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  1. Member
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    Apr 2008
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    Guys,

    Finally looking to convert my VHS family tapes to digital. I will keep my original tapes as a backup, but would like to migrate this footage to the most "pleasant" digital condition possible. I'm prepared to buy a dedicated, high speed machine to apply all manner of noise reduction, filters, etc. if it helps.

    To this end I'm curious about using the new h.264 hardware capture / realtime devices. Specifically BlackMagic has a usb h.264 device that would allow me to use a D-VHS deck using the component outs and have the BlackMagic device do a real-time conversion to h.264. After files are built I could then use some video editing tools compatible with h.264 and the ultimately burn to blueray or archive to my home media server for streaming to devices throughout the house.

    For reference here is the BlackMagic h.264 capture device:
    http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/videorecorder/

    Am I off track here? Is this overkill? If I want to end up with h.264 files the the absolute best video capture I can obtain (I realize I will still have VERY mediocre video quality when Im' done) is there a better way to go about this?

    Thanks!

    bradeso
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  2. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    I would save yourself some money and get a good fast PC with lots of HDD, capture to a lossless format, filter and edit, then convert to H.264 at the end of the process. H.264 takes a lot of power to encode and decode, and is already heavily compressed. Editing and filtering tools for H.264 are still young and green in many respects, so it is still not the best environment to work in natively. Also, there is a much higher likelihood of artifacts when compressing noisy source.

    If you were capturing quality source directly to H.264 for final storage, the blackmagic card would probably be worth the investment, but as a first capture point for lower quality material, I suspect there are better ways to go.
    Read my blog here.
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  3. Member
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    guns!inger,

    Thanks. What lossless format would you recommend I convert too initially and what kind of capture card would you recommend?

    Thanks.
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  4. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    I like lagarith, but huffyuv is also popular.There are probably a dozen others out there as well. Size is an issue with losslessly compressed footage. Expect to use around 30 - 40 GB per hour for SD resolution footage.
    Read my blog here.
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  5. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    It's not lossless, but DV-AVI is very easy to edit and filter. Uses about 13GB/hour of hard drive space. But you do need to use a DVD framesize of 720X480 NTSC. I use a Canopus ADVC-100 hardware converter for the encoding. You can also use the Enosoft DV Processor for color correction, etc. as you transfer to the HDD. Or if you have a camcorder with DV out and analog passthrough, it will work the same.

    It can also be done in software with a DV codec like the Panasonic DV codec or the Cedocida DV Codec and capturing with Virtualdub through a capture card. Though I haven't tried the Cedocida codec for that.
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