Outsmarting Sony (or, Stupid U-Matic Tricks!)
So, part of the reconfiguration of my edit suite/man cave has been to recable everything to use S-Video instead of composite video for the highest quality video I can get from my collection of professional and prosumer gear. This was pretty easy on the S-VHS front since that's where S-Video was developed to begin with, and my Betacam deck does S-
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These studio decks group fairly neatly. You have the 800, 820, and 900 which all do "regular" U-Matic, and you have the 850, 870, and 950 which also handle U-Matic SP.
The 800s were entry level and most of them had every last hour wrung out of them in small-to-mid market TV stations. Like the VO-58xx series, they're serviceable if you get a good example.
The 820 and 870 models are special, in that they support dynamic tracking -- onboard slo-mo playback. It's actually pretty fun to mess around with (I have a BVU-870) but the reality is if you'll get better results capturing at regular speed and playing with it later in AfterEffects. The good news is, these machines were usually pampered to protect the special heads required. The bad news is, said heads are both outrageously expensive to replace and and more prone to have tracking issues due to their increased complexity.
If you know you'll never capture any U-Matic SP tape, then the 820 is a great bet -- provided you don't need parts or service for it.
One last thing -- the VO-5xxx series has unbalanced audio whereas the VO-9xxx and BVU-xxx series has balanced audio, which may influence your decision based on what other equipment you have on hand.
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I was looking at some pics, wow electronics sure had a lot of parts inside them back in the day!
I'll keep looking around and see what I can find.
What kind of money do you think I should need to spend for a deck?
Thanks again for all the help, I'll keep asking questions as I come across them (if you don't mind!)
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U-Matic decks had a lot of discrete components and very few microprocessors or custom chipsets to handle the signals. That makes them very easy to service but it also makes them bulkier and heavier. Don't forget that the 3/4" format was the world's first viable videocassette format -- it was all 2" open reel tape, put together at the turn of the '70s.
How much you should spend depends on how much tape you want to digitize, what your requirements are for the final product, what kind of deck you want, and what kind of deadline you have. $100-$200 without shipping is probably the sweet spot -- toward the lower end if you're looking at VO-58xx decks, more if the seller indicates the unit has been recently serviced. As a rule of thumb, cosmetically you don't want the deck to look like it's been dropped, but too cosmetically pristine and the unit may have spent so much time in storage that it may need belts or lubrication to make it viable.
Hope all this helps!
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I'll let you know how it all ends up.
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I ended up winning a VO-9800. Listing said that it had been serviced last year and was recently checked and was in working order. $200 plus $65 shipping from CA.
I'm assuming the dub output doesn't carry audio? So for audio, am I taking it directly from the xlr out from the 9800, into the rca jacks on the capture card?
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You are correct, the dub line is video only. You'll need to convert the balanced audio from the 9800 to unbalanced audio for your capture card.
In most cases this requires more than simply a cable which changes the XLR to RCA because the output levels are different. However, the 9800 may have a menu setting which lets you adjust the output gain -- I've never been in the setup menu for that series of deck.
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