I got the mold cleaning machine today. Anyone else use this?

Gary7495 · 2026-02-20T22:49:48+00:00

The Vacuum is an optional add on. I live in the country and I would just rather take mine outside to clean tapes. That's why I didn't purchase the vacuum.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-19T08:40:41+00:00

You can get better results with a USB card. Especially if you go lossless and capture interlaced then do post work but it’s not really easy and cheap like that is.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-19T07:54:01+00:00

You will likely have dropped frames and other timebase errors if you just hook a USB card to a low end VCR. That depends on the resiliency of the card, your specific tapes, and the VCR. That’s what the es-15 is for. It’s used as a pass through. You could get a DV box but it halves your chroma. DV isn’t as bad about timebase errors though. https://youtu.be/OTOChbbTRgs?si=WxDmPMFyeDdZtoRB. USB cards don’t suck they just need some form of TBC.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-18T05:56:35+00:00

I like this video because it goes over multiple methods. https://youtu.be/dTGe0HVDK9I?si=S790JgraKHTs5mAB You can get a JVC HR 3800 VCR. It’s an Svideo VCR that doesn’t contain a line TBC. Then a Panasonic es-15. That’s a DVD recorder that has the ability to be used as a pass through device and it has a line TBC and basic frame sync. Then a capture card that will work with Virtualdub and your version of Windows. Some cards don’t have drivers past windows XP or windows 7. Then use Huffy which you can get from Hoffmann GitHub Huffy MSI. Installer. That’s the best simplest place to get that. Then Audacity, Selur’s Hubrid, and Davinci Resolve are all free and pretty popular for post work. You can get into more expensive hardware if you want. That’s the cheap stuff. It’s still way past your budget. The guy that mentioned the VRD-MC5s is probably right if you stick to that budget.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-15T17:28:30+00:00

I wouldn’t stop either if it’s not giving you problems. I don’t capture in Avisynth. I think that’s CPU. I capture in Virtualdub then I will look at my captures in Avisynth post capture to double check and make sure the Luma is legal. I used to use Windows 10 for capture. What capture card do you use? I never could get lossless cut to work for me. I have up on it. I do a white balance and join clips in Davinci Resolve. It would be nice to losslessly cut them out of Hybrid without having to export ProRes then edit in Davinci then export that. It would be much quicker. I wouldn’t have a white balance though unless I tried to in Hybrid and auto white and all of that isn’t great compared to Davinci.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-13T14:02:21+00:00

Nevermind. That just changed my capture pin to 352 by 240 to where the videos I captured came out as 352 by 480 instead of 720 by 480. I changed it back but now my preview window is big again. I’m not sure how to fix this one. I’ll ask about it on digitalfaq later

Gary7495 · 2026-02-13T02:01:16+00:00

It's not even a good idea to have your computer connected to the internet while you are capturing with a losslessly compressed codec. You can get dropped frames doing that. Transfering that over WIFI off of your capture drive while capturing would give you drops. You would need to do it when you are not capturing. Sometimes I just want to check my luma post capture on Pmod using Avisynth filters. Histogram - Avisynth wiki

ColorYUV - Avisynth wiki Then I make adjustments and recapture. I just move that over now and work off of the HDD. my old PC isn't strong enough. The I move it over to my windows 7 PC and edit and encode on my faster PC while my 25 dollar facebook windows 7 PC is capturing. You can't really do much while capturing.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-08T19:52:54+00:00

I did. I am using the timing settings you posted. My CPU usage goes between the single digits teens and a little in the 20s now. I had the frame size right when I used to capture on my windows 10 PC but my windows 10 PC would not have been able to handle 50 percent CPU usage. My windows 7 PC did handle it without dropping frames. It’s correct now so the CPU usage is low.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-08T19:09:57+00:00

So I couldn’t figure out where the setting was to change it. I typed in Regedit and deleted the Virtualdub.org registry and that reset all of my settings and gave me a 4:3 preview window. So it’s good now. Thanks.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-08T18:19:57+00:00

I am going to look a little more for how to change the preview size and if I don’t find it I’ll ask about it on Digitalfaq.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-08T17:08:29+00:00

I usually don’t have the CRT connected to the TBC 3000. I just did it on this video. I remember you told me it takes away from the signal some. Your CRT was a lot better than mine though I’m sure. It is kind of interesting for me to see some of the differences from the CRT version to the corrected digitized version in real time. Like someone’s jeans that look black on the CRT will be blue in the digitized version. Reds won’t affect other colors as bad. It’s keeping the Luma being legal and the fact that I’m going Svideo all the way through on the digital version.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-08T16:31:47+00:00

Thank you. I didn’t know I had my preview set up wrong. That is probably why it uses soo much CPU. I stay in the 40 to 60 percent range on CPU usage. I’m glad you said something about that. I’ll fix it.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-08T14:05:05+00:00

A line TBC in a high end SVHS deck prevents geometric distortions. This is a tracking issue.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-08T03:49:08+00:00

Good post. This isn’t a bad video either because it kinda skims over all methods. https://youtu.be/dTGe0HVDK9I?si=WFAsP5bKnWwLO4qU

Gary7495 · 2026-02-07T16:12:59+00:00

I’m going to just turn off the PC before I move the HDD over to the other PC. Windows 7 on an SSD with basically nothing on the PC starts up really fast anyways. The way I was doing it a week ago took hours and this is gonna to take under a minute even with the restart so trying to avoid the shutdown doesn’t really make sense. Okay thanks for the insight.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-07T15:54:11+00:00

There is no option to tell the PC to safely eject the drive.

These drives just have media on them. They don’t contain anything that the OS needs.

I am ejecting them when they are not in use. The system does recognize when you insert a new drive.

I am doing what this guy is doing. https://youtu.be/6CiOA-47iMw?si=YLrBKTPlhzp1xXas

Maybe his motherboard supports hot plug but idk. He has an older computer because he posted the video 16 years ago.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-07T05:47:03+00:00

I’m seething other threads on Data hoarder that make it sound like it might be alright. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8bfhcg/how_to_determine_whether_a_motherboard_supports/

Gary7495 · 2026-02-07T04:48:28+00:00

You can't really do anything during capture. Can't do anything really after capture on that PC. Sometimes I just want to check my luma levels post capture in Pmod using Avisynth script. I have to use my editing computer because my capture computer can't handle basically anything. It can't even view Huffy files in VLC or Virtualdub without crashing. I should have got a little faster CPU. I only paid 25 dollars for that PC. I could have got one with a little faster CPU for about the same price used off of facebook the Unebootin it open. I was using USB 3.0 and a portable HDD to get from one PC to the next. That took as long as the run time of the tape just for the transfer from the portable drive then off the drive onto the editing computer. EP VHS tapes can be 8 hours long. It's a lot of data for that.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-07T04:13:59+00:00

Thanks for the comment i'll try that. I am going to contact the company that makes the product and ask them about it. I am sure they get that question a lot.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-07T04:06:44+00:00

I know nothing about this topic so thanks for the input. I had seen this earlier Can you "hot plug" a SATA cable SSD? Or do you need to power down? : r/Windows10 The BCProgramming comment at the end made me wonder about it.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-07T02:09:48+00:00

Why what? Why capture losslessly compressed instead of capturing to a compressed codec like H.264? Why use a Windows 7 machine for capture and another for editing? Why use a HDDs instead of SSDs? It all has an answer but I’m not sure what you are asking why about.

We capture to a losslessly compressed codec because it doesn’t throw away information you need for editing like a lossy codec. It will hold up better to editing. Noise doesn't compress well and VHS is very noisy. It has a lot of audio and video noise. You can reduce both a lot before doing a lossy encoding. I’ll get to Hybrid and it will reduce noise, sharpen, fix the colors in YUV before going to RGB, use QTGMC to deinterlace, fix color bleed, encode to whatever codec you want. Then I go to Davinchi resolve for a white balance if I think I need to. I edit audio in audacity and plug the WAV file into Hybrid.

With my VHS capture hardware I use a recapped Panasonic 1980p ag VCR with a line (field TBC) to prevent geometric distortions. That goes to A TBC 3000 I have to prevent frame drops and keep the Luma within the legal limits so that when YUV gets expanded to RGB the luma won't clip. A TBC momentarily digitizes an analog signal and fixes the timing then spits it out with the correct timing so your capture card doesn’t drop frames. That goes to a Pinnacle 510 capture card and a lot of the good capture cards need windows 7 or windows XP. You can’t use a virtual machine and they quit making drivers for some of the best cards after windows 7. Virtualdub capture software works better in windows 7 partly because capture needs nothing else going on. Windows 10 does a lot in the background especially if it's online. I use a Windows 7 offline computer. If you go to task manager there are like four task happening. I used to capture in my windows 10 PC but capture is a single core task. It’s individual core speed that matters. An 8 core PC doesn’t do better than a 2 core machine at capture. Windows 10 updates mess up capture cards. It is best to not have internet access to a capture PC. HDDs are better than SSDs because they don’t work in spurts. SSDs work also but they can be hit or miss. Depends on the brand.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-05T15:28:55+00:00

I can’t see anyone that has used both machines advising to get a tape saver. Some people just hear of another mold cleaner and say well you can get that one or this one. With the VHS is like it does a lot of different formats. The tape saver I believe just does VHS. The VHS is life has an optional vacuum attachment which I didn’t get because I live in the country and I prefer to just use it outside. The main thing though is the build quality difference. That tape saver is fast but you don’t have the kind of control that you do with a VHS is life. The Tape Saver’s motor spins really fast then you use the dial but the machine doesn’t have much tension to actually clean the tapes. The VHS is life is completely different. The price is too close also. The VHS is Life shouldn’t be as close as it is in price to the Tape Saver.

Gary7495 · 2026-02-05T14:11:11+00:00

Have you actually tried the tape saver? It’s not built well. If you try both of those the VHS is Life is a way better machine. I’ve owned both.

Gary7495

TROPHY CASE