Capturing PAL S-VHS-C - Advice very much appreciated

[Genu29]

I am looking for help/suggestion on how to setup my system for S-VHS-C PAL capturing; it is made of PANASONIC VCR NVFS90 and ASUS ATI 9600XT.
I would like to get support for the following questions:

MATERIAL SOURCE
S-VHS-C PAL interlaced: is it better to use the VCR with S-VHS-C adapter or use a native S-VHS-C VideoCam (I could recover a Panasonic NV MS50, but I don’t know if it has a TBC system included) ?

PC
I would like to use VirtualDub with Huffyuv v2.1.1 CCE patch, but without any Filter (cropping/denoising); my idea is to have a master file and then, after capturing, work on it for filtering (cropping/denoising) and codec conversion. Is it a good strategy ? Afaik, cropping is not suggested for interlaced material, am I wrong ?

VCR:
It has a Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector: what position should I choose ?
It has a Picture sharpness control: this is a cursor with three milestones (sharp/middle/soft) that seems enabled only if the Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector is put Off; what position should I choose ?

Many thanks for your support

[sanlyn]

Sorry to say, I'm not familiar enough with your VCR to answer specific questions about the settings you mention. However, in general: applyiong noise filters and sharpeners while capturing tape isn't the best idea. First, sharpening will also sharpen noise, making it more difficult to clean up later. The built-in noise filters themselves in most tape players are almost always the simple blurring type that introduces unwanted artifacts.

I would like to use VirtualDub with Huffyuv v2.1.1 CCE patch, but without any Filter (cropping/denoising); my idea is to have a master file and then, after capturing, work on it for filtering (cropping/denoising) and codec conversion. Is it a good strategy ? Afaik, cropping is not suggested for interlaced material, am I wrong ?

Capturing with minimum modification of the incoming image is preferable; the only way to undo real-time capture processing if you don't like it is to recapture. Cropping: I don't generally crop during capture, as this can always be done later. Just remember that cropping interlaced source involves cropping of two fields within a frame. So the pixels cropped vertically (top and bottom) should be even numbers of pixels from either or both borders. Different colorspaces (YV12, YUY2, RGB) have specific cropping requirements, as covered in this Avisynth document: http://avisynth.org/oldwiki/index.php?page=Crop . You should add black borders to restore the resulting frames to the proper dimensions.

[2Bdecided]

I am looking for help/suggestion on how to setup my system for S-VHS-C PAL capturing; it is made of PANASONIC VCR NVFS90 and ASUS ATI 9600XT.
I would like to get support for the following questions:

MATERIAL SOURCE
S-VHS-C PAL interlaced: is it better to use the VCR with S-VHS-C adapter or use a native S-VHS-C VideoCam (I could recover a Panasonic NV MS50, but I don’t know if it has a TBC system included) ?

The NV-FS90 doesn't have a TBC either. It was a great VCR in its day, built like a tank, and if still working up to spec is fine for capturing S-VHS-C with an adapter, but for best results you need a line TBC somewhere. Either in a more modern VCR (that may or may not be better than the NV-FS90 overall), or the capture device, DV camcorder, DVD recorder loop-through, etc.

The original camcorder the tapes were recorded on might be better than the NV-FS90 at playing it's own tapes - but sometimes there's no visible difference. Some people mistrust the VHS-C adapters, but I'd rather use one of those with a known deck than some random camcorder. Apart from worries about adapters (never had any trouble myself), there's no reason to use a different camcorder from the one the tape was recorded on in preference to a good stand-alone deck.

PC
I would like to use VirtualDub with Huffyuv v2.1.1 CCE patch, but without any Filter (cropping/denoising); my idea is to have a master file and then, after capturing, work on it for filtering (cropping/denoising) and codec conversion. Is it a good strategy ? Afaik, cropping is not suggested for interlaced material, am I wrong ?

You're correct.

VCR:
It has a Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector: what position should I choose ?
It has a Picture sharpness control: this is a cursor with three milestones (sharp/middle/soft) that seems enabled only if the Noise Filter/Off/Edit selector is put Off; what position should I choose ?

The manual suggests using EDIT for dubbing - it says it removes some filtering that's on by default. It certainly makes the picture noisier.

The noise filter is nothing special - it just makes the picture softer.

I'm never sure with Panasonic decks which position is doing "nothing" to the tapes - and whether I'd prefer that position if I found it.

Cheers,
David.