What's my best choice for capturing s-vhs to digital?

[movieguru]

I am trying to convert some old movie S-VHS tape to hopefully digital discs. I am concerned about whether there is enough definition in these tapes to produce a BluRay disc. One comment here was that you need a HD source to burn an HD disc. Can my S-VHS provide the definition needed for Blu-Ray?

The driver situation is a bit scary and I'm hoping whatever I buy will be compatible with my Windows 7 Home Professional Operating System. I think I have strong hardware with my Sabertooth Z777 mother board and GEForce GTX 660 graphics board. My video camera's best output port is S-Video.

I don't want to waste money on a deluxe solution if the result would be the same using one of the better USB sticks. I am pretty fussy about the final clarity of the conversion, and so would pay the extra bucks if it is acheivable.

I hear too many horror stories about Ebay, so I am reluctant to go that route. What's my best choice?

[Brad]

Blu-ray supports both 4:3 and 16:9 SD video at 720x480, in all 3 supported codecs (AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2).

Use that instead of upscaling and then encoding the result.

[johns0]

Movieguru-please do not grave rob older threads,i moved your post to a new thread.

[jagabo]

I am concerned about whether there is enough definition in these tapes to produce a BluRay disc.

S-VHS has even lower resolution than DVD. But yes, you can capture and burn to Blu-ray. The same as you can capture and burn to DVD. But the result won't be high definition video.

If you want to spend a lot of money and time (not to mention the learning curve) you can capture as standard definition, filter and upscale to HD, and get slightly better picture quality than just capturing as SD, burning to Blu-ray as SD, and letting your player upscale.

[Groami Geistalt]

What hardware are you using to capture the video?

[movieguru]

For starters, I have purchased an ATI HD750 PCIE TV Tuner card that has an S-Video input and can capture S-VHS material and output it to one of several formats including H.264, AVI, MPEG, DivX, WMV, MPEG4, etc. I am going to try this first for both DVD's and Blu-Ray burnings. The S-Video should have a definition of 420x480. This is not exactly HD, but the HD gives me a wider picture on my plasma TV and possibly better clarity. I may decide to upgrade the hardware to something like an ATI GC1000 that is supposedly better at capturing HD.

[hech54]

I may decide to upgrade the hardware to something like an ATI GC1000 that is supposedly better at capturing HD.

You are not capturing HD....you are capturing SD.

[jagabo]

The S-Video should have a definition of 420x480.

That's probably a typo, but you should be capturing at 720x480.

This is not exactly HD, but the HD gives me a wider picture on my plasma TV and possibly better clarity.

Your source is 4:3 and should be pillarboxed on an HDTV.

I may decide to upgrade the hardware to something like an ATI GC1000 that is supposedly better at capturing HD.

How are you going to capture HD from an SD signal? Do you have a standalone upscaler? It's possible to upscale in software before encoding and get a slightly better picture (if you know what you're doing) than your TV or DVD/Blu-ray player produces when it upscales. But you will never get HD picture quality from S-VHS. An SD capture device at 720x480 is able to capture everything in an SD signal.

[movieguru]

You are probably correct about the typ-o error for S-VHS. I have seen other references that claim the effective lines for S-VHS is about 425. No matter, this is not HD. People claim the S-VHS looks good when played on a TV from a DVD, but I will see for myself. I have no plans to do any enhancement of the S-VHS signal with software, but that depends on how good or bad it looks without it. I was planning to capture the video as SD, but burn it to an HD disc. Probably no benefit in resolution, but a wider picture and possibly being able to keep long videos on one disc instead of multiple DVD's.

I have no idea about these stand alone upscalers, and whether they are worth the trouble to use.

[addu]

You can capture at full sd resolution 720*480 with any tv tuner card and then bring those files inside powerdirector 8,9,10 or 11 and upscale with thru theatre technology of them and make bluray dvd of ur choice. Smartest and the cheapest way of making high resolution upscaled bluray dvd.

[jagabo]

You can capture at full sd resolution 720*480 with any tv tuner card and then bring those files inside powerdirector 8,9,10 or 11 and upscale with thru theatre technology

Do you have any before and after samples you could share?

[addu]

that u urself can try with a trial versions of powerdirector to confirm whether it is actually happening. But i m sure it is happening otherwise there are costly solutions to upscale like the toshiba spurse engine card with tmpgenc videomastering works combination. I m satisfied with both the output as i m having both the solutions. The third is a freeware which is far more better than this all but very hard to explain in details and is realtime to upscale with superior resolution after the file is captured on the hard disk.

[jagabo]

that u urself can try with a trial versions of powerdirector to confirm whether it is actually happening.

I have no doubt the software can upscale. My question is the quality vs. other methods. I hate installing software that I don't plan to use or buy. Thanks anyway though.

[addu]

i think powerdirector has the fastest installation and the quality is very good but little bit slow comparatively to spurse engine which gives u realtime upscaling and the quality is also good if the source is original sd resolution than ur upscaled is just like hd.

[Hoser Rob]

You may be able to upscale sd to hd but you'll just be using a lot of cpu cycles and time with no improvement. Upscaling can't put information in that isn't there in the source.

[addu]

With Spurse engine card of course no cpu usage but the quality is near like hd. But with powerdirector cpu cycles are consumed than why cpu in first place made to do that but powerdirector is using cuda power to execute upscale effect and the results are better than ordinary sd. But first u should have ur file in pure 480i or p than u will get results.

[jagabo]

With Spurse engine card... the quality is near like hd.

No it's not. Get any high quality Blu-ray movie and compare it to any upscaled VHS. The difference is night and day. Even upscaled DVD is obviously not HD.

[addu]

We are talking here about bringing old home videos to near hd qualities and what possible solutions to bring near to hd. No body can be able to make a low resolution video to perfect hd.

[jagabo]

Don't forget, every HDTV will upscale SD inputs. All Blu-ray players and most (?) DVD players too. The question is how good is the quality of the various methods vs how much time, effort, and cost is involved.

[addu]

Then every 3d hdtv preform 2d to 3d conversion then there will be certainly no need of creating or enjoy making those 3d files also. So we will all stop and also I m packing my bags to go somewhere else to pass my time.

[zoobie]

For future reference, I just had a house convert 3 S-VHS tapes to DVD for $5 each on eBay with free shipping. I first had to contact the sellers to determine if they had real SVHS deck or just a quasi-VHS player.

[2Bdecided]

We are talking here about bringing old home videos to near hd qualities and what possible solutions to bring near to hd.

I think your definition of "near" is different from that used by most people!

Cheers,
David.