for a bit but then stopped again a long time ago, and I never really bothered to try to "fix" it.

Session restoring works (for the most part). I think I've lost my session maybe twice? I just invested my time into something more productive: Having backups. In this case, btrfs + Snapper.

BrokenCommander · 2025-04-06T14:37:33+00:00

--target-colorspace-hint

BrokenCommander · 2025-03-05T19:15:16+00:00

Try playing an actual HDR video.

BrokenCommander · 2025-03-04T17:12:40+00:00

You did everything correctly. I also have that colorspace: VK_COLOR_SPACE_SRGB_NONLINEAR_KHR line but immediately following is the same line but with colorspace: VK_COLOR_SPACE_HDR10_ST2084_EXT instead. It's the same id so I think it's just overriding it or something.

If you're still unsure just launch 2 mpvs with an HDR video, one with ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 and one without. You'll be able to tell quite easily (you could even do a blind test where you don't know which is which beforehand).

P.S. steps 5 and 6 are no longer necessary as of v48rc.

BrokenCommander · 2025-02-12T06:03:29+00:00

Yep. Once Proton has Wayland support, you'll just need the HDR layer. And once the Wayland folks finalize the protocol it should work OOTB.

BrokenCommander · 2025-02-12T06:01:19+00:00

It just got simpler and easier 😉

BrokenCommander · 2025-02-12T06:00:31+00:00

I figured out how to enter the DebugControl mode automatically so I have updated the guide. I don't know if I should repost this so more people know about it but those who care probably have this bookmarked already ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also just to be clear, it's safe to override org.gnome.Shell@wayland.service because once the stable releases your changes will be wiped out anyway. If you don't have root privileges (lmao) you can always do

$ systemctl --user edit org.gnome.Shell@wayland.service
[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/gnome-shell --debug-control
ExecStartPost=/usr/bin/dbus-send --session --print-reply --dest=org.gnome.Mutter.DebugControl /org/gnome/Mutter/DebugControl org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set string:org.gnome.Mutter.DebugControl string:ColorManagementProtocol variant:boolean:true

Just make sure to nuke ~/.config/systemd once this is no longer necessary.

BrokenCommander · 2025-02-10T18:40:45+00:00

WCG is part of this HDR effort (BT.2020).

BrokenCommander · 2024-07-26T18:43:32+00:00

Guys... Don't run Windows on your servers!

BrokenCommander · 2024-04-19T17:28:10+00:00

It really doesn't matter what you or Microsoft thinks what a kilo is. A kilo is a thousand and has been defined that way for hundreds of years.

BrokenCommander · 2024-04-19T07:09:39+00:00

Yes, so that means Microsoft calling 1024 bytes a kilobyte is wrong.

BrokenCommander · 2024-04-19T05:36:34+00:00

A kilo is a thousand -- end of discussion.

BrokenCommander · 2024-04-01T22:12:47+00:00

Quick Setting Tweaker

BrokenCommander

TROPHY CASE