Getting started digitizing VHS collection

[planetearth]

Hello, I've been researching on how to do this but I'm a little lost.

I'd like the best quality possible.

I've determined I need a S-Video capable VHS player and possibly Elgato Video Capture ($87.99 Amazon), and possibly a Gefen (Ftv-hdmi-2-compsvidsn) composite scaler to increase the resolution. I'm sure I'm missing a lot here but can the Gefen plug and play into a laptop's USB. Or do I need a video card? I'm also not sure how all of these things work together or even if they do necessarily. What is recommended for the best quality?

[lingyi]

Start by reading lordsmurf's article:https://www.digitalfaq.com/editorials/digital-video/professional-analog-workflow.htm Everything in there applies to home capture except the needing video cameras and non-VHS machines, assuming you only have VHS tapes.

Then read this current thread, lots of good info: https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-workflows/13285-best-vcr-digtilize.html

Forget the Elgato, known as Elcrappo here and at DigitalFAQ and a hardware upscaler.

[planetearth]

Start by reading lordsmurf's article:https://www.digitalfaq.com/editorials/digital-video/professional-analog-workflow.htm Everything in there applies to home capture except the needing video cameras and non-VHS machines, assuming you only have VHS tapes.

Then read this current thread, lots of good info: https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-workflows/13285-best-vcr-digtilize.html

Forget the Elgato, known as Elcrappo here and at DigitalFAQ and a hardware upscaler.

Upscalers are not recommended?

[lingyi]

Much better done in software, if at all.

[johnmeyer]

You get no visual improvement by using an upscaler. They have no way to add detail.

[Bwaak]

The major reason to upscale is if you want to upload to Youtube, because Youtube turns on 50p/60p frame rate for 720p and higher res.

[johnmeyer]

The major reason to upscale is if you want to upload to Youtube, because Youtube turns on 50p/60p frame rate for 720p and higher res.

Yeah, I've seen that posted in Reddit and do remember finding that out myself about ten years ago. I didn't know that was still going on. The claim is that YouTube uses a different (and better) codec to encode higher-res videos.

I should try a test, like I did a decade ago, to see if this is still true. A lot of these recommendations persist even after the problem has been removed. (I'm not saying that's the case here, since I haven't tested it myself.)