Working on a Sony J-30 Digital Betacam player. Can we get it to play a tape?

[@more.power.]

Thank you Colin for taking us along with you on the repair.

[@Petertronic]

Interesting seeing how Betacam machines evolved since I left the industry in 2000. I was intimately familiar with all machines up to that time, and had never seen this one. Sad it didn't work properly, good luck finding another one for parts.

[@MrBetaByte]

Such a great Betacam player but so many are abused - of course as they are pro kit that saw some life. Schematics are an issue but I have got a few of these up and running now but they aren't easy to fault find compared to earlier kit on many levels. Great video and thank you for sharing - always love a journey...

[@RobToole]

another great video, thanks for posting!

[@manusudha4269]

You could check the gap between stator and rotor of the capstain motor .

[@WatchJoelTV]

i like your help videos very much.

[@chillidogkev]

I bought x2 low hour mint condition J3's last year, both non working and both with faulty power supplies. The same fault and the same component. On one of them, if it was plugged in and left for 30 minutes it would often spring into life so I knew exactly what was going on. Both fixed easily although one really threw me as there was a problem with those ribbon cables to confuse matters! Ace units.

[@video99couk]

Got to be capacitors. Can you tell us which part(s) failed?

[@chillidogkev]

@@video99couk Yes. There's one capacitor, small and surrounded by a couple of other components halfway down that power supply board. Difficult to see really and definitely can't see the base. No bulging of the top and looks fine. It's in the SMPS startup circuit. I missed it for ages because it 'looked' fine and it was not as easy to take out so didn't bother. My ESR meter missed it also IN circuit. Again, that threw me off the scent. Both of these caps were the culprit on both J3's. When remove I could see leaking at the base. The 2nd machine repair still would not work which was a mystery UNTIL I found a secondary problem with one ribbon cable that despite testing fine on the bench (continuity) would not work when connected at both ends! Bad end contacts. I might have a photo somewhere and if so I'll post it here.

[@raspam]

17:20: SIF2 might be "serial interface 2" , CMD the data pin and CS seems to be chip select. But I'm just guessing ...

[@video99couk]

I think that is right, yes.

[@mdftrasher]

One drop oil on de bearing? (motor is shot anyway)

[@video99couk]

It's not mechanically stiff, it's an electronic fault with the motor.

[@akemikimine2963]

Nice video thankyou for sharing. Could you please take some time to talk about the loading mechanism of the beta series. Why the J30 player use the loading mechanism like VHS. And PVW2800 or beta camcoder use several different loading way. What will be affected by different loading methods of VTR with the same format.Thankyou!

[@video99couk]

It does go to show how the loading mechanism is not completely dictated by the format. Most Beta equipment uses a loading ring but some uses loading arms. Meanwhile most VHS based equipment uses loading arms but some (Philips Charlie mechanism springs to mind) uses loading rings. Which is best? Probably dictated by many factors including cost, weight, size and other factors. The J machines were not as robust as the bigger decks but were all about getting size and weight down.

[@akemikimine2963]

@@video99couk Thank you for your reply. It's very useful！

[@stuzyk]

Great video, I have one of these, if I put a digital betacam tape in should it play just via composite out or is it FireWire only ?

[@video99couk]

SDI to an SDI capture device could potentially give the best results, but Firewire would be good too. Composite Out would work but is of course very limited quality.

[@stuzyk]

@video99couk thanks for the reply, I just get a grey screen with a digital tape via composite, betacamSP tapes play fine via composite

[@westsidetillidieog]

I got the same unit if i use sdi output i have a wrong blacklevel, can i set up to ire 7.5? Thanks

[@richclips]

Hi Colin, I notice that there is a small surface mount electrolytic on the capstan motor PCB, what are the chances that it's dud. I do also remember some of these motors having dry joints on the PCBs either on the hall effect sensors or the windings. Worth a look :)

[@video99couk]

Checked it already.

[@frankfarago2825]

Okay -- so cosmeticaly it is rather a rotten egg, it ain't working, and as it is a mere pedestrian J-30, as it does not even have the single SD-SDI output BNC jack on the back. What a barn find, wow....

[@video99couk]

I thought it does have SDI but would have to check. I wanted the Firewire output which it does have. Most of the kit I get in doesn't work, the fun is trying to fix it.

[@frankfarago2825]

@@video99couk I just purchased a like-new J-30SDI with only 104 hours on its head/drum assembly for only €650. I didn't need to "fix" anything on it or inside of it, as anything and everything on it works just fine. Whatever.

[@revaoaf]

Hello good Sir, how do you turn off dolby c noise reduction on the j30? Can't seem to figure it out thanks

[@video99couk]

My understanding is that this can only be disabled when playing oxide tapes. For BetacamSP it was part of the format. I may be wrong, so check that.

[@Jallge]

Do you have any reel to reel VTRs, such as EIAJ-1, quadruplex or 1" type C?

[@video99couk]

I have a 1" C-format machine complete with TBC, but it requires some work and I probably need a bit of help with that one. Certainly no room for Quad here!

[@mysfiring]

Am curious: did you put together your own isolation transformer, or did you purchase it from somewhere? Because I’d love to put my own together, but have never come across a source of 1:1 transformers in commodity products I could steal one out of.

[@video99couk]

I have two of them, one fixed voltage and the other with lots of windings which can be configured for various voltages. They have both featured in previous videos. I built them up myself.

[@mysfiring]

@@video99couk looks like I’m going on an isolation transformer video-build-guide search on your channel, then. Thanks for the info! :D

[@DJVybeBeats]

Very interesting video. May you please tell me the model number of your magnifier. The larger one which is adjustable. Thanks.

[@video99couk]

That's very old, it uses a fluorescent tube. I think there are better ones today.

[@ER7ABY]

I have bod one in the picture , bif gray line at the bottom , how can I send u the player ?

[@video99couk]

I can't take on repairs, I have a backlog of equipment to work on.

[@zx8401ztv]

What about removing the capstan motor and strip it down to the coils?, there could be cracked joints on the hall effect pickups. Just a silly thought. The front display has high voltage and filament voltage around 4 volts maybe, Shame they don't tell you the led fault meaning :-(

[@video99couk]

These things aren't know for dry joints. I think it's actually failed. Hoping to get a replacement.

[@alistercarmichael4990]

Having taken the plunge on a dead j3 the other day I was encouraged by the ease of obtaining the service manual. While it reads like a book of peril they do explain the led functions. Why they would light. Later on in the errors section it is explained what errors are available to be determined by the display code and a breakdown of the codes and code makeup. Flashes may be linked to the code number though that is not stated in my limited read of the book.

[@frankowalker4662]

What a shame, it a nice looking machine. Is'nt there a compatibe capstan motor from a different Sony model you could use, or are they all too specific ?

[@video99couk]

One from another J series deck should work.

[@Capturing-Memories]

I don't know about converting lossless AVI 4:2:2 to DV, I know it's a manageable format but really DV is obsolete and converting it to h.264 which what everyone wants these days incur a permanent loss, I'm not criticizing your work, I'm just saying that with modern CPU speeds and HDD capacities dumping lossless and converting it to h.264 shouldn't be a cumbersome task like it use to be 2 decades ago even for capturing analog formats not just digital Betacam. High quality de-interlacing and conversion to h.264 using ffmpeg in less than real time speed yields much much better results but can be scheduled overnight for multiple files so one don't have to sit in front of the computer.

[@video99couk]

If customers want other file formats, I capture them from the SDI port. A lot of customers do take DV-AVI files though, virtually all video editing software takes those. Bear in mind that here in the UK, most tapes are PAL and DV gives better results in PAL than NTSC.

[@frankfarago2825]

I converted 11 hours using a J-30SDI deck, output from deck was uncompressed SD in AVI pocket, then trasnscoded it to both Apple ProRes 422 HQ and ProRes 4444 to see the quiality differences, if any. As there weren"t any, we stuck with ProRes 422 HQ. That is also a nice delivery format of our shows for many streaming platforms.

[@Capturing-Memories]

@@frankfarago2825 4:4:4 just bloats the file size, It will not add any visual benefit to the quality of the video.

[@MIDRATZ]

G’Day! CAN YOU HELP? I need advice on what used miniDV deck I should seek, buy, use, then resell on eBay. I have 30 miniDV tapes from 20 years ago that I want to digitize. A regular Sony camcorder I have, who’s heads I’ve cleaned, shows they all have lots of glitches (blocky video artifacts, sound chirps and cutouts. Etc). I’m hoping there’s a used affordable system out there than can help clean this up by a lot. Something. With FireWire in obviously. CAN YOU HELP?

[@video99couk]

Any good camcorder should do this. It may be that the one you have been using is defective, or it may be that the tapes themselves have been recorded on a defective camcorder. I have a range of different players to overcome just this sort of problem. There's no guarantee that using an expensive professional deck will do any better than a more modest camcorder, and it might even be worse. So probably it will be better to get someone like me to work on them. But if you do want to have another go, I've found that Panasonic camcorders can be a little more tolerant of bad tapes than Sony ones, for some unknown reason.

[@MIDRATZ]

Thank you for the reply. I can’t find it now but I know I read somewhere that there’s a certain Sony model that has componentry that no others have to improve the reading of old tapes. I was hoping you knew about that and what model It was.

[@bobsbits5357]

hi dr who you had on the tape the old BW one tomb of the cy men

[@video99couk]

I saw it was an old Dr Who but didn't look any further. Odd thing to have on a DigiBeta tape.

[@steverobertsbbc]

@@video99couk I'm quite curious about that, as it looks like it might be a tape I made when I used to look after the restoration of Doctor Who for the DVD range. It seems to be a yellow label BBC Resources tape and at one point you can see a comparison wipe between the restored and unrestored sections of one of the most damaged parts. I wonder how it ended up with you? (Only curious, I have no claim to it!) What does the label say?

[@rsuryase]

This is the scrap machine now.

[@video99couk]

Well maybe not, if I can get some parts. It is low hours.

[@sonybetamax3212]

What is the price please

[@michaelmitchell8218]

I watched a few of your video and you do not have a clue what your doing. I can’t go into this to long but you seem to rely on taking part of one machine to put in another’s. This thing is old and need a service which you can’t do because you can’t read electronics signals right or know how a component affects another component. The whole thing needs to be stripped down and tested. You have test points on a circuit you read to check. I don’t think you know how to use oscilloscope right. I’m not putting you down but these things are old now and they are going to have problems and need a good service. Use to do all this years ago and you need all the right equipment for these things.

[@video99couk]

You do know that the defective panel on this J30 is treated as a replacement part by Sony and there are no schematics available? Haven't you actually watched me doing component level repairs, such as on the Beta PCM S/PDIF phase locked loop jitter fault? Or how about the V2000 which had a faulty hybrid so I built a replacement POR curcuit? Or reverse engineered a DAT machine to perform SDIF2 to S/PDIF conversion? But sometimes parts swapping is just the quickest way to narrow down a fault.

[@bobsbits5357]

hi what if you have 4 audio channels this only has 2 on the banks ha ha

[@video99couk]

You can select which channels are fed to the analogue connectors, or use SDI output and capture all four digitally at once.