Brightness Boosting

You may have read that the ES-15 (and other Panasonic DVD recorders with the Diga feature) boosts brightness slightly. There are two parts to the story: 1/overall brightness is boosted slightly and 2/there is an momentary overboost on scene changes with large brightness changes.

Overall Brightness Increase

To address point 1, it has been found that, for some tapes, particularly bad tapes, there is a slight brightening, manifesting itself as slightly brighter white areas, meaning there is a possibility that the whites will be blown out and you’ll lose any video information in that area. On a good tape, I found the ES-15 remains true to the original. Here is an example: Hi8 direct to GV-USB2 S-Video capture Hi8 to ES-15 (AV4 In, AV1 SCART Out) to GV- USB2, all S-Video There is no discernable brightness boosting. A YouTube example showing no brightness boosting: https://youtu.be/0HKIDpK5xAg?list=PLSv6e2rLHR mI8SUB1nPfUCL6EkGnX6pOP Ways to correct this? Using the digitiser’s Proc Amp, lower the contrast just a tad to recover the details in the white areas. While this isn’t technically the “correct” way to do it, I’ve found it yields quite satisfactory results and will recover most of the information in the white areas. The “correct” way to counter this brightness boost is to reduce the brightness levels entering the DVD recorder so it can’t overboost them. This reduction can be done either: • with a hardware Proc Amp after the VCR but before the DVD recorder, • adding a rheostat in the luma line of the S-Video cable; I made a box that allows you to lower the luma level slightly: • by placing a 5db attenuator in the Luma line of an S-Video cable in the output from the VCR before input to the DVD recorder. This is discussed here, and an example of the cabling is shown here. I now use this setup. The components are: • S-Video BNC breakout/splitter cables (x2) These ones are quite expensive; there are cheaper splitters available. • 5db attenuator. Depending on the arrangement of your video gear, you may need longer splitter cables or two BNC extension cables. For the extension cables, ensure you get the correct, male ends (with the locking nut). Brightness Momentary Boost at Scene Changes In scenarios of extreme brightness change, S- Video output on AV4 displays a very slight brightness increase for a couple of frames. The S- Video output on AV1 (via a SCART connector) does not display this boost. Is it an issue or consideration in practice? In my opinion, No.