VHS capture hardware

[Tom`]

Like many, many others, I want to convert some home movies to DVD. Naturally I want to maintain the best possible quality, but I also can't afford the type of equipment I would need for that. There is an enormous amount of information here, but it's difficult to sort through it - I have trouble telling which is applicable to my situation, since I see threads recommending standalone DVD recorders as well as some recommending pro-grade equipment, and I fall somewhere between these extremes of fastest and best.

Anyway, after doing quite a bit of research, I just bought a DVD recorder: link. I don't actually want it to record DVDs, so I thought this was a pretty good deal for a S-VHS VCR with built-in TBC (I hope I'm not wrong here). Anyway, right now I have an ATI TV Wonder 650 that can do analog capture, which I've tried using in the past. It has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, which apparently means that capturing with VirtualDub (as I have been) introduces a lossy-compression stage at the very beginning (even though I capture to Huffyuv), which would be compounded by the conversion to DVD-compliant MPEG-2 format. I want to try to avoid this as much as possible, and I was considering a Canopus ADVC-300 to replace the ATI card, for its capability to capture to DV as well as its range of filters and quality enhancers. In addition, the external solution would give me greater flexibility as opposed to the PCI card.

However, I've read in numerous places here that the filters on the ADVC-300 would be better done in software, and the TBC is really non-existent, which leads me to believe that I would be better suited with an ADVC-100 (which can be found considerably more cheaply on eBay).

So I suppose my questions are as follows: First, is the S-VHS player I just bought going to give me a relatively high-quality video output?

Second, is there something I've been doing wrong with respect to the ATI capture card (capturing to Huffyuv with VirtualDub, then encoding to DVD format with Avidemux)?

Third, what, if any, are the advantages of the ADVC-300 over the ADVC-100 in my situation?

Last, is there anything I am missing with respect to hardware or software I need to use, keeping in mind that I want the greatest quality possible with my limited equipment?

Thanks for reading this rather long post - I've read a lot of information on this, and I want to make sure I'm doing everything as effectively as I can given my limited resources.

[redwudz]

The big question is how much VHS capturing/converting do you plan to do? And what type of quality are the VHS tapes?

If they are commercial VHS tapes, then your combo unit probably won't accept and back them up to DVD. Macrovision is commonly used on commercial tapes to block copying them. If you have a lot of tapes, then you may want to invest a bit more in the conversion hardware. If you have just a few, a DVR is a good choice. Then it depends on how much they need to be edited. Lots of editing needs a low loss format. DV is about 20:1 compression ratio, so not bad. HuffyUV is lossless, don't know the compression ratio, but it should be low.

With most tapes, the method you mention with VD and Huffy should be about the best you can do. The only addition might be a TBC, but good ones are expensive. The ATI cards usually do very well, but may be a bit hard to set up.

I have a ADVC-100 and it works well. I don't have a TBC though. More cost than I want to have. A few big advantages to a ADVC-100 and 300, editing is very easy and the audio and video are locked, so rarely a sync problem. And they don't need a super fast computer to capture in DV. But if you are not doing a lot of editing, maybe not as cost effective.

You might explain how you are using a hardware MPEG-2 capture card, but capturing using HuffyUV. Are you bypassing the hardware encoder?

Well, hopefully that may guide you on some of your questions. Other can probably give you more info or ideas.

And welcome to our forums.

[lordsmurf]

HuffYUV is about 5:1 or 7:1 .... I forget specifics. Much better than DV.

You can still clean up a high-bitrate MPEG capture, and be perfectly fine, with an output that still improves upon the source input. While uncompressed/low-compression AVI formats are better, the dogma that MPEG is "too lossy" is bullshit. Ramp up the MPEG to 15k or 25k bitrate, with I-frames only.

[Tom`]

The big question is how much VHS capturing/converting do you plan to do? And what type of quality are the VHS tapes?

I only have maybe 20 or so, but if I can do this reasonably well my relatives will probably want me to do theirs too. :P The quality is pretty variable, with some of the tapes having degraded with time, but they're not so bad that they won't play in a standard VCR. They're all SP, too, which I gather is a good thing.

If they are commercial VHS tapes, then your combo unit probably won't accept and back them up to DVD. Macrovision is commonly used on commercial tapes to block copying them. If you have a lot of tapes, then you may want to invest a bit more in the conversion hardware. If you have just a few, a DVR is a good choice. Then it depends on how much they need to be edited. Lots of editing needs a low loss format. DV is about 20:1 compression ratio, so not bad. HuffyUV is lossless, don't know the compression ratio, but it should be low.

None of them are commercial tapes. Not too much editing to be done, probably just a bit of cutting I should be able to do with Avidemux.

You might explain how you are using a hardware MPEG-2 capture card, but capturing using HuffyUV. Are you bypassing the hardware encoder?

Well, hopefully that may guide you on some of your questions. Other can probably give you more info or ideas.

And welcome to our forums.

I assumed everything went through the MPEG-2 encoder before going to VirtualDub. VirtualDub can't handle that format, though, and I assume it's completely ignorant of that process - I didn't see any settings anywhere to bypass the hardware encoder.

HuffYUV is about 5:1 or 7:1 .... I forget specifics. Much better than DV. You can still clean up a high-bitrate MPEG capture, and be perfectly fine, with an output that still improves upon the source input. While uncompressed/low-compression AVI formats are better, the dogma that MPEG is "too lossy" is bullshit. Ramp up the MPEG to 15k or 25k bitrate, with I-frames only.

Well, I get around 2-3:1 with Huffyuv. Are you saying that the capture card would give me better results than any of the Canopus devices? I don't think I can change the settings on the card's MPEG encoder, which is partly why I assumed it would be inferior.

Also, anyone have any experience with the JVC SR-MV55 VCR? It seemed to be well-respected here, if overpriced at over $600.

Thanks for the responses.

[lordsmurf]

JVC SR-MV55 VCR should be great. But I thought your budget was low?
For $600, you could get both a decent VCR -and- a TBC.

Depending on your computers slot, an ATI AIW AGP Radeon card might be a good solution. (I actually have a few ATI AIW AGP cards I no longer need, should probably sell. TBC, too.)

[Tom`]

JVC SR-MV55 VCR should be great. But I thought your budget was low?
For $600, you could get both a decent VCR -and- a TBC.

Depending on your computers slot, an ATI AIW AGP Radeon card might be a good solution. (I actually have a few ATI AIW AGP cards I no longer need, should probably sell. TBC, too.)

I got one with a broken DVD drive for $60 on eBay. I already have a TV Wonder 650, but I was hoping one of the Canopus units would give me better quality.

[danno78]

Any capture card can capture in any codec that you have inside. Because VirtualDub don`t work fine (stability isue)with my Theatre 550 card I use GraphEdit (free tool). Others use ChrisTV (commercial tool).
More info about GraphEdit can be found on Rage3D forum
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33792569
First image show GraphEdit capturing lossless using Lagarith codec and second image show hardware mpeg2 capture.
For commercial tape ATI Theatre 650 / 550 need external TBC or other tolls for removing Macrovision protection. I recommned external TBC.

[lordsmurf]

Your ATI and the ATI that I talk about are not the same card.
The Canopus actually gives lower quality.

[Tom`]

Your ATI and the ATI that I talk about are not the same card.
The Canopus actually gives lower quality.

Which ATI card are you talking about here - the AIW one or mine? Would the Canopus give better quality than my TV Wonder 650 or not? (can't use AGP, anyway, the only computer I have with an AGP slot is an old Pentium II).

[danno78]

Would the Canopus give better quality than my TV Wonder 650 or not? (can't use AGP, anyway, the only computer I have with an AGP slot is an old Pentium II).

Theatre 650 (main chip from TV Wonder 650) in my eyes is the one of the best analog to digital ADC. Unfortunately, support for these boards is limited.
Other card with similar IQ and processing power chip over analog signal would be Compro E850 and E900 (based on Philips SAA7163, SAA7164). I never used but at least on paper are comparable to ATI.

[TheFamilyMan]

If you are using virtualdub to capture from your 650 based card, you are bypassing its MPEG2 encoder and are capturing using the AVI compression codec you specified, i.e. huffyuv (which happens to be a lossless AVI compression codec). Said another way, your captured footage is NOT MPEG2, which may be a good thing when it come to editing. Just be aware that you'll still need an MPEG2 encoder and an authoring tool to make DVDs. The MPEG2 encoder is just as critical to the final quality as the capturing equipment. I've used TMPGEnc Plus with excellent results, but lately I use the MainConcept encoder within Adobe Premiere Elements which is also excellent but very limited in its scope. I've done exactly what you're out to do, using a 550 based card. Good Luck!

P.S. I've read that ChrisTV can capture to MPEG2 using 550/650 based card. I tried its demo and utterly failed to get it to do ANYTHING except crash my system, so I can't recommend it (plus even if it worked I think it's overpriced).

[Tom`]

If you are using virtualdub to capture from your 650 based card, you are bypassing its MPEG2 encoder and are capturing using the AVI compression codec you specified, i.e. huffyuv (which happens to be a lossless AVI compression codec). Said another way, your captured footage is NOT MPEG2, which may be a good thing when it come to editing.

Someone on the VirtualDub board told me otherwise:

about that card: if you're piping the mpeg2 encoder to vdub, you're not getting any benefits, you're just taking (lossy) mpeg2 stream and encoding it to huff.
it's same as taking mpeg2 and storing it on disk, expect that you have much, much bigger files.

Capturing works pretty well (after resolving some sync issues), but in the past I had only used a very old (20+ years) VCR, which wasn't satisfactory with respect to the video quality. It's nice to know that this is a pretty good card, though.

[TheFamilyMan]

IIRC I've read that capture software, such as virtualdub, iuvcr and virtualvcr, captures the digital video before it's processed by the 550/650 MPEG2 engine. I been doing this stuff using my 550 for years now: there are definately no MPEG2 compression artifacts that appear in the captured AVI VHS footage. IMO that poster on the vdub forum was shooting from the hip and never actually used vdub with a 550/650 card.