Tim: >> The two most obvious questions, and easiest to resolve remotely, is >> do you know how to hook the two together, Claude Jones: > That's a pretty general question - what I don't fully understand is > sync, and where that's supposed to be fed from, and what some of the > sync connector labels mean - don't have the machine handy right now, > so I can't refer to it, so I'm doing this reply from memory They come from your house sync pulse generator, if you're integrating the machine into a system. The TBC will run entirely on internal sync, if you want to use just the VTR and TBC together. Compostite video reference is what's commonly known as a black burst signal. Essentially a black video signal, the same as you'd get from the video out of a camera with the lens cap on. Black video signal, with colour burst. The TBC can use this signal, alone, as its reference source. The composite sync connectors use 4 Volt peak-to-peak combined horizontal and vertical sync signals. I can't recall what else was on the back, there were four connectors on the one I played with the other day, and it'll depend on the model and local video system. In general, for Australian PAL, we also have things like PAL pulse, which is a square wave that inverts on every other horizontal line; and colour framing, which is a pulse on every fourth field (it takes four fields for the colour sub-carrier to return to the same phase). NTSC would be different - it wouldn't have the PAL pulse, I don't recall how their colour framing works. >> and do you have the multicore? > I do. For a simple stand-alone playback machine, that may go to just a monitor, or any other recorder: * Connect the multicore between TBC and VTR. * Connect advanced sync (probably abbreviated to ADV SYNC) from the TBC to a sync or reference input on the VTR. This is a 4 Volt composite sync signal. * Connect video out from the TBC to whatever other device you're feeding to. The other inputs around the multi-core are for when you use a VTR that doesn't have a multi-core, such as Umatic (though we found that TBC was awful at handling the BVU deck we had at hand). Video in's rather obvious, you've got two choices for drop-out compensation - monitoring the RF from the video heads, or paying attention to a drop-out signal from the VTR (a simple enough RF / not-enough RF signal). You might also want to connect the TBC video out back to the VTR's video monitor TBC input, and the local video monitor to the video monitor output. That lets you use the VTR's front panel controls to switch between monitoring input, raw VTR output (demod), TBC output, and a spare video source. If you were integrating that VTR into other video systems for playback, you'd also connect your house sync references to the TBC reference inputs. Depending on the particular equipment models involved, and your requirements, that might be just a blackburst video signal (essentially the same as a capped-off video camera output), or might also include other separately-cabled sync signals. The other outputs on the timebase correct don't need to be used. You've got several video outputs, two of them are composite, one of them lets you switch off sync insertion, and a sub-carrier signal for feeding to some things like *some* Umatic recorders which have a sub-carrier input. If there's a reference out, it's probably another composite sync output, rather than blackburst (I can't recall). The advanced sync is for the player it's correcting (because of delays involved in time base correcting, the player video needs to be a bit ahead of the output video). -- (This box runs FC6, my others run FC4 & FC5, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.