getting around the panasonic dvd recorder white level issue

several people, myself included, use a panasonic dvd recorder as a time base corrector for their vhs transfers. unfortunately they have a flaw: on some tapes the white levels clip internally. essentially the brightness is too high to the point where detail is lost. this especially shows up with tapes that have macrovision on them.

i've looked around the internet for solutions. some say use a proc amp before the es15, some say mod an s-video cable with a resistor (which means soldering), some say just deal with it. but there was one user on the domesday86 discord server who sugested another option: split the y/c signal on the s-video cable to two bnc jacks, then attenuate the y (luma) channel with an attenuator, then get the two bnc jacks back to s-video.

so i took the plunge. here's how everything's set-up.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ONLY APPLIES TO S-VIDEO. I CANNOT GUARANTEE THIS'LL WORK WITH COMPOSITE (USING ONE CABLE INSTEAD).

this is all before shipping costs. i paid about $100 for everything + shipping.

to get this all hooked up you'll need to connect everything to the input of your dvd recorder. connect one of the s-video breakout cables to the output of your vcr, hook the two sdi cables into the two bnc jacks on the adapter, add the add the attenuator to the cable that goes to the y (luma) channel, then plug both sdi cables into the second breakout adapter, then plug the adapter into one of the inputs of the dvd recorder.

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with your adapter, you might have to guess which plug is the y channel. for me, it's the white plug. but if you don't see a brightness difference, try the colored plug.

if you hooked up everything correctly, you'll see a dimmer image. this is normal. the attenuator is there to ensure nothing gets clipped by the dvd recorder. i have some comparison screenshots for y'all to see.

as you can tell, there might not be a major difference, but if you notice that some highlights are lost in the histogram on the unattenuated capture. a plus of attenuating the signal is that it gives us more headroom to play around with in post.

this isn't just for macrovision tapes either, you can use this on any tapes that clip with the dvd recorder to get back any lost detail. and to be honest, i'd recomend you keep the attenuator on all tapes, just because of that extra headroom.

but if you don't care about doing stuff in post, then it's all good. no need to do anything extra. you might not be a fan of the dimmer picture, but trust me, this recovers a lot of lost detail.

a HUGE shoutut to tommy86 on the domesday86 discord server for letting me know about the setup! you're a real one!!

at least i finally have some decent s-video cables now