capturing from VHS

[halbblah]

Hello!

I have several old VHS cassettes and want to get rid of them, but obviosly saving the content before I want to store capture them to my harddisk and maybe burn them to dvd after cutting. The higher the quality, the better it is. But I have not much experience in techniques of video editing, so mechanics which improve quality automaticly are what I'd like to have.
I own a Leadtek 7800 gtx graphics card which provides me with a s-video in. So my thoughts were about buying an S-VHS recorder (hoping it improves even the quality of non "Super"-VHS and using s-vhs instead of scart would help, too).
But there also seem to be hardware which automaticaly transfers the analog VHS stream, like the ADVC100 from Canopus, at least a recommendation found via google says so.

Is the method with the S-VHS recorder the way I should choose ? If so, which one should I buy or at least: which features should it have. (I already looked through the vcr buying guide)

And is there a software which could further improve the quality even for an unexperienced user ?

thank you very much for reading! a solution to this would mean very much to me!

[lordsmurf]

to get rid of them, but obviosly saving the content before I want to store capture them
mechanics which improve quality automaticly are what I'd like to have.

There is no "restore it" button or software. It takes a level of skill and good video hardware.

So my thoughts were about buying an S-VHS recorder (hoping it improves even the quality of non "Super"-VHS and using s-vhs instead of scart would help, too).

Using a high-end VCR (not just "S-VHS", but one with filters and TBCs/DNR) is a good start. Use the s-video wire (not "S-VHS wire")

But there also seem to be hardware which automaticaly transfers the analog VHS stream, like the ADVC100 from Canopus, at least a recommendation found via google says so.

Whatever you read is bullcrap. That is nothing more than a DV conversion device, it does not do one bit of video cleaning.

Is the method with the S-VHS recorder the way I should choose ? If so, which one should I buy or at least: which features should it have. (I already looked through the vcr buying guide)

That pretty much has all you need to know model-wise.

And is there a software which could further improve the quality even for an unexperienced user ?

Software, yes. For the inexperienced, no. Practice at it, get experience. VirtualDub has filters, TMPGEnc has filters -- the experience part is learning how to make trade-offs (re-encoding loss, vs filtering gains).

[Cole]

I advise, even if you find an excellent way to convert your tapes, that you don't get rid of your tapes just yet.

When I first started out on converting my old VHS tapes it was the hight of the VCD days and I had a particular TV series that I had on VHS that I wanted to keep. I did my conversion to VCD and used the tapes again for my day to day time-shifting.

A couple of years later and I had moved up to DVDs and invested in a better VCR, a small video enchacer and a hardware TBC. I also understood the software more which also helped my results.

I really wished that I had hung onto that series as it had never received a DVD release and the results I could achieve now are far superior to what I could manage when I had the tapes.

The point I am making is that throwing away valuable tapes after your first conversion would be a shame as somewhere along the line your conversions will be much better than your first attempt - new software/hardware may appear for example - and you may regret not having the tapes to be able to give them that further treatment.

Of course, if these are tapes of films available on DVD then it doesn't matter.

[victoriabears]

try , if you still have it, your existing vcr & a dvd recorder if youi can get one to try, before going nuts and trying other options.

[PaulePanter]

So my thoughts were about buying an S-VHS recorder (hoping it improves even the quality of non "Super"-VHS and using s-vhs instead of scart would help, too).

Using a high-end VCR (not just "S-VHS", but one with filters and TBCs/DNR) is a good start. Use the s-video wire (not "S-VHS wire")

Lordsmurf, could you add this to the VCR Buying Guide, please, to make it clear that S-VHS or TBCs/DNR VCRs are also the best choice for “normal” VHS tapes. For example the following.

“These machines all have some degree of noise reduction, or otherwise play a VHS or S-VHS tape cleanly. So this guide also applies if you own just VHS tapes.”


Thanks a lot,

Paul