Best equipment to get rolling

[LegitCoolKid]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a complete n00b at this and have been reading over the forums and have found myself very overwhelmed. I really do want to get my old VHS/SVHS tapes put on to my computer and burned to DVD or Blu Ray for safe keeping. I need help in knowing specifically what software/hardware to purchase. I have a few ideas but want to be sure the equipment is still relevant as I saw this information in posts from two years ago. Here's what I'm thinking so far :

First a rundown of my system. I have a Core i7 Sandybridge OC'd to 4.2 Ghz, 128 gig SSD's on RAID 1, 2 TB storage hard drives RAID 1, 16 Gigs RAM and this video card. I also put in lights to make it glow green, because I'm that much of a nerd.

VCR - I need a suggestion on this and where to get a good/safe one to use for this project. I have many tapes and they're all important to me. I don't want them damaged. (One is actually currently stuck in a magnavox VHS player from a year ago. Gonna need to get that out but I probably shouldn't use that VCR for this project...). I'm even willing to spring for a professional deck if that means getting this done well.

TBC - Do I need a TBC? I'd like to do the best job I can the first time around, so I don't mind spending the money if I can effectively get a decent copy of whats on the VHS. I was looking at this one but also read it can affect colors etc - Datavideo TBC-1000 Single Channel Time Base Corrector (About 480 dollars)
Is there a more expensive or less expensive model I should be looking at?

Capture device - I gathered from the forums that for a project like this, the firewire Canopus ADVC110 would be best. Is this still true?

Software - Free would definitely be nice, and I don't mind a challenge but I'm also a busy person. So the fastest way to get these ripped to my computer (For safe keeping I'll probably copy these captures to several external hd's) and eventually put onto disc (maybe with autochaptering a DVD or Blu-Ray every 15 or 20 minutes) would be great. From what I've gathered VirtualDub is good for capturing and TMPGenc is good for authoring/editing?

I really would appreciate any help and guidance/instruction that can be given here. These videos are very dear to my family, and so I would like us to be able to preserve them for the future, and will put forth all effort necessary to be able to do so.

[hech54]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/2251-tbc-time-base.html
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/1567-vcr-buying-guide.html

[lordsmurf]

Capture device - I gathered from the forums that for a project like this, the firewire Canopus ADVC110 would be best. Is this still true?

It never was true. (Unless you're on a Mac, which has few options.)

[sanlyn]

Can't advise you on a capture card (I've been using the same ATI AllInWonders since 2002/2004, never needed others).

Others can scream themselves blue in the face over the following statement, but I'd prefer VGA into a PC monitor rather than DVI. DVI is too slow and noisy, especially for analog source like VHS-- for me, anyway. Your card doesn't have VGA out, so this is a moot point.

TBC: You need a line-level TBC for VHS transfers. A full frame unit like the TBC-1000 is ok for passing copy protected tapes, but it does nothing for the line timing and other playback problems associated with analog tape. Anyway, a DVD recorder used as tbc pass-thru will likely defeat macrovision tapes (mine do), and many but not all upscale camcorders with pass-thru features will have line-level TBC and macrovision pass-thru to boot. There are many posts in the forum about pass-thru line tbc devices; I posted some here and here, and there is a more general and technical thread here . WHile DVD and camcorder pass-thru will work, don't expect them to behave like $5000 shop units. But likely you'll get better results that you would from a semi-pro TBC/DNR VCR that uses archaic technology and has been used to death.

For VCR's, look for posts by orsetto. Some are recent, some go back months, some go farther back. One of his replies to questions about pro-level VCR's is here. There are many, many more. In general, if your tapes are recorded at EP or 4-hour LP, you don't want JVC. My last JVC was ditched a few years back after it ruined 2 tapes. You can find good used buys on eBay (I found 4 over the years), goodwill shops and other sources. Anything "new" you might buy today will be nearly useless as a player.

You don't need a ton of expensive software. I have a ton of it, all free (except for NeatVideo, which I consider essential for grungy, crappy, noisy VHS) from Avisynth and VirtualDub and hundreds of filters available. TMPGENC has a good line of MPEG editors and authoring programs, but there are others around. For encoders, TMPGenc Plus 2.5 is still sold by the bucketfull (and it's cheap) and freebies like HCenc are very popular. I use both. Don't waste your time or $$$ on high-powered apps like Vegas Pro or Premiere Pro. They have their uses but they aren't essential; in many cases they have limitations you don't want to live with. Many pay for Premiere to do nothing more than simple cut and edit, which is a huge waste, and VHS noise reduction and other video repair jobs are something you'd think many retail software engineers never heard of. The most I ever spent for video software was on eBay for 32-bit After Effects Pro CS3. Nine months later, I'm still learning to use it. If I had to spend big time I'd go for After Effects over the other big guys, as AE has more functions that would apply to VHS restoral problems.

The usual workflow for a first-class VHS transfer would be: player -> line TBC or tbc pass-thru -> proc amp (not essential, but good to have around. Your first few captures will tell you why) -> capture device -> capture software -> record to lossless AVI and audio with Lagarith or huffyuv lossless compression -> post-process with Avisynth, VirtualDub, etc., -> cut/join/other edits -> encode -> author.

Have at it. Warning: the rewards for your efforts can be edifying, but this will take longer than a week.

[lordsmurf]

(2) You gain little or nothing by transferring VHS to BluRay.

DVD: MPEG-2, 720x480/576, 4:3, 29.97/25fps, 9.8Mbps
Blu-ray: MPEG-2, 720x480/576, 4:3, 29.97/25fps, 15.0Mbps

BD has an edge in bitrate. That's important with crappy handheld footage.

[sanlyn]

True, massive bitrate differences count. I wonder, though, most of what I see posted around here doesn't seem to benefit that much. But, then, maybe the work ain't so precise. What I've seen from Adobe/Vegas upscaling plugins looks mighty impressive, though. But (wow) expensive. I use some pretty steep bitrates anyway, but . . . not having tried SD->BD myself I'd go by LS, who has more experience here -- and better equipment, for sure. The O.P. can certainly give it a try. But I'd add, first, learn to get SD in good shape.

[poisondeathray]

True, massive bitrate differences count. I wonder, though, most of what I see posted around here doesn't seem to benefit that much. But, then, maybe the work ain't so precise. What I've seen from Adobe/Vegas upscaling plugins looks mighty impressive, though. But (wow) expensive. I use some pretty steep bitrates anyway, but . . . not having tried SD->BD myself I'd go by LS, who has more experience here -- and better equipment, for sure. The O.P. can certainly give it a try. But I'd add, first, learn to get SD in good shape.

He's talking about SD blu-ray , not HD blu-ray .

You can actually use 40Mb/s maxrate if you use AVC for SD blu-ray, but I can't see of any good reason for using bitrates that high unless you wanted to capture and preserve some sort of noise pattern

The other potential benefit of SD blu-ray is you can fit more footage on a BD25 . They are not that expensive anymore in terms of cost/GB

The 3rd party upscaling plugins you mentioned are actually not that great - avisynth through nnedi3 does a better job on most content . Personally I wouldn't upscale.

[lordsmurf]

The tradeoff with BD-R is that the disc isn't archival.
The construction of the disc is an inverted CD-R with a thin lower polycarbonate.
It's not a sandwich like DVD.
This has several consequences for storage, handling, and aging.

So don't make a BD-R your only copy.

[sanlyn]

Looks as if I'm a bit behind current developments that pdr and lordsmurf refer to. Thanks for gettijg me from under my rock on this, I'll take a look around this weekend. (Gosh, more ways to make me work harder? Hm. Thanks).

[Captain Satellite]

How many tapes are you going to transfer? Considering the cost, time and frustration (you're a noob so you can count on a certain percentage of head scratching/banging), have you considered getting this done professionally?

There's a lot more that goes into tape transfer than most people realize. Your money might be better spent paying paying somebody who has the experience to get the best possible transfer. Purchasing the best possible equipment will only yield the best possible results if you have the experience to use it.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/

[SixFiftyThree]

Thanks lordsmurf and poisondeathray for sharing that knowledge.

I always thought, for some reason, that if you needed higher bitrate MPEG2 for SD on Blu-ray then you needed to upscale, since it was otherwise limited to the same bitrate as DVD. Especially didn't know it has a ceiling of 40Mb/s with AVC - wow. I can't imagine ever needing anything that high though.

But then if you're authoring to Blu-ray wouldn't H264 be a better option? I'm largely inexperienced with encoding, but that seems like the popular method. However I recall reading that MPEG2 may be better for interlaced content. On the other hand, Doom9 members encourage smart bob deinterlace and just encoding progressive H264, but it requires an upscale to HD since there's no support for 576p50 or 480p60.

I think I'd still choose high bitrate MPEG2 since it perfectly accommodates interlaced SD, and you can just let hardware do the deinterlacing and upscaling. The results should be great providing that its good hardware.

[poisondeathray]

I think h264 will give better compression if you use a good encoder (There are bad AVC encoders that are as bad as MPEG2)

Interlaced h.264 is fine, it depends again on the encoder . Many of the comments you have read were probably old, and no longer apply (they probably referred to older x264 versions, where interlaced encoding wasn't developed yet)

For typical VHS home videos, you will most likely need to use TBC, clean it up, fix colors, stabilize. These decisions will have much more impact on final "quality" than specific encoding decisions . Noise, heavy motion require more bitrate . If you clean it up properly, not only will it look better, you can use much lower bitrates and fit more video per disc

I wouldn't bob and upscale to 720p60 (or 720p50 in 50Hz regions) for VHS material. Only if your equipment has exceptionally poor upscaler and/or deinterlacer would I consider going that route. You can try some short samples on a re-writable disc to see which you prefer

[robjv1]

Congrats on embarking on this new endeavor! It can be both fun and frustrating, but you'll learn a lot and have your own hands in the archival/restoral of your own family home movies which is always rewarding.

Your system is fine. Assuming you'll be going the computer capture route and not looking for a DVD recorder, you'll be looking at needing a capture card, a TBC, and a VCR at minimum and some other supplementary equipment possibly too (passthrough device to deal with image tearing/flagging on your tapes if that's a common problem on them, proc-amp, external CRT TV/monitor to be used as a monitor, etc.). There are a few VCRs that you could buy that will enable you to avoid having to buy a TBC, but you'll end up paying as much for those VCRs alone as you would another professional VCR and a TBC, so I wouldn't expect any cost savings there.

Fair warning on the rest of the stuff you read on the site too: You'll have to understand that in the search for the 'best quality' you're going to get different equipment recommendations, because not everyone agrees on what looks/works the best. You'll also need to consider your budget, as it will put limitations on the type and amount of equipment you can get, and possibly the quality you can expect depending on the condition of your tapes. Keep in mind that some VCRs/equipment that were available in plentiful supply a few years ago are harder to come by now, so you may have to settle for what is available or be patient.

Anyhow, one area you'll see these differences of opinion play out is in the suggestions for VCRs. Many people are partial to the professional VCRs that contain noise reduction circuitry, where others feel they bring other issues to the table. Some people think they save you a ton of trouble on the front-end, where others believe they cause more problems than they are worth and that their noise reduction abilities are antiquated in some respects, thus you might as well capture your noisy tapes in their full noisy glory with a solid consumer VCR and then spend your time carefully filtering on the back-end in software. Some people do a mixture of both of those ways. There are merits to both arguments and the actual results of each method will depend on YOUR actual tapes -- so really the very best way to know what will work for you is to try all of them and experiment. Your budget may not allow that though -- so you'll somewhat be taking a stab in the dark when purchasing equipment. In that scenario, I think it would be helpful to check out some of the VCR picture comparison threads just to give you an idea of what images look best to you and then ask questions about those specific decks here in the thread. You'll want to get an idea of what VCRs create the look you want.

As far as capture devices, it is sort of a mixed bag. The older vintage ATI cards are probably out, given your system (although others may chime in on this). You have the ATI USB/PCIE capture cards (600 / 650 / 750) which are the ones that probably produce the most faithful picture (and are also affordable) but they seem to have one major issue with the AGC (automatic gain correction) that affects a lot of folks. See this thread: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/344643-Ati-theatre-750-vs-theatre-650?p=2167919. I personally have not had an issue with the AGC on my 750 card, but it may be the specific combination of equipment that I'm using that is suppressing it, I'd have to test it with another VCR to see if the problem appears I suppose. So that's a potential risk to contend with. See this thread for comparisons with other devices: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/331817-Best-MPEG-2-Capture-Device. Another device you may have heard of is the Black Magic Intensity. For this sort of project it may be overkill (it'll cost you some $$$ too) and many users have reported issues with VHS capture, although I am not a user myself and am not sure if they can be overcome or not. Keep in mind that none of these devices do the kind of hardware noise filtering that you'll find in the NR SVHS decks or the vintage 2005/2006 DVD recorders out there, so you'll need to do the filtering yourself on the computer if you're wanting to actually improve on the quality of your original tapes by reducing the actual noise in the signal.

Well I'll stop there for now -- I'd get those items first, see how they work with your tapes, and then buy more equipment from there if you need it. If you choose a VCR that has to be used in tandem with a TBC, you're pretty much looking at either the DataVideo TBC-1000 (about $480) or the AVT-8710 (about $230). Both make good choices for most people.

I'll throw one other thing out there since you alluded to being busy and wanting to get this done quickly -- the main disadvantage of using a vintage DVD recorder versus computer capture is that there is a chance it won't last the length of your project. Generally speaking the maximum potential for quality (depending on the recorder chosen) is also less that can be accomplished on the computer. However the big advantage is speed -- you can get this project done more quickly, because you'll be using real-time MPEG2 encoding. In essence, a DVD recorder captures, filters, encodes, authors and burns all in one step. With the right equipment, you can get very good results. On the computer you'll likely be capturing once, filtering it in software, encoding it to MPEG2, authoring it with an authoring application (this is also where you add chapters, menus) and burning it with ImgBurn. That's going to take time, especially the filtering. Plus you have the learning curve of using all of this software to consider, which is even higher if you plan on using Blu Ray. There are many tradeoffs to consider.

[lordsmurf]

I think h264 will give better compression if you use a good encoder (

This is correct -- however, it's offset by several variables.

1. At 15Mb/s, MPEG-2 is going to look quite good, even to a discerning eye. So H264 vs MPEG-2 A/B comparisons will be more random than ever. You won't have macroblocks or other easy-to-see tell-tale signs. In fact, H.264 may be more blurry/soft, because of built-in NR.

2. Yes, you'll be able to fit more on a disc with H.264, but that also means you're going to have to deal with creating BD menus, which isn't necessarily as easy (or the same as) developing DVD menus. A 25GB BD-R can often perfectly duplicate a VHS tape as a menu-less disc. Like the tape, you'd put in the disc, and it'd just start playing. Add chapter marks to skip easily. Menus are usually worthless for homemade non-episodic (non-TV) material anyway.

The older vintage ATI cards are probably out, given your system (although others may chime in on this).

You haven't been following my recent research.

ATI AIW in Vista! It is possible, and with ATI MMC + VirtualDub!

Thus far, I have an ATI AIW working in Vista 32-bit with ATI MMC + VirtualDub. And in Windows 7 32-bit with VirtualDub. The next test is Windows 7 64-bit. Like you, I just assumed it didn't work because AMD and MS said it wouldn't work, and have mistakenly repeated the "not an option" stance for years. That's turned out to be a myth.

At some point, I'll be writing how-to install/usage guides for post-XP systems.

------

@OP -- It may be more wise to simply pay a service to transfer your home movies. And then simply re-buy released videos now on DVD; buy used to save money. (Amazon often has used DVDs for under $1.) This would be easier, and can turn out to be the same price or even lower-cost. You don't have to DIY.

[poisondeathray]

I think h264 will give better compression if you use a good encoder (

This is correct -- however, it's offset by several variables.

1. At 15Mb/s, MPEG-2 is going to look quite good, even to a discerning eye. So H264 vs MPEG-2 A/B comparisons will be more random than ever. You won't have macroblocks or other easy-to-see tell-tale signs.

I agree 15Mb/s MPEG2 will look fine for most SD content. But that's not really a valid point, because the main purpose of using AVC was to use lower bitrates. Why use 15Mb/s MPEG2 when you can get away with 6-9 Mb/s using a good AVC encoder?

In fact, H.264 may be more blurry/soft, because of built-in NR.

Did you mean inloop deblocking ? You can control deblocking alpha/beta strength or even disable it (not recommended)

NR can be disabled on x264 (it's actually off by default)

But one AVC encoder in particular has a NR function that can't be disabled, even in the SDK. It generally produces softer/blurry results because it's tuned for PSNR. (:cough... mainconcept)

I would argue that NR shouldn't be left to the encoder. It should be done at preprocessing stage. This is what pro compressionists do.

[robjv1]

I think h264 will give better compression if you use a good encoder (

This is correct -- however, it's offset by several variables.

1. At 15Mb/s, MPEG-2 is going to look quite good, even to a discerning eye. So H264 vs MPEG-2 A/B comparisons will be more random than ever. You won't have macroblocks or other easy-to-see tell-tale signs. In fact, H.264 may be more blurry/soft, because of built-in NR.

2. Yes, you'll be able to fit more on a disc with H.264, but that also means you're going to have to deal with creating BD menus, which isn't necessarily as easy (or the same as) developing DVD menus. A 25GB BD-R can often perfectly duplicate a VHS tape as a menu-less disc. Like the tape, you'd put in the disc, and it'd just start playing. Add chapter marks to skip easily. Menus are usually worthless for homemade non-episodic (non-TV) material anyway.

The older vintage ATI cards are probably out, given your system (although others may chime in on this).

You haven't been following my recent research.

ATI AIW in Vista! It is possible, and with ATI MMC + VirtualDub!

Thus far, I have an ATI AIW working in Vista 32-bit with ATI MMC + VirtualDub. And in Windows 7 32-bit with VirtualDub. The next test is Windows 7 64-bit. Like you, I just assumed it didn't work because AMD and MS said it wouldn't work, and have mistakenly repeated the "not an option" stance for years. That's turned out to be a myth.

At some point, I'll be writing how-to install/usage guides for post-XP systems.

------

@OP -- It may be more wise to simply pay a service to transfer your home movies. And then simply re-buy released videos now on DVD; buy used to save money. (Amazon often has used DVDs for under $1.) This would be easier, and can turn out to be the same price or even lower-cost. You don't have to DIY.

I have seen your posts on Windows 7, but I was thinking the issue for most was PCI Express and only a few cards being available in that configuration? The only one I ever tried was the AIW 2006, and I didn't find it I'd as good of a job as some of the earlier AGP cards. Is there a better one available?

[lordsmurf]

One of my main ATI AIW cards is PCI-E.
The x1800 and x1900 are both PCI-E cards, and both work fine.

My preference is still for AGP, even if using an final-era AGP board with a multi-core.
Then again, my preference is also for XP.

PCI would work, too. Those exist.

[robjv1]

One of my main ATI AIW cards is PCI-E.
The x1800 and x1900 are both PCI-E cards, and both work fine.

My preference is still for AGP, even if using an final-era AGP board with a multi-core.
Then again, my preference is also for XP.

PCI would work, too. Those exist.

Yeah, that's a good point regarding PCI x1. I'm not familiar with what models there are available, but those should work fine.

Yeah, I agree -- getting an XP box is relatively cheap and easy enough these days, might as well just go that route and get an AGP based board instead of fussing with the more modern cards that aren't really meant to capture a signal as unstable as VHS. If you're doing lossless captures, you can always off-source the actual encoding to a more powerful machine.

I didn't like the actual picture quality of the AIW 2006 PCI Express card I tried, it added some odd artifacts to the image, although it was a used purchase, so who knows.

[sanlyn]

I didn't like the actual picture quality of the AIW 2006 PCI Express card I tried, it added some odd artifacts to the image, although it was a used purchase, so who knows.

Agreed. That 2006 was a cheap job with none of the talents of the older AIW's. I tried it myself, thinking I'd get a replacement if one of my old AIW's had problems. Returned it to the store 2 days later, then bought 3 copies of the last AGP motherboards I could find. I guess my AIW's have survived because of all the case cooling fans, dust filters, and frequent cleaning. I've moved to an HD PVR since then, but nothing in most users' income brackets can beat the old AGP's for affordable analog capture.