user29303: This answer reports that in order not to lose quality when digitizing VHS one should use an S-Video cable.
My VCR is a Sharp VC-M401SM and does not have any S-Video output nor a composite output. Instead it has a scart video/audio line.
Question: If I use an adaptor like the following together with an S-Video cable can I obtain a better quality than using the same adapter with a composite cable? Why? Does the answer depend on the tape quality (VHS or S-VHS)?


user14523: Yes, using the S-Video output of the SCART breakout will give you better quality than if you use the composite output of the same breakout. (You can get even better quality if you use a different SCART breakout that has RGB outputs.)
NTSC and PAL composite signals sacrifice the amount of data about the brightness and color of the scene for the sake of squishing it all together on one easy to use wire. S-Video separates the black and white (luminance) from the color (chrominance) signals, removing some blurring introduced in a composite signal. Using RGB outputs further improves quality by eliminating the bandwidth limitations of combining the three color signals into one.
The improvements will be more noticeable when you are using an S-VHS source because S-VHS has a higher luminance bandwidth than VHS. But you will still have some possibly subtle improvements with VHS, too. The way a VHS tape stores the signal is slightly different (color-under) than NTSC or PAL, so there is some extra loss converting for output to composite compared to converting to S-Video.
(Video Engineering is a solid, highly technical reference for older media technology.)

user31966: The answer is probably no, unless the SCART socket on your VCR is labeled specifically as "S-VIDEO". The fact that SCART connector has S-Video pins does not guarantee that your VCR provides S-Video signal to these pins. A low-end model will simply transmit a composite signal over the luminance S-Video pin and nothing over the chrominance pin.
Even my DVD player having both S-Video and SCART sockets doesn't provide S-Video signal over SCART. Only component RGB.

29303: <p><a href="https://video.stackexchange.com/a/15282/29303">This answer</a> reports that in order not to lose quality when digitizing VHS one should use an S-Video cable.</p>

<p>My VCR is a Sharp VC-M401SM and does not have any S-Video output nor a composite output. Instead it has a scart video/audio line.</p>

<p><strong>Question:</strong> If I use an adaptor like the following together with an S-Video cable can I obtain a better quality than using the same adapter with a composite cable? Why? Does the answer depend on the tape quality (VHS or S-VHS)?</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/FoF9j.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/FoF9j.jpg" alt="Scart adapter"></a></p>
 14523: <p>Yes, using the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Video" rel="nofollow noreferrer">S-Video</a> output of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SCART</a> breakout will give you better quality than if you use the composite output of the same breakout. (You can get even better quality if you use a different SCART breakout that has RGB outputs.)</p>

<p>NTSC and PAL composite signals sacrifice the amount of data about the brightness and color of the scene for the sake of squishing it all together on one easy to use wire. S-Video separates the black and white (luminance) from the color (chrominance) signals, removing some blurring introduced in a composite signal. Using RGB outputs further improves quality by eliminating the bandwidth limitations of combining the three color signals into one.</p>

<p>The improvements will be more noticeable when you are using an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-VHS" rel="nofollow noreferrer">S-VHS</a> source because S-VHS has a higher luminance bandwidth than VHS. But you will still have some possibly subtle improvements with VHS, too. The way a VHS tape stores the signal is slightly different (color-under) than NTSC or PAL, so there is some extra loss converting for output to composite compared to converting to S-Video.</p>

<p>(<a href="https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00BUWB768" rel="nofollow noreferrer" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Video Engineering</a> is a solid, highly technical reference for older media technology.)</p>
 31966: <p>The answer is probably no, unless the SCART socket on your VCR is labeled specifically as &quot;S-VIDEO&quot;. The fact that SCART connector has S-Video pins does not guarantee that your VCR provides S-Video signal to these pins. A low-end model will simply transmit a composite signal over the luminance S-Video pin and nothing over the chrominance pin.</p>
<p>Even my DVD player having both S-Video and SCART sockets doesn't provide S-Video signal over SCART. Only component RGB.</p>
