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  1. Member
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    Jun 2008
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    United Kingdom
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    First I'd like to say what a fantastic resource this site is!

    Background
    Concerned about deterioration I've decided to digitise around 50 VHS tapes (PAL) of recorded TV documentaries some being 15 years old now. I don't foresee wanting to watch these on full TV screen and am more likely to view on my computer. I want to be able to edit the footage assembling it as part of a critique of TV coverage for a media studies project. It wouldn't be published but I might like to distribute to interested parties again for play back on computer.

    Strategy
    Before embarking on this exercise I thought I'd run my reasoning past the vast collective wisdom that is evidently out there:

    I don't want to spend too long doing this (my wife likes to see me occasionally - still!) so I want to avoid lengthy encodings which capturing to DV and then converting to an MPEG version seems to entail.
    I don't want to use terabytes of storage (if I was to store the DV without compression).

    I use an iMac G5 2.1GHZ OSX 10.4 (iMovie HD / iDVD / Toast) with a Miglia EvolutionTV device which captures directly to MPEG-4 at 640 x 480 at varying data transfer rates. iMovie can load MPEG-4 directly without conversion provided that the dimensions are 640 x 480.

    I did a search for the EvolutionTV (now discontinued) but failed to get any hits so I guess it wasn't a wild success - but if anyone has any direct experience I'd like to hear...

    I have done various trial runs capturing the same portion of VHS at different data transfer rates. The results seem pretty good. I have noticed that the brightness/colour occasionally change as the captured file is played back but this seems to apply whatever the data transfer rate (the sharpness is slightly less good on lower settings). I don't notice any improvement after the rate which uses about 1GB per hour

    Now I have found this site I am wondering if there is any mileage in improving the playback mechanism i.e. buying a S-VHS machine. The current machine only has SCART output but the SCART-adaptor has S-Video as well as component (yellow) output. Would a VCR with a S-Video output from the back of the player be better?

    There are some S-VHS machines on eBay that are not in the list on the Restoration forum e.g. JVC HR-S6600EK. Will all S-VHS players produce an improvement or should I hold out for a "listed" machine? I don't mind spending a bit say £50 ($100) but I don't know about going much higher because some of the posts here suggest that improvements are not guaranteed anyway.

    Finally, it seems like a dumb question but what are the signs of VHS deterioration?
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  2. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Due to interlacing issues, VHS captured direct to MPEG-4 will look terrible.

    The best "fast" method would be to capture directly 352x480 MPEG-2 interlaced video. These are not huge files. You're looking at ~700MB/hour on the hard drive. Capture a bunch of them.

    Batch encode from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 (XVID, most likely) using proper IVTC or deinterlacing filters (NOT BLEND OR DROP-FRAME! Drop-frame is often called "odd" or "even"). Encode out to your smaller file. In all honestly, you're looking at ~150-200MB/hour on the MPEG-4 files, so don't expect huge savings in space.

    S-VIDEO output would be my choice here, separate luma and chroma output. PAL is not as bad as NTSC, but both formats (VHS in general) suffer chroma noise badly. Separating the signal, as well as using a VCR that filters (good S-VHS machine, for example, with internal DNR and/or TBC) will help immensely.

    Machines on eBay that are NOT in the VCR list are probably consider low-end crappy machines. There are many low-end S-VHS machines that are just barely better than a consumer VHS machine. Improvements in a higher-end machine are almost always guaranteed, so I don't know what you've been reading (or the person posting was either an idiot, or simply refer to special types of cases). In "general" it will vastly outperform low-end or consumer grade machines.
    Want my help? Ask here! (not via PM!)
    FAQs: Best Blank DiscsBest TBCsBest VCRs for captureRestore VHS
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  3. Member 2Bdecided's Avatar
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    Nov 2007
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    United Kingdom
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    He'll want 576-lines to maintain the interlacing on a PAL source - 480 is no good.

    To deliver 480-lines from a 576-line PAL source, I'm guessing the capture box is either deinterlacing and resizing (which is fair enough) or resizing without deinterlacing (which is really poor).


    If you don't want to "improve" the quality, don't ask questions here - just be happy with whatever quick-and-dirty method you've got working!

    The quick-and-quite-good option is to use a decent VCR and a stand-alone DVD recorder.

    Cheers,
    David.
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  4. Member
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    Jun 2008
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    United Kingdom
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    Thanks for the info. I'm hoping to lay my hands on a better VCR then do my quality tests against that.

    It'll take me some time but I'll post back results when I've finished in case it helps others doing similar stuff.

    Thanks once again.
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  5. In my experience the later Panasonics with tbc and dnr will do better than JVC on good tapes. I have many pal vcr's from the UK.
    The toshiba v727 series is also a good vcr.

    What were they recorded on-thats a good vcr to start with.

    Also using a panasonic ES10 as a pass through really improves the captured picture. Its not good as a dvd recorder but just using it as a pass through will clean up the image.
    PAL/NTSC problem solver.
    USED TO BE A UK Equipment owner., NOW FINISHED WITH VHS CONVERSIONS-THANKS
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  6. Member
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    Nov 2002
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    United States
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    When I was using my ATI AIW card on an MSI 865 board, I was capturing straight to deinterlaced DivX from the TV Tuner with an MMC that supported that feature. I've never captured from VHS this way though.

    I was using a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4. I couldn't capture to XviD though. It would capture about 30 seconds of video and then crash.

    The card won't run on the Intel DG965 board with onboard video enabled and I can't get it to run on this P35 board with a HD 2600XT video card installed.
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