Video effects processors?

[Mr.Blue_Sky]

Way back in the 80’s, when camcorders were hitting it big, you could get a device that would allow the would-be Speilberg to add “special effects” to his recently recorded video. Such things as wipes and subtitles were right at your fingertips. I need to get one of these things especially if it has a “letterbox” matte.

I have some old videotapes that were recorded on a VCR that had some problems that I was not aware of of long after I recorded dozens of tapes on it. The tapes recorded on it have severe tracking noise at the bottom of the picture. I figure I could pass the video through the processor with either a letterbox matte or at least a bottom mask and cover up the noise so that I can salvage the tapes.

As soon as standalone recordable DVD plater become affordable, I plan on transferring the majority of my tape collection to DVD, but I don’t want to transfer crappy originals. I COULD re-record a lot of this, but most of the source material (sitcoms, mostly) are unavailable and I don’t want to spend the time editing them if they were.

I Googled “video processors” and “video editing” and got way too much software-based stuff.

Any ideas who might sell one of these devices?

[beagledave]

Might want to try videoguys.com

[Inky_1]

When you say “Way back in the 80’s” I’m thinking your remembering something other than a computer interface video editor (i.e. the Amiga Video Toaster)?

The few stand-alone video mixers that spring to mind are the Focus Home Editing Suite series or the RCA Home Video editor. They all have wipes, text effects and various color enhancers, and I seem to remember the RCA’s had a letterbox effect. Anyway, I’ve seen them all for sale on Ebay for under $100, so it might pay to noodle around. But, seriously, I suspect your better off in the long run getting a video card for your computer and saving your videos as AVI’s as you can always convert them to DIVX or MPEG or whatever format the DVD burners slated to come out in a few years will eat.