[INTRO PLAYS]
I'm pretty sure most everybody remembers
using VHS tapes. And if you're like me,
I'm pretty sure you remember the quality
being pretty bad. But I got to thinking
about it and I began to wonder was the
quality bad because the format was bad,
or was it my fault? For example, most of
the material I had on VHS was
recorded from television, and to make
matters worse I typically use the EP
speed settings so that I could fit more
on a tape and even the store-bought
tapes that I had were mastered with old
analog and duplication methods.
Of course, all of my home movies were recorded
directly from camcorders and I think the
quality of the cameras vary greatly from
one brand to the next. For example, this
video of me in 1987 actually doesn't
look too bad I was 12 years old here.
Now, this video of me in 1992 was on a
totally different camera and the quality
looks pretty terrible. So I thought it
was time for some experiments. I went
up to the attic and got my old VCR down.
You can see it's been a while since this
thing is used. I suspect the last time
it was used was 15 or 16 years ago.
I cleaned it off and then decided to
open it up and clean the head and all of
the other moving parts inside.
Then it was time to insert a tape and see if it's
still actually worked, and amazingly, it does.
These things are actually a marvel
of engineering.You know watching it here
on the CRT television it looks
surprisingly good. But when I connect it up
to my video capture device and bring it
into the digital world it looks
surprisingly bad and I think the modern
video displays are crisp enough to
really allow you to see the
imperfections for the old CRTs are not.
I also wondered about some other things
like how many times has this tape been played
maybe it's just worn out. And I also
wondered about the composite video
format maybe maybe that's just the limit
of what the composite video format has
to offer. And I also wondered about the
mastering and duplication processes
used back in the 80s and 90s.
So, I decided to create a few tests of my own.
First of all, I bought a brand new old
stock copy of "Back to the Future" on VHS.
Now, this baby has never been opened
before. In fact, I kind of feel bad for
opening it but I'll do it in the name of science.
So, in this experiment I'll be using my
Western Digital Live TV since it has a
composite video output. Then I'm going to
connect it directly to my video capture
device on my PC and record a scene from
Back to the Future. Now this copy of the
movie is a 1080p version that's been
ripped from Blu-ray and offers the
benefit of being digitally remastered
copy of the movie.
This will give us an idea of exactly
what the limit of the composite video
format is. I'll refer to this as the
Direct Composite for the rest of the
episode. Then I'm going to connect my VCR
to my PC and record the same clip from
the original tape. I'll refer to this as
the Original 1985 VHS (even though that this is an 1993 MCA Universal Home Video re-release). And then I'm going
to do one more thing. I've bought this
Maxell broadcast-quality VHS tape.
This is what the professionals used back in
the day. If you look at the two tape side
by side, you can see this one is slightly
darker material than the other.
In audio cassettes the darker usually means better quality.
I'm assuming the same is true here.
And then I'm going to record from the
Western Digital Live TV straight to this
tape, and then I'm going to play the tape
back and record it to my PC. It'll be
interesting to see whether my copy looks
better than the original 1985 version.
So, the results are in.
Here's a clip from the 1080p version
just for a point of reference. Now I'm
playing all of these with a mirror image
so hopefully it'll keep YouTube from
dinging me with copyright infringement,
even though I'm definitely using these
under fair use (due to the video being originally going to be blocked worldwide by NBCUniversal).
I don't know if that helps or not but
it's worth a shot. Now, here's the version
I recorded directly from Composite Video.
By the way, I'm not modifying these clips
and anyway. I'm not the interlacing them
or zooming in to cut out the letterbox.
I want you to see them exactly as they are.
And here's the version are recorded onto
my own tape. It actually looks better
than I really thought it would,
and here's the version from the original
1985 VHS tape (although this is really an 1993 MCA Universal Home Video re-release, again).
Wow. That looks terrible. Ok so we had a
nice bright daylight scene, how about a
dark night scene to compare.
So, here's the Direct Composite,
and here is the version are recorded on the tape,
and here's the Original 1985 VHS (although that this is a 1993 MCA Universal Home Video re-release, once again).
So let's look at some close-ups. I've snap
some individual frames that we can look
at more closely because it's really hard
to zoom into an interlaced video when
it's playing. So this is from the Direct
Composite. Now, this doesn't actually look
too bad. There's definitely some clues
that this is from a Composite Video
though. If you look around the edge of
Jennifer's face and even Marty is to some
degree you'll see sort of a checkerboard
pattern. This is typical composite
artifacting. And if you look at any sharp
edges like the edge of her clothes or
Marty's striped shirt, you'll see some
rainbow color fringing.
That's another effect of Composite Video.
You can even see some fringing on the trees like in
this area here. But this is essentially
DVD quality. If DVD were being played on
a Composite Device.
Now let's look at the frame from My Recording.
Interestingly enough most of the color
fringing is gone, and I suspect it is due
to the softening of the image. So the sharp edges are gone.
One area you can see this in really clearly as if you
compare the trees, and you'll see a lot
of the detail is blurred in the VHS
recording as compared to the Straight Composite.
Also if you look at the columns on the clock tower, on
the composite version you can actually make
out some of the detail of the rock
pattern, but on the VHS version it just
looks like one solid piece.
Now take a look at the Original 1985 VHS (although that this is a 1993 MCA-Universal re-release, once a-frickin'-gain), and you
can see in this version that the trees
have lost all of their detail completely.
The columns on the clock tower look even
worse, but there's just generally a lot
of noise in this picture, even in the sky.
Also there's a white glow around Marty's head.
So let's go through them real
quickly so you can see the differences.
So, let's look at a dark scene. This is the
Direct Composite signal again, just like
last time. This doesn't look too bad. You
can still see some of that color
fringing effect here. An interesting side
note is that if I had used S-Video
instead of composite this effect would
be gone. But VHS is not capable of S-Video.
So, I don't think there's any point.
OK. So here's My Recording. And you can
see some noise has been added to the
image and the JCPenney logo has some
color artifacts now. And here's the
Original 1985 VHS (although that this is an 1993 MCA Universal Home Video re-release, for the last time) and wow. Very noisy image.
Well, apparently, the Composite Video
signal can actually carry a better
signal than VHS is capable of even
taking advantage of. But the other thing
that I learned and I think this
surprised me more than anything else is
that I can actually record my own movies
and have them better quality than the
factory original tapes. And I would also
like to point out that this VCR I'm
using is a very low end product. It was a
low end product back in the 1990's
when I bought it. It was, you
know it's a 2-head.
Oh, and by the way, despite what I've been
told my whole life apparently 4-head
VCRs are no better quality than 2-head
VCRs when playing a regular tape in SP
speed, they do have some advantages when
doing fast-forward and rewind as far as
and also playing a EP speeds, but the
tests I'm doing apparently there would
have been no difference.
OK. So, I would like to also shown a
comparison with S-Video. The problem is
as far as I know no VHS players actually
support S-Video because much like
LaserDisc players where's the actual signal
encoded onto the tape is actually a
composite signal. There is no storage
separation of the Color Signal
vs. the Luminance Signal. So the other
problem of course is that my Western Digital device
also does not have a S-Video output on it. So, if I happen to
own a DVD player and a DVD copy of Back to the Future,
I might have been able to
show you at least an S-Video
example from that but I don't own
that so.
So, to answer the original question. Yes, I
think VHS tapes are just as bad as we
remember them, but I think they could
have been a lot better and we just used
higher quality tapes both at home and you
know at the studio where they're being
duplicated and mastered out to all the consumers.