Time Base Correctors

Video images are made up of a number of scanned horizontal lines – these line are normally electronically produced, each comprising of a synchronising pulse at the beginning of each line, followed by electronic information that describes the colour and intensity of the image of that line.

It is due to the inherent problems of VCR’s that Time Base Correctors were required.

When a video signal is recorded on tape, the mechanical recording process disturbs its precise timing, but the display device (TV or Monitor) can compensate for this by locking on to the synchronising pulse that is on each line. Therefore, the small timing jitter caused by the VCR is barely noticeable on the screen.

Time Base Correctors are sold from as little as £100 to thousands of pounds for full professional broadcast models.

Do I Need a Time Base Corrector?

Inside every VCR, playback, record and erase heads make contact with the tape every time it is played – all this physical contact changes the physical size and shape of the tape, which degrades the quality.

Again, when copying from VCR to VCR (making multiple copies) each copied tape’s timing gradually gets worse until finally the TV is incapable of holding on to the picture at all and the whole image tears apart.

Without a Time Base Corrector (TBC), you cannot make a good quality copy of a tape, which has become worn, or a copy of a copy.

What is Time Base Error?

Typical Time Base errors include timing jitter, unstable picture (rolling), geometrical distortions, picture bending, and displacement of the picture to the left or right of the screen.

All these types of errors can be eradicated with the use of a Time Base Corrector.

All high quality TBC’s have built-in sync generators which re-instate Horizontal and Vertical Sync and burst on the video signal.

With or Without Genlock Facility?

The benefit of having the Genlock facility, is when you have a tape that is so worn (the sync pulses have been destroyed) the genlock facility will allow you to input another video source with good sync pulses and thus your copying tape will then be able to re-time itself by using the sync pulses from the second video source.

Lektropacks supply the following Time Base Correctors - CTB100 CTB100G CTB531 CTB531R CMX07