VHS archiving, help me select a workflow?

[550sc]

Ye experts of all things video, I recently cleaned out my family's entire VHS collection from my parents' house and want to get these bulky and fragile old tapes into a digital archival format. I've thrown together some spare parts computer parts (XP Pro SP3, Pentium 4 650, 2GB of PC3200, a 500GB external hard drive, and an ATi Theater 650 Pro) to make a dedicated machine for capture and transcoding, hooked to a JVC S-VHS deck thru S-video and RCA stereo plugs. I'm using BeyondTV 4 and the 650s onboard MPEG2 encoder to get my raw video, and removing commercials in MPEG Video Wizard DVD (since it works with MPEG2 without any re-encoding on simple timeline edits), but from there I'm having trouble choosing a video codec and container. The stuff I'm encoding is mostly off-the-air recordings that would be hard to replace commercially, like obscure Discovery Channel programs or old auto races. Programs like auto races occasionally go to three hours, but not over. I'd like to get a three-hour program onto a single DVD-5 without any real loss in quality, and I've been happy with the quality I've gotten in XVID from AutoGK and in X264 from Handbrake on 2-pass test videos (though I should have done more decombing in AutoGK) cramming those 3-hour races down to 4.3GB. Here are the stumbling blocks I'm facing: Can I get the video to overscan at capture in BeyondTV so I don't have to crop out the inevitable black borders as a separate step, or during transcoding? If not, is there a program that can that plays nicely with my card? VLC just plain hates my hardware, Roxio stops recording at any damaged spot in these sometimes 25 year-old tapes, and programs that don't use the hardware MPEG2 encoded can't maintain framerate. I'd like to play these discs on current and future DVD/BD players and game consoles (currently have an Xbox 360), so a well-established codec and container are important to me, but not at the expense of quality. Currently cropping and zooming on a 3-hour program takes 5 hours of rendering, and de-combing/modest noise reduction/transcoding takes another 15, so I'd love to cut that time down. Thanks in advance!

[hech54]

X264 from Handbrake on 2-pass test videos (though I should have done more decombing in AutoGK) cramming those 3-hour races down to 4.3GB.

Although there is nothing "wrong" with H264/X264....you do know that when you burn that to a DVD....that isn't a "DVD" that will play on a set-top DVD player....right? Sure many playback devices can now handle a video file like that either via an external HDD or memory stick....that still is not the most share-able way to go.

[jagabo]

If you don't have an SVHS deck with a line TBC you should get one. Quality starts there. Horizontal time base jitter is a killer of video compression. To keep Roxio from aborting you need a full frame TBC. If your ATi Theater 650 Pro is like other ATI 650 based products it needs a macrovision stripper to keep its AGC circuitry from kicking in (even though your tapes don't have macrovision) and screwing with the levels and chroma.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326560-Which-is-better-usb-stick-vhs-cap-or-hd-pvr-...=1#post2023227

You shouldn't be deinterlacing. You're cutting the temporal resolution in half, reducing the spacial resolution, and creating artifacts. Modern DVD players and TVs are designed to handle interlaced video. Film based material can be inverse telecined to 23.976 fps. VirtualDub can probably crop the overscan borders while capturing but I don't recommend it. Modern TVs continue to overscan so you won't see the borders. And since you're going to be filtering and reencoding you might as well just crop them at that time (if you really want to get rid of them). I'd cap at 720x480 then crop a total of 16 pixels off the left and right edges, leaving a 704x480 frame. That's still DVD compatible. To get three hours of sports footage on a DVD5 you're probably going to have to reduce the resolution to 352x480 to keep the picture from braking up into macroblock artifacts. VHS only has about that much resolution anyway so you're not really losing anything.

[550sc]

X264 from Handbrake on 2-pass test videos (though I should have done more decombing in AutoGK) cramming those 3-hour races down to 4.3GB.

Although there is nothing "wrong" with H264/X264....you do know that when you burn that to a DVD....that isn't a "DVD" that will play on a set-top DVD player....right? Sure many playback devices can now handle a video file like that either via an external HDD or memory stick....that still is not the most share-able way to go.

Yeah, I'm just using 4.7GB DVD-R as a cheap and fairly durable format... which is why I'm posting here, if someone can suggest a better way to do this, where I might end up with a disc that would play in some hardware besides just full-on personal computers.

[550sc]

If you don't have an SVHS deck with a line TBC you should get one. Quality starts there. Horizontal time base jitter is a killer of video compression. To keep Roxio from aborting you need a full frame TBC. If your ATi Theater 650 Pro is like other ATI 650 based products it needs a macrovision stripper to keep its AGC circuitry from kicking in (even though your tapes don't have macrovision) and screwing with the levels and chroma.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326560-Which-is-better-usb-stick-vhs-cap-or-hd-pvr-...=1#post2023227

You shouldn't be deinterlacing. You're cutting the temporal resolution in half, reducing the spacial resolution, and creating artifacts. Modern DVD players and TVs are designed to handle interlaced video. Film based material can be inverse telecined to 23.976 fps. VirtualDub can probably crop the overscan borders while capturing but I don't recommend it. Modern TVs continue to overscan so you won't see the borders. And since you're going to be filtering and reencoding you might as well just crop them at that time (if you really want to get rid of them). I'd cap at 720x480 then crop a total of 16 pixels off the left and right edges, leaving a 704x480 frame. That's still DVD compatible. To get three hours of sports footage on a DVD5 you're probably going to have to reduce the resolution to 352x480 to keep the picture from braking up into macroblock artifacts. VHS only has about that much resolution anyway so you're not really losing anything.

Yeah, a TBC would be nice but it's just beyond what I could justify spending for this project, unless there's a super-cheap standalone on eBay that I don't know about. Most of the tapes are recorded at EP anyhow (yeah, I know, bad move in hindsight, but I was about 10 when most of these tapes were made), so there's already that drop in quality. I'm open to the idea if I can find it at a managable price, don't get me wrong. Haven't had any AGC problems, but those strippers are cheap enough that I guess they're worth a look. I've got the Sapphire Theatrix 650 PCI, if that means anything. I'm not deinterlacing as a matter of course, but I have been trying Handbrake's "De-Comb" filter because I do get some very, very bad interlacing artifacts on occasion, while the rest of a recording will be fine. The HDTV and computer monitors I do my viewing on are all very earnest about their resolution and don't overscan unless told to (and the TV has no setting between "fill top to bottom" and "fill left to right"). I have tried just trying to make a conventional, standards-compliant DVD-5 by losing resolution and bitrate to get the filesize down but I just lose too much visual quality to think about archiving these in MPEG2 unless I start buying 8.5GB DVD+R. I dunno, does that just make more sense? They're under a buck a disc these days if you buy in any decent quantity. You mentioned inverse telecine; some of the material is live broadcasts from PAL cameras, but broadcast and recorded on NTSC over cable in the US. Should I try and get back the original 25fps that way or just leave it as is? I'll complicate that further by saying that the PAL feed is often overlaid with NTSC-origin graphics and has commentary and studio segments recorded in the US.

[jagabo]

Yeah, a TBC would be nice but it's just beyond what I could justify spending for this project

Consider a Panasonic DVD recorder like the ES15. They have a built in line-tbc and frame sync that work in passthrough mode.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/319420-Who-uses-a-DVD-recorder-as-a-line-TBC-and-wh...=1#post1983288

That will clean up the horizontal jitter and prevent your capture card from aborting on damaged tapes. You can get them on ebay for about US$75.

You mentioned inverse telecine; some of the material is live broadcasts from PAL cameras, but broadcast and recorded on NTSC over cable in the US. Should I try and get back the original 25fps that way or just leave it as is? I'll complicate that further by saying that the PAL feed is often overlaid with NTSC-origin graphics and has commentary and studio segments recorded in the US.

What you might want to do depends on exactly how the standards conversion was done. It's easiest to leave it interlaced. But there are ways of removing field blending (common with PAL to NTSC conversions), restoring the original 25 fps, etc.

[550sc]

Yeah, a TBC would be nice but it's just beyond what I could justify spending for this project

Consider a Panasonic DVD recorder like the ES15. They have a built in line-tbc and frame sync that work in passthrough mode.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/319420-Who-uses-a-DVD-recorder-as-a-line-TBC-and-wh...=1#post1983288

That will clean up the horizontal jitter and prevent your capture card from aborting on damaged tapes. You can get them on ebay for about US$75.

You mentioned inverse telecine; some of the material is live broadcasts from PAL cameras, but broadcast and recorded on NTSC over cable in the US. Should I try and get back the original 25fps that way or just leave it as is? I'll complicate that further by saying that the PAL feed is often overlaid with NTSC-origin graphics and has commentary and studio segments recorded in the US.

What you might want to do depends on exactly how the standards conversion was done. It's easiest to leave it interlaced. But there are ways of removing field blending (common with PAL to NTSC conversions), restoring the original 25 fps, etc.

Hmm, that's more than I want to have tied up in this project, to be honest. Could get a nice old screw-mount camera lens for that. For the sake of argument, what if I was to find an old standalone TBC in auction or surplus? Even if it lacks S-Video connections? On the plus side, BeyondTV doesn't abort recordings due to tape problems, since I switched to that from Roxio I haven't had any problem getting my footage Doesn't sound like it's worth trying to turn those hybrid broadcasts back into PAL, nope. If it's of any value, I uploaded a 30 second clip representative of what I'm getting straight from the VCR to the tape, no correction at all. http://www.mediafire.com/file/0mpue7vmgxv5puu/fontanatest.mpg It's starting to seem like I'm making this harder than it should be, and that I should just stick with MPEG2, and use 8.5GB media when I need it. Also, any idea why carriage returns don't post in my messages? I keep ending up with a block of text. Thanks for your time and patience, BTW. EDIT: Oh yeah, the VCR is a JVC HR-S5000U.