Transfer to Digital Using Digital8 Camcorder, DvDirect, and FFMPEG

[sbigelow]

Like so many others, I want to transfer my 100+ Digital8, Hi8, and VHS home movies to MP4 files. In my case, I want the digital video to eventually wind up as H.265 HEVC MP4 files.

About my competency: I was pretty comfortable in the analog video world, having worked in commercial video production and duplication for a little over a decade. But that was a long time ago, and that experience doesn't translate very well to today's tools, other than I have a slight head start on vocabulary.

Here are the tools I'm thinking of using:

• My trusty Sony TRV 740 and possibly my TRV 350 (on which many of the tapes were originally recorded).
• A Sony DvDirect standalone DVD burner, connected to the camcorders using i.Link / FireWire where possible, or S-Video where necessary.
• A to-be-named VHS player, connected to either the S-Video input of the TRV740 (in a pass-through to take advantage of the line TBC and DNR of the camcorder) or directly connected to the S-Video input of the DvDirect unit.
• POSSIBLY adding a frame TBC into the workflow, if the quality of the tapes require it.
• About a gazillion (give or take) DVD-Rs on which to record the videos.
• FFMPEG software to rip the video and audio from the DVDs, possibly re-sync the audio and video if required (I understand this is a common problem), and dump the output to H.265 HEVC MP4 files.

The resulting MP4 files will be distributed to kids, other family members, etc., on digital media (e.g. a flash drive).

The advantages of this approach, to me, are that I'm not tying up my computer while the content of the tapes are transferred to digital media, and that the resulting DVDs (a semi-durable physical media with as close to the source material as possible) can be archived. I want to use the H.265 HEVC coding to get the best quality "playback video" with the smallest file size; I completely understand it may be a year or two before H.265 goes fully mainstream, and software apps including browsers fully support the standard. (VLC supports playback of H.265 encoding already! Yay!)

I think this workflow will work well, especially over the months it will take me to transfer the content of all of these tapes.

I'd like your thoughts on the workflow - does it make sense? Is there a more straightforward way of accomplishing what I want? Any other comments you'd like to add are welcomed as well.

I haven't purchased a DvDirect burner unit yet - I'm still trying to decide which model best suits my needs. I'm not real clear on the differences between the various Sony DvDirect models - it looks like the VRD-VC30 is the most recent version, although the model naming scheme seems to have been changed from the format used for the (apparently earlier) VRD-MC1 thru VRD-MC10 models. Is there a concise explanation of the differences between each DvDirect model, and the history of the product, for example, in what way is the VRD-VC30 better (or worse) than the VRD-MC10? Sony's not real good about doing side-by-side model comparisons, and the DvDirect products seem like a niche product line that hasn't resulted in creation of comparison charts like, say, comparing which VHS VCR will be best for transferring tapes to digital. I'm working on a spreadsheet that tries to compare each feature per model, but I'll gladly take advantage of the work anyone else has done comparing the different models.

A note on FFMPEG: this freeware is amazing for the quality and control it provides when doing digital media conversions. It's a command-line tool, rather than a GUI, and so can be extremely confusing at first. However, I have yet to come across a conversion need that I haven't been able to solve using the software's documentation and fantastic user community - it's very rare that I want to do something that somebody else hasn't already figured out.

Thanks for your ideas and thoughts!

[dellsam34]

I don't think it's a good idea to capture to DVD then encode from DVD to h.264, DVD(MPEG-2) is nowhere near close to the original capture. Also camcorders don't apply TBC on the incoming signal, just the tapes bein played back.

[sbigelow]

@dellsam34 Thanks. I'd completely ignored the encoding to MPEG-2 when the source video is recorded to the DvDirect. You're right, and I agree - I don't think it's a good idea to encode the "archive master" in a lossy format only to decode and re-encode it in a lossless format (H.265 lossless) or a likely less lossy format such as H.265 or H.264.

Back to the drawing board!

[lordsmurf]

The Sony DVDirect is also pretty lousy. Sony encoder chipsets were always crummy.

I've done this with LSI and Zoran chipsets, however. Those can look good. LSI from tape, Zoran from broadcast. Just a shareable copy for Youtube or family or whatever, not the master.

Converting into the DV camera also squashes down quality to 4:1:1 DV -- yuck. So 2x loss DV+DVD.

If you're looking for quality conversion, that's not it at all. It's really mediocre to lousy.

And the VCR matters, ideally S-VHS with line TBC.

Note that H.264/5 handles interlaced poorly on SD. Most devices expect progressive. So problems. This is why you keep a quality lossess or high-bitrate MPEG master as interlaced, and then encode a deinterlaced copy compressed. Hybrid is best, with deinterlace via Avisynth/Vapoursynth + encoding via ffmpeg in one GUI.

[sbigelow]

@lordsmurf Thanks! This is all good stuff to know. (If this was easy, everyone would do it, right?)

I'm getting that the camcorder-to-computer and VHS-to-computer are two separate workflows, and I shouldn't bother with running the VHS output through the Camcorder, since 1) the TBC won't be engaged on the camcorder for the incoming signal, and 2) the analog-to-digital conversion done in-camera will give poor quality.