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  1. Member
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    Dec 2005
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    Hi!

    I've just bought a Plexgear Moviesaver 500 (Component to USB) and connected my VHS player to my Macbook Pro. I want to capture my old family VHS tapes (from vacations and so on) on my computer and save them on an external harddrive. Now I need some advice on what formats to use...


    The capturing program that comes with the USB stick is called VideoGlide Capture. Here I can choose between different formats such as "Photo - JPEG", "h.264", "MPEG-4", "DV - PAL" and so on...

    I'd rather not record everything and then realize I made a crappy decision for some reason. I'm not very good at these kind of things

    - So, do you have any advice on what to use?

    I won't burn it to DVD but save it on an external drive instead as stated above.


    Thanks!


    EDIT:
    Maybe it is better to capture as DV-PAL and then use another software to encode it?
    Last edited by Linuus; 8th Apr 2012 at 14:20.
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  2. i'd use the format that compress the least. Sound like DV-PAL might be the one assuming you have the space.
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  3. Member
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    Originally Posted by pixel zombie View Post
    i'd use the format that compress the least. Sound like DV-PAL might be the one assuming you have the space.
    OK, but would you keep it like that or try to encode it / compress it in another software? It's about 50-70hrs of VHS video we're talking about I would guess.
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  4. wow, that is lot of footage. I would try MP4 with H.264 encoding, i've had good results with that in the past.
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  5. Member
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    The footage you are capturing will never be any better than the marginal quality of VHS so I'd agree with pixel zombie and suggest H264/AAC in an MP4 container as it will certainly be as good as the captured footage. If you have QT Pro, you may export from QT Player using single-pass. There are other apps you might prefer and that's okay; just run some conversion tests with a minute's worth of footage and do your comparisons.
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  6. Member
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    Originally Posted by rumplestiltskin View Post
    The footage you are capturing will never be any better than the marginal quality of VHS so I'd agree with pixel zombie and suggest H264/AAC in an MP4 container as it will certainly be as good as the captured footage. If you have QT Pro, you may export from QT Player using single-pass. There are other apps you might prefer and that's okay; just run some conversion tests with a minute's worth of footage and do your comparisons.
    OK. So you would suggest that I first capture it in like DV-PAL or similar and then do some encoding/compression in another tool.

    Any other suggestion of good software for this for Mac?

    Thank you for the help!
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  7. Member
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    Yes; capture it in whatever format is the best quality with the least amount of compression provided by the dongle. I just checked the manual and, unfortunately, I don't understand Swedish. However, the unit looks similar to other devices by Roxio, etc. If I remember correctly, those devices use MPEG2 (with PCM? audio maybe) conversion/compression/multiplexing as their native format. You'll have to look in the "Video Settings..." in the menu.

    Let us know what the "native" capture format is and we can make some suggestions about transcoding software.
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