Capturing analog tapes: is digital8 cam better than analog?

[huykin]

Which connection gives best quality for capturing analog 8mm & hi8 tapes? (Assume I have (a) analog capture card with composite & s-video in, (b) firewire card, (c) hi8 cam with composite & s-video out, and (d) digital8 cam that plays analog tapes and has composite, s-video & firewire in & out as well as analog-to-digital transfer. I don't really have all that, but can easily get it if needed.)

I know that s-video is better than composite. But will I gain anything from capturing through a digital8 cam instead of Hi8 cam with s-video? If I do use digital8 cam, is it better to use s-video or firewire connection? And finally if I do use digital8 cam with firewire, will I end up with DV encoded video? (If true, this may not be the best way, because encoding noisy video to DV & then reencoding to MPEG should be worse than capturing with lossless compression & then encoding to MPEG.) I saw some people advocating capturing analog tapes with digital8 cams (for example, http://codecpage.com/mjpegtst.html#Anker157516), but the whole picture isn't completely clear to me yet.

Thanks.

[yg1968]

You will get different answer from different people but I find that capturing with the passthrough feature of a digital camcorder (if it has one) works very well. The quality loss is minimal. You don't have to worry about out of sync issues or dropped frames. If you are transfering from DV to mpeg-2, the quality is also very good. It is certainly one of the better options. A Sony digital8 camcorder can therefore pretty much do all of the above. Make sure that the digital8 camcorder has a passthrough feature (most Sony digital8 camcorders do except for the TRV-140).

Another DV capture option is the Canopus ADVC-100. You need a firewire card for both of these options.

[swoloschek]

I too had many 8mm tapes that I wanted to archive onto DVD. I first started with a Dazzle DVCII and using the 8mm camcorder as the source. This combination produced terrible video quality and out of sync auido/video... I would not recommend a Dazzle product to anyone.. After being completely disgusted with wasting that kind of change I did some more research and found very plausible evidence that using either a Hi-8 or Digital-8 camcorder would produce better video then the standard 8mm camcorder..So I borrowed a friends Digital-8 with a firewire connection and the video looked great! So I actually bought a nice Digital 8 camcorder and I am now converting my old 8mm with great succuss.


good luck..

[colday]

My old 8mm (not Hi8), camera died. I did a lot of research, and ended up with a Sony Digital 8.

I transfered some 8mm tapes through the firewire to disk, then did a straight record back to a digital 8 tape. I swear the copy is better than the original! I now have a DVD recorder so I'm off to record them all to DVD.

I too would say get the Sony Digital 8. Also, do check that it has a pass through.

[huykin]

Thanks a lot to everybody!

I am convinced that capturing analog cam tapes with a digital8 cam is the way to go.

1. When you mention passthrough, do you mean connecting the out of an analog cam to the in of a digial cam with s-video or composite, and then connecting the out of a digital cam to the computer with firewire? If yes, why would I do that (and introduce additional noise when connecting the cams), if I can play analog tapes directly on the digital8 cam?

2. If I capture analog tapes using a digital cam & firewire, do I automatically get DV-encoded video?

3. I understand that firewire method produces very good results. But I still wonder, if I look for the best possible quality (eventually encoding in MPEG2 at a high bitrate), and firewire = DV, will I get a better result by connecting the digital cam to an analog capture card using s-video and capturing with lossless compression? (I assume that this way I'll get the video from the analog tape without intermediate DV encoding, but I may be wrong.) If I understand it correctly, the firewire method avoids the noise of an analog connection but introduces an intermediate DV compression. So I wonder which factor is more important.

4. Sony TRV240 (the second from the bottom in the current line of Sony digital8) seems to be a good cam for this purpose. The only drawback I see is the relatively low resolution (1/6" 460k gross pixels CCD, 290k pixels video actual, whatever that means), which is significantly less than in high-end digital8 cams (1/4.7" 1070k gross pixels CCD, 690k pixels video actual) and many DV cams. Since the cheapest digital8 cam with higher resolution (TRV740) is much pricier than TRV240, I wonder if it makes a big practical difference (not for capturing analog tapes, but for shooting new video of course)?

5. Finally, if I use a cheap generic firewire card (as opposed to an expensive brand name card), will it reduce the quality? I mean the pure quality of transfer, not the features of software bundled with the card. (I will probably use a third-party software anyway.)

Thanks again for all the replies!

[simply3]

hi, anyone can help.


I would like to know which one will get best quality?

1, Use Passthrough to capture analog VHS to DV format, and burn DV.

2, Use Passthrough to capture analog VHS to DV format, and convert to MPEG2 and burn SVC D, or dvd.

(Sony DVMC-DA2, or Canopus ADVC-100 Analog Video to DV Converter)

3, analog VHS tape into MPEG2, and Burn into MPEG2 svcd, or dvd.

(Canopus ADVC-1394 A/D Converter, or else)

thanks,

simply

[huykin]

simply3,

Even though I an asker myself here, I think I can answer your question. It comes down to the best compromise between quality, size, time (and money) spent.

Assuming that quality is more important than time, and you want to get the best quality at reasonable file size, the best solution here is to capture with minimal compression and then encode to MPEG2. This is your #2.

#1 of course gives a better quality than #2, just because it has less compression. But DV has so little compression (about 10 times less than MPEG2 with resolution/bitrate sufficient for VHS), that it is not practical as a final format even for DVD. You would use DV as a final format only if you store the result on a DV tape. (But for this you don't need to transfer it to computer at all, although you might for editing.)

#3 (capturing directly to MPEG2) is the quickest, but will not achieve the same quality/size ratio as #2. So you may use it to save time but with understanding that you have lower quality and/or bigger size than with #2.

I hope this helps.

[vhelp]

3. I understand that firewire method produces very good results. But I still wonder, if I look for the best possible quality (eventually encoding in MPEG2 at a high bitrate), and firewire = DV, will I get a better result by connecting the digital cam to an analog capture card using s-video and capturing with lossless compression? (I assume that this way I'll get the video from the analog tape without intermediate DV encoding, but I may be wrong.) If I understand it correctly, the firewire method avoids the noise of an analog connection but introduces an intermediate DV compression. So I wonder which factor is more important.

Yes!! You are better off w/ an analog capture, because the DV codec that
is built into any DV capturing device or gizmo will not give you an
accurate color once transfered to DV avi (type 1 or type 2) Where, an
analog capture will give you pricise and accurate color representation.
You've probably heared the tirm, "color washout" This is something I've
suffered (and still do) with my DV cam. If I transfer via my DV cam
w/ firewire to my harddrive, I'll suffer that DREADFUL color washout,
but if I Analog capture it with a capture card,, hooked up to my DV
cam, I'll NOT suffer the color problem, and have beautiful color quality
avi's. Its only when you use firewire, that you will suffer this.
I've explained it here to, case you wanna read some more details:
--> Which unit do I need to do commerical transfer from VHS

5. Finally, if I use a cheap generic firewire card (as opposed to an expensive brand name card), will it reduce the quality? I mean the pure quality of transfer, not the features of software bundled with the card. (I will probably use a third-party software anyway.)

The quality will still be the same for any card, cheap or pricy $$

simply3,
for you, it probably wont matter, so go with any kind of medium that
will work for you w/ minimum amount of fuss. But..
as I've stated above, and with the included link above, which goes into
detail (quite analy) be warned of the level of quality from DV.
No matter how you slice it, there's no beating an analog capture.
You can convert your analog captures to DV, and quality will be exact
as the captured analog avi, BUT, if you use firewire in your DV transfer,
you'll suffer some color quality loss too. So, bare this in mind in
your quest for the best route/method to take.
If you're ademit about the ADVC, then go for the advc-100 model, and
encode to vcd/svcd w/ tmpg (see sites here for many guides on this)

Good luck all.
-vhelp

[huykin]

vhelp,

Thanks for the reply, it's very useful. But I am still confused. First you say that color washout is a property of DV codecs, but then you say that one can still convert to DV without loss of quality (as soon as you use firewire). Also you say that capturing from a digital cam to an analog capture card, you don't get this problem. I understand analog capture ok, but am very new to the DV/digital8 stuff, so probably I do not fully appreciate what you are saying.

Isn't anything recorded with a digital cam already encoded to DV, and firewire is just used to transfer it to the computer? So do all digital camera recordings (both shooting and analog-to-digital transfers) suffer the color washout?

What do you think about the noise that is added from an analog capture?

When an analog capture card, a firewire card, an analog cam, and a digital8 cam are available, what is your suggested max-quality method to capture: analog tapes (that can be played in the digital cam), VCR/TV stuff (that can be passed-trough or analog-to-digital-converted with the digital cam), and digital tapes?

Thanks!

[solarfox]

huykin -- I'm not sure where vhelp gets his somewhat peculiar idea that "the DV codec that is built into any DV capturing device or gizmo will not give you an accurate color once transfered to DV" (emphasis mine), but I very much doubt that he has conducted the in-depth testing necessary to make that claim, so if I were you I'd take his post with a very large grain of salt. I've been using a Dazzle DVbridge for several months and, whatever its other faults may be (and it has several), I've never noticed the color values to be significantly degraded by the conversion from analog to DV...

To answer your questions specifically:

#1 -- Yes, that is what "passthrough" is, and there's no reason to do it if you're transferring 8mm or Hi-8 tapes using a Digital-8 camcorder. (Unless your particular Digital-8 doesn't do the analog-to-digital conversion during playback of analog tapes. I don't know of any Digital-8 camcorders that don't have that feature, but that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't one. )

#2 -- Yes, if your camcorder is doing the analog-to-digital conversion as above, then what comes up the IEEE1394/Firewire line is DV-encoded video. (Usually DV Type 1.)

#3 -- Yes, you do incur a compression step when you digitize through the firewire port -- but based on the material I've transferred so far, DV-type-1's resolution and image quality is more than adequate to handle source material that was originally recorded on analog videotape (especially VHS or 8mm!) or captured off broadcast TV. The compression will become far more of an issue once you start encoding down to MPEG-2 for burning to DVD.

#4 -- Typically, the difference between "gross pixels" and "actual video" boils down to the camera using the extra imaging area for features such as image stabilizing (a.k.a. "SteadyShot"), or for extra resolution when the camera is used as a digital still-camera. (Some cameras can store high-rez pictures on MemorySticks or other flash-memory devices, as well as recording video onto tape.) As for whether the extra pixels make a difference -- since DV Type-1 video, at NTSC resolution, is 720*480 pixels, the maximum resolution of the frame is 345.6Kpixels anyway, so the 690Kpixel camera is probably just using the extra pixels to smooth out the image by "oversampling" it, so to speak. It probably does make a difference in the final image quality... whether or not it makes enough of a difference to you to be worth the extra cost is something only you can decide.

#5 -- The IEEE1394/Firewire card itself has no bearing on the video quality, since it doesn't do any of the encoding or decoding. It's just a bus controller/adapter, like a USB or SCSI card. That being said, a cheap generic model might be more likely to have issues working properly with some software or hardware, depending on how well the drivers were written and how extensively the whole package was tested during the design phase -- so save your receipt and make sure you can return it if it doesn't work.

[solarfox]

[b]simply3[/i] -- I presume that when you say "burning DV", you mean burning the .AVI file straight to a CD-R or DVD-R? If so, there's no point in doing this, since no DVD player I know of will play such a disc. (The only reason I can think of to do so would be if you're a videographer building an archive of short video clips for future editing projects... and considering the Brobdignagian size of DV files, you'd be better off putting a beefy 180Gb hard drive in an external USB 2.0 or IEEE1394/Firewire case and using that as your archive instead...)

As to whether capturing to DV and then encoding down to MPEG-2 for burning will give better results than a direct-to-MPEG-2 capture... this depends on several factors, not the least of which is how much video you're trying to get onto a single disc and at what bit-rate. If you're capturing a half-hour programme to DVD-R, then the direct-to-MPEG-2 might be better, since you can simply let it capture constant-bitrate video at the highest rate (8000kbps) possible and forget about it. On the other hand, if you're trying to put that half-hour of video onto a SVCD, or you're trying to cram two, three, or four hours of video onto a single DVD-R, the capture-to-DV option is, in my experience, usually better since you can then encode the captured video with variable bitrate and give the encoder a higher maximum bitrate to work with when it needs it.

[simply3]

HI, Solarfox

I have 120 min vhs tapes(many), I want to use MPEG2 so I can get high quality screen. (if cdr is not enough hold then I might need dvdr for holding 120min of vhs tape. My concern is screen and audio quality. Capture to DV(I plan to use Sony DVMC-DA2, or Canopus ADVC-100 Analog Video to DV Converter—which one is more better?); VS, direct-to-MPEG-2 for SVCD or dvdr.(I saw one card --Canopus MVR-1000 for direct mpeg1,2, how about this card?).

Appriciate some more help,


Simply3

[solarfox]

simply3 -- There is no way you will get 120 minutes of MPEG-2 video onto a CD-R. (Well, OK, technically it could be done, but your bit rate would be so abysmally low the picture would be unwatchable even if you could convince your DVD player to play it at all.)

I have no first-hand experience with the specific devices you mention, so I can't advise you there other than to say that the Canopus ADVC-100 has been highly spoken-of by quite a few users on this forum, and it is the one I intend to buy to replace my Dazzle DVbridge. (The Dazzle has "issues". )

For what it's worth, the process I use is to capture the VHS tapes via the Dazzle DVbridge, then use ULead Media Studio Pro 6.5 to edit the captured DV files (cutting out commercials and such) and encode them to MPEG-2. (I usually encode it as variable bit-rate with a ceiling of 5000-6000kbps, depending on the length of the programme I'm encoding. However, I've gotten acceptable results even going as low as 4000kbps when trying to cram a 4-hour TV mini-series -- which usually works out to about 170 minutes when you strip out all the commercials -- onto a single disc... "Acceptable" is, of course, a matter of personal opinion. ) After the video is encoded, I burn it to DVD-R using ULead DVD Workshop 1.2 to create customized menus and such.

The only significant change I sometimes make to the process is that if I have a not-so-well-aged VHS tape with marginal signal quality, I'll connect the VCR to my Sony TRV-103 Digital-8 camcorder, dub the VHS tape to Digital-8, then connect the camcorder to the IEEE1394/Firewire port and capture the Digital-8 dub I just made. For some reason, the Sony camcorder seems to be a little more tolerant of marginal sync signals than the Dazzle, so sometimes I can get an old or noisy tape to capture this way.

It may not necessarily be the best method, but it works for me.

[arealgijoe]

I have an older Sony Digital-8 camcorder and also std 8mm tapes. My favorite so far has been to record directly from my Digital-8 camcorder to either VCDrecorder or DVDrecorder. both my Terapin VCDR and panasonic DVD recorder have S-Video ins.

I also have a DVD burnner but the direct to disk via a VCD or DVD recorder is easier, faster and great results. Once I burn a VCD or DVD I use a CD or DVD burnner to make extra and backup copies. Takes less than an hour to backup a FULL DVD-R using a DVD-ROM, DVD burnner and NERO.

J E

[huykin]

Just want to thank everybody for taking time to share their experiences and thoughts. Special thanks to solarfox & vhelp for detailed replies. It turned out to be quite an interesting thread. If anybody still has something to share/add/argue on these subjects, it will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[Jim2312]

I am new to this and am trying to figure out all of my options on what equipment to buy. From this thead it sounds like you can hook up a VCR (VHS Tapes) to a digital 8mm (S-Video) camera and then hook the camera to the computer (Firewire). It also seems that you can just use the digital camera as a pass though or actually record to the camera and then to the computer. Is this true? Why would you want to record to the camera if you can just pass through?

A newbie.

Jim

[solarfox]

It also seems that you can just use the digital camera as a pass though or actually record to the camera and then to the computer. Is this true? Why would you want to record to the camera if you can just pass through?

Jim2312 -- Well, in my case, I do the recording because my particular model of Digital-8 camcorder (Sony TRV-103) doesn't do "passthrough"; connecting the IEEE1394/Firewire cable disables the analog connections completely. It only converts analog input to DV form when recording to tape, so I have to do a two-step process to get the conversion done. (Which was my primary motivation for buying the Dazzle DVbridge; if my camcorder had had the passthrough feature, I probably wouldn't have bothered.)

[yg1968]

I have mentioned this before but you should avoid the Sony TRV-140 as it is a digital 8 camcorder only (i.e. it doesn't accept analog Hi8) which doesn't have a passthrough feature.

I haven't tested both options but I believe that a camcorder with a passthrough feature will have similar (if not identical) results than the Canopus ADVC-100. There is no need to get both.

The colour compression by DV is very good. According to the following articles, the difference with RGB cannot be seen by the human eye. Vhelp probably has a specific software issue. I haven't noticed any colour washout issue with my TRV-25.

See points 2.2 and 2.4 of the first article which states:

2.3 Color-Space Conversion

The first transition made from the raw data collected by the three CCDs is from the "RGB Color-Space" to the "YIQ Color-Space". This is primarily done for compatibility issues with NTSC broadcasting standards as well as achieving what is considered "visually-lossless" lossy compression. This seemingly inconsistent phrase refers to the fact that the conversion between these two color spaces results in an unrecoverable loss of color detail, but because of the nature of human visual perception, this reduction in color resolution is unnoticeable. [...]

2.4 Down-Sampling YIQ
[...]

The end result is that 4:1:1 systems have 25% less color information as 4:2:2 systems. To add some perspective, the resulting quality loss of either system of data reduction is still very negligible to the perceived image quality. The two formats at this stage would be nearly impossible to discern with the human eye.

http://www.rtproductions.net/home/documents/DVCAM.htm
http://www.rtproductions.net/home/documents/Executive%20Summary.htm
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html

[huykin]

I guess my main original question can be formulated as follows:

Which way of capture produces higher quality MPEG2: (1) s-video - analog capture card - lossless compression - MPEG2, or (2) DV - firewire - MPEG2? I think to answer such question one shouldn't look at video in a capture format (DV, Huffyuv, MJPEG). The fact that there is very little (or no) visible degradation in a capture format, doesn't necessarily mean that it is a very good capture format. (For example, compression artifacts not visible in DV may amplify later during MPEG2 encoding, especially after repeated intermediate editing/saving.) On the other hand, there may be software playback issues, that may lead to an incorrect conclusion about a capture format. (For example, I get bad colors if play YUY2 Huffyuv with 16-bit display, but this has no effect on the quality of MPEG2 encoding.) So the answer should come from comparing the final MPEG2 results of the same video captured using these 2 methods. I'll do it myself once I get all the components and time. But if somebody has already done that, would be great to hear the results (with an indication of which apects of quality - compression artifacts, noisyness, sharpness, colors - are compared).

Thanks again!

[yg1968]

I have only gotten dropped frames and out of sync issues with my ATI AIW 128 card. So I would say that I prefer capturing in DV where you should never get these problems. Using DV as a capturing device will give you very good results. I don't know if it's the best option but it is certainly one of the better ones. I find it hassle free compared to analog capturing.

[vhelp]

to add.. .. ..
the only time you would (at least in my case) is when your firewire
cable is just not tightly fit enough into the ADVC-100. It can
drop a frame or too. I've only experience this w/ mine when I'm
walking too hard, that the bibrations is enough to jiggle the wire
thus dropping 1 or 2 frames. I've seen my device drop 2 frames.
But, luckely, these weren't keepsakes, more like test clips for
some test encodes I do often.
Other than that, you should never get any framedrops if you're wires
are tigthly fit.

Well, I just got finished doing a DV CAM of some kids sled-riding,
and it was fun. I can't wait to see how these come out, ..and my
hands are frozen cold!

My Process for this project:
* DV CAM A/V S-Vid --> A/V S-Vid of ADVC-100 --> divX/TMPG
* file: "sledride" ...came out good in divX format so far.

-vhelp