Can anyone help me with a TBC? This is all new to me

So I recently ordered a Shuttle USB to capture the 30+ Hi8 tapes my father has and send a hard drive to each of my siblings since I have nothing else to do with this quarantine.

I've learned along the way that it wasn't as simple as grabbing a good product and capturing. I've been having to constantly correct the audio de-sync in FCPX because of the frame drop, and I've seen it suggested here that a TBC will significantly reduce the frame drop and thus help the audio sync. This is where I'm stuck though. I've seen that some VCR's have built in TBC's but those are more for some kind of vertical line correction and not audio?

I've also seen TBC's range from $50-1000+. I'm not out to do this as a business, and I can't afford those really expensive TBC's. Is there a somewhat affordable one someone could suggest? I would primarily be using it for hi8 capturing, though my family does have some stuff on VHS and VHS-C. I appreciate any suggestions and advice, thanks!

Also, to avoid having to deal with massive file types it was suggested by the BlackMagic help center that I use one of the apple prores formats rather than uncompressed quicktime. Would ProRes 222 be a good option for minimal quality loss for those sources?

The best option for Hi-8 would be a D-8 camcorder. Most of them were backward compatible and can digitize Hi-8 and deliver via their DV output. There is no ProRes 222, it's 422. It would be good enough, or if you are very critical, use ProRes 422 HQ.

Use a Leitch 475/575/675 to convert to SDI and capture from there. It's a broadcast grade A to D, once the signal is SDI you can use a mini recorder and ignore all the analog foolishness with BM capture cards.

Good Luck

The leitch option looks promising, but what about audio? There doesn't appear to be audio inputs in this setup.

If you're checking out ebay it's about a 50/50 split for models with and without analog audio. The AV models have channel strips on the back. If there is a delete plate then it doesn't have the option. Look for these guys.

Good Luck

s-l300.jpg (17.77 KiB) Viewed 1968 times

Depending on the output of your hi8 camera, you may be able to consider a simpler method.

I recently was archiving all my old digibeta tapes and DVC pro tapes, and decided to do the family home movies as well. Sources were VHS and Hi8 video, that only had a composite output from the camera.

I ran both the vhs and the HI8 through an old DVD recorder that was collecting dust in the basement, and fed the output from that machine to Avid though a blackmagic capture card with analog in.
(the dvd recorder also has component and hdmi out...but i didn't go down that path...kept everything "same as source" so to speak.

The dvd recorder acts as the frame sync, and the captures went in easily.

When feeding a Hi8 signal from a player via a Blackmagic card to a computer is it still necessary to go via a TBC? Or if you were to convert Hi8 to digital in a digital8 camera is TBC bypassed?

You don't need a card or TBC to feed a digital signal from a D-8 straight into the computer, only FireWire.

Hi,

Do you know how can I capture my VHS PAL without drop frame?

I try to capture with Premiere pro but I loose a lot of frames.

Sorry for my bad english

Best regards