Archiving poor quality VHS tapes: how much overkill is too much?

[Brad]

I need to clear out room, so the originals need to go bye-bye in most cases. And after investing so much money in equipment and time in the actual transfers, I don't ever want to have to touch them again anyway.

So, what are my fellow archivists opting for these days?

I was thinking BD-R and BD-R DL discs, since authoring to SD Blu-ray lets me drop the ancient MPEG-2. But then again x264's own developers have lamented the quality of interlaced encoding. Regardless, no problems with bitrates given the 48Mbps mux total and I can also leave the audio uncompressed.

There's always lossless, but is there a single STB-type device that can play any lossless video codec at all? Maybe x264 lossless? If not, are there any that can play uncompressed video?

[jagabo]

is there a single STB-type device that can play any lossless video codec at all? Maybe x264 lossless? If not, are there any that can play uncompressed video?

No, no, and no. In my experience.

[yoda313]

Here are some suggestions:

Setup an htpc to view the lossless video you are looking to do - I believe jagabo is trying to say this is your only bet on this type of video.

Make constant redundant backups on multiple platforms. If these are at all important to you and hard or impossible to replace than ensure you have duplicates and triplicates. That means multiple harddrives for original captures and first generation "final" edits - the files you'd use to create the dvds and blurays.

Also if you intend to destroy/remove all originals than multiple disc copies of the same videos are also advisable.

Otherwise if you have a disc that goes bad and a harddrive dies on you you are out of luck. Multiple backups on multiple platforms are the only way to ensure longevity if you no longer have the originals. Plus you should migrate your harddrives to new harddrives at regular intervals to ensure longevity as well.

In short I still think its too hasty to trash your originals. Unless space is at a true premium I would still preserve the originals as a last ditch resort should your transfers go awry somehow.

Barring that I would at least consider saving SOME of your originals for insurance. Hand pick the MOST IRREPLACEABLE ones and keep those for insurance. Otherwise you'll truly be up a creek without a paddle if you should encounter massive critical data die offs.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

[brusno]

@yoda313:
What method would you prefer to backup the VHS to the PC? With videocard and using Lagarith-codec? This would be the best possible quality right?

Me myself have been using MPEG2 for VHS/Hi8-backup, because it's easy when you have a combined DVD-VHS player
And the quality on SP (Standard play, 2 hrs pr. DVD). BUT, the quality will not be as good as on the VHS tapes I'm afraid. Because it will be grainy (blocks).
It will be a compromise between quality and how much work you will put in it.

[yoda313]

What method would you prefer to backup the VHS to the PC? With videocard and using Lagarith-codec? This would be the best possible quality right?

Actually I've never worked with lossless or lossy codecs.

Its also been awhile since I"ve done vhs to dvd. Lately the only dvd I've been doing has been working with internet video like youtube stuff and making dvds from that.

When I do vhs I've always done the mpeg2 route to minimize the steps in my workflow.

However I do believe that direct capture to a lossy codec like dv or lossless would give you the most flexibility in terms of editing capability. I don't believe lossy/lossless is efficient or practical for the playback environment. Its too bulky in terms of file size and incompatible with players aside from a computer. Unless you could find a small settop box unit that can play dv avi files from a harddrive I would still use mpeg2 mpg files for playback or move into the 21st century and use h264 if you aren't going to exclusively use the physical dvds you make.

[jagabo]

I've never heard of a set-top player that can play DV.

I consider Lagarith to be dangerous for archiving. Are you sure you'll be able to find a decoder 20 years from now? 50 years? Even if you save a copy of the codec will you be able to find a computer that can use it? HuffYUV doesn't compress as much but has been much more widespread and is more likely to be around in the future.

High bitrate MPEG 2 with all I frames, or IP frames and short GOPs is worth considering. Many set-top players can play that. Same for h.264.

If you're concerned about interlaced performance with x264 you could use SeparateFields() or split the fields and stack them, and encode progressive. Of course, that means you'll have to reverse the operation when you want to work with the video later. And it won't be so watchable. How hard will it be to find tools to do that in the future?

[yoda313]

How hard will it be to find tools to do that in the future?

I think that would be part of your archiving strategy. Save your software and codecs on harddrives and dvds/blurays so you have access to them in the future. Of course you'll need to keep a copy of at least winxp so you can use it in a virtual os in the future.

I've never heard of a set-top player that can play DV.

Not surprising. But if there was one that would be the most logical way to do lossy playback of captured video. Though at 13gb per hour even with terabyte harddrives that is still way too impractical for a large video collection. Still better to do some compression for your playback environment.