So finally I’ve managed to get my analogue video synthesiser, Vidiot, to speak fluently with my digital set-up so I can now fully integrate that analogue content into my live visual digital set-up.
Had to correct the VHS signal going into the synthesiser and I looked round for ages trying to find an affordable Time Base Corrector and a lot of the even recently obsolete / discontinued devices were very costly and reading more about them not guaranteed to work with my set-up.
So I followed the alternative route of buying an old VCR-DVDr combo which was originally brought out to allow people to easily transfer their old videos to shiny new DVDs (!). The main benefit for me being the machine has Time Base Correction built in so that the wobbly tape heads can be re-interpreted for smooth DVD copying.
Picked a vintage BUSH one on eBay for £90, plus a Scart to composite adapter, sent it to the Vidiot then into a Blackmagic convertor and out into my Mac via Syphon and into my live layers and it works (-:
Got some classic sci-fi movies out of their boxes - an added bonus with the hybrid machine is that I can have two movies loaded at once - one DVD and one VHS and then switch between the two.
Can’t wait to use it for a gig (although not looking forward to lugging the big old VCR around . . .)
