Capturing VHS to digital file format in 2016

[Cygnus111]

I've found a few threads about capturing VHS but they're all pretty old. What I'm looking for is updated info on a solid way to capture VHS to any digital format. I've found info on Hauppage PVRs, I've found info on video cards, I've found info on dongles made for the supreme novice, yet I've never found anything that compares them all or suggests what the best way to do it is.

I'll tell you what I've done in the past. I have a Panasonic DMR-EH50 which is a stand-alone DVR that burns to DVD. I've captured from VHS to it, edited/trimmed my video and burned to DVD, but it typically looks a bit blocky and suffers from color rings (or however you refer to the visible shades of black, white, gray and all colors in-between when your video has a direct shot of, say, a streetlight). In short, my source VHS looks better. So, now I want to do this stuff right so I can dump the hundreds of VHS tapes I own and put them all on a portable hard drive.

I was debating on starting with an AlienWare PC, just because they're made for gaming and so they're made for high-end graphics. But I'm not sure where to go from there. Any help is appreciated. Assume a budget of about $2K, and that you're speaking to a complete novice because I've been out of the "video editing" circuit for a while and so have forgotten many terms.

[hech54]

Record in the highest possible quality setting with the Panasonic.....that will do better than any novice with a capture "thing".
This is VHS you are dealing with....you won't get perfect quality from it. It may be 2016 but your VCR never will be.

[JVRaines]

A Diamond, Hauppage, or StarTech USB converter dongle works just fine for VHS. Use VirtualDub or AmaRecTV to capture a lossless video format (HuffYUV, Lagarith, UT Video) and uncompressed WAV audio. Learn how to work the processing amplifier controls in the software driver so you get a good tonal range and credible color. If you want to go the extra mile, learn how to script Avisynth for major image improvements. Archive the lossless files (they will be large) to backup media. Use VidCoder to make copies in the compressed MP4 format for everyday viewing on a broad range of devices.

[orsetto]

So, now I want to do this stuff right so I can dump the hundreds of VHS tapes I own and put them all on a portable hard drive.

That statement alone cuts you off at the knees and limits some of your options. For all the reams of useful and useless BS thats been posted on this topic, very rarely does anyone flat-out mention what a gigantic, tedious, PITA time sink the task really is for any workflow other than straightforward capture to a dvd recorder. There is no magic combination of hardware and software that will provide "great" VHS captures with minimal effort and time investment: you either settle for a quick and painless DVD recorder, or pull every last hair off your head (and nether regions) in a never-ending pursuit of "perfection". Doing this for dozens of VHS is a nightmare, doing it for hundreds is untenable unless you are under 30 y/o and can schedule every waking moment of the next 30 years of your life to the job.

If you glean nothing else from all the threads, understand this: significant improvement of capture quality beyond that provided by a dvd recorder (or USB dongle with bundled software) is usually unachievable by a novice. The people who've been doing VHS capture since 2003 blythely throw around terms like "scripting" and "AVIsynth" as if any average Joe could randomly pick up all the required skills over a holiday weekend. They mean well, they're trying to be helpful, but every last one of them has the heart and soul of a total geek. Perhaps one in twenty people interested in "perfect" VHS capture have the mentality to really pull it off: you need gallons of patience, a fetish for tweaking, and the rare ability to re-watch the same damn scene over and over and OVER as you make changes, yet not get so sick of the video you start wondering why the hell you bothered.

Other key points you may or may not have noticed while thread surfing: getting exceptional transfers often involves using one of the rare "high end" VCRs which are now old, decrepit, and priced in the stratosphere. Reproducing the effects of their hardware DNR circuits using software tweaks is not easy. The VCR hardware circuits effortlessly cure ills like geometric distortions and certain types of noise. Perversely, some VHS flaws are best cured by connecting a VCR to the line inputs of a dvd recorder, and the line outputs of the dvd recorder to a capture device (in essence, using the dvd recorder as a pass-thru signal conditioner).

I'm not suggesting you give up on your quest to improve capture quality over what your DMR-EH50 can provide (that is an older Panasonic with definite encoder quirks that work well for some tapes, not so well for others). But be realistic: getting better quality won't be a cakewalk- it becomes a very long-term avocation for large VHS collections. If nothing else, start by ruthlessly evaluating all the tapes in your library: anything that isn't personal family videos should simply be replaced by commercial Hollywood discs if at all possible (many older movies and TV series go for chump change on Amazon or eBay). If the cost seems daunting, consider how much your time is worth: one can easily spend several hours refining the capture of one hour of VHS.

Good luck to you. After several years, I'm about halfway thru digitizing my own 3000 tape library: the endless variability from tape to tape got real old, real fast and put me off continuing on a daily basis. I need to work up motivation and enthusiasm every few weeks, get as many done as possible before I burn out again, then take a break. The breaks get longer and longer each time...

[Cygnus111]

orsetto -
I get what you're saying. Let me just say that except for a few family videos, the majority of my collection consists of concert footage I've collected over about 30 years. Much of it is from TV from around the world, some of it was filmed by audience members, and a scant few were filmed by myself with a DV recorder. Back in the day, I copied the DV footage to HiFi VHS tapes. These are my highest priority. After that, there are a few videos I have that I feel are in better condition than what circulates on free trade sites like Dime A Dozen and Traders Den. So my next priority would be transferring these tapes to get better copies in circulation. The rest, if they already circulate in similar or better condition, would be tossed without transferring them. So, while I say "hundreds", it kind of boils down to 30 or so tapes. I don't need "professional, studio" quality, but I'm looking for advice on the best hardware option to use to capture.

FWIW, I have a JVC HR-S2901U HiFi VHS deck. Not sure if that's one of the high-end ones you're talking about, but it's the only one I have with an SVHS output and that's what I'll be using.

[DB83]

Well I don't suppose you still own the DV camera and the original DV recordings since that would be a start.

And even if you just have the DV camera that could be used as a pass-thro device to give you better quality than a 'bog-standard' VHS capture.

These 'tv from around the world' tapes. Are they your recordings or acquired. With the latter, they might look 'ok' on a CRT tv but they could be 2nd or even third generation (a copy of a copy) tapes. The people who typically do these simply join 2 vcrs together and no signal enhancement. So they will look pretty s$%te however you attempt capture them.

All that being said, there is no quick fix just as orsetto points out. What would work for one tape could be a disaster for another. But equipment wise, no harm starting cheap and if that does not work then try something more expensive. Cheap = Ezcap116 (a genuine one from an official source not a cheap chinese knock-off) or a Hauppauge USBLive2. More expensive would be a VHS to DV converter such as a Canopus 100/110 (which some on here love or some hate). But with many captures you could well come across time-base errors and only a line TBC will help here.

As for topics, there are hundred on here and many not so old as you suggest. It is worth seeking them out and reading them.

[orsetto]

I feel you, Cygnus111: got a subset of my own, roughly 260 "compilation" tapes, made between 1981 and 2002, with a mix of music and comedy clips (often recorded by different VCRs on the same tape). Just the thought of digitizing them makes me want to hunt for a bottle of Stoli, so I've been postponing those to be the very last tapes I tackle. Dealing with video variations between "normal" tapes is bad enough: coping with individual tapes that might have 20 assorted clips of highly variable quality (and generation loss), made by multiple VCRs, is just headache-inducing. As DB83 mentioned, the "traded concert" stuff is especially daunting and tends to digitize as little more than colorful blobs accompanied by great music. If that weren't enough, you can get bogged down trying to organize the whole project: I figure if I'm gonna do it at all, I'd like to have folders or discs of particular performers grouped together. It may be better to digitize it all as-is, then sort the files out later.

I'd start by trying the genuine EZcap recommended by DB83, if you can find one thats legit. Your JVC 2901 is a decent standard-issue VCR, well-regarded by some concert digitizers I know who are unbelievably picky about VCRs. The coveted DNR circuit available in high-end VCRs works better on first-generation original tapes than second, third, or fourth-gen "swap dupes", so may be of lesser benefit to you. "High-end" models would be JVC SR-V101, SR-V10, HR-S9911, etc. These are collectively known as the JVC "DigiPure" series, all have the TBC+DNR feature. Many models were made over the years. None are cheap, many are quite worn out.

Note there are some people who are pleased with the video quality of USB dongles like EZcap, but disappointed by the audio encoder. These ultra- "techie" types work around this by capturing the sound with a separate device they prefer, then muxing the audio and video tracks together afterward. That to me is the very definition of a convoluted "pull my hair out by the roots" activity, but a few dedicated "concert swap" folks swear by such methods. My personal collection of music-related videos does not have soundtrack quality that merits that much effort, and I doubt most other "traded" stuff does either, but to each his own.

[JVRaines]

If one has "hundreds" of tapes to convert, then one has PLENTY of time to become an Avisynth wizard or some such if one chooses. Because you can't really go far away in case the VCR starts munching your irreplaceable recording. And you must adopt an industrial mindset: keep the machine running ALL THE TIME. That's how I got through a project digitizing 700 U-matic videocassettes, for instance.

[Cygnus111]

DB83 - The tapes were recorded by people around the world. A few by me, if it was on TV in the US. I know many are 2nd or 3rd (or 7th) gen tapes, but the hard-core collectors are looking for the best quality copy period, regardless of the quality. The hope is that eventually a better quality copy surfaces, which in some cases my copies are better than what's in circulation.


JVRaines - I've seen many mentions of AVISynth here, and by it's description it seems like just a free version of Sony Vegas without the GUI. If I have Vegas (which I do), can I do the same stuff or is AVISynth really worth dedicating some time to learn?

[JVRaines]

Vegas is an editor with effects; Avisynth is a filter engine with far more sophisticated capabilities at the expense of being harder to use. For example, Vegas offers only blend and interpolation deinterlacing (and Yadif as a plugin), while Avisynth hosts one of the best deinterlacers ever developed. Vegas has good color correction tools, but with Avisynth, you can precisely compensate for issues like YIQ error from videotape.

[DB83]

Cygnus111

I fully accept your sentiment having done some trading myself in the past. Some of the stuff I received was pretty atrocious yet on another compilation tape there was a better version.

As for avisynth, the biggest issue is recognising what needs to be done and then sourcing the filter to do it. I read a topic on here only a few weeks ago where a member was attempting a single avisynth script for all possibilities. A quite impossible task. In fact no one on here could suggest a single solution for every tape.

[atanatizante]

I`m also a novice trying to digitize some old VHS in the best possible way with the following hardware:
1. Computer i7 & 12Gb RAM and 2TBs of space
2. Panasonic S-VHS NV-HS 950 with TBC and 3D-DNR
3. AV Denon X2000 with dedicated chip for enhance A/D conversion from Analog Devices ADV7840 : http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/data_sheets/ADV7840.pdf
4. Avermedia ExtermeCap U3
5. No AV editing sofware (you may suggest one) ...
I would be very grateful if someone could help with this matter ...

[sebus]

A Diamond, Hauppage, or StarTech USB converter dongle works just fine for VHS. Use VirtualDub or AmaRecTV to capture a lossless video format (HuffYUV, Lagarith, UT Video) and uncompressed WAV audio. Learn how to work the processing amplifier controls in the software driver so you get a good tonal range and credible color. If you want to go the extra mile, learn how to script Avisynth for major image improvements. Archive the lossless files (they will be large) to backup media. Use VidCoder to make copies in the compressed MP4 format for everyday viewing on a broad range of devices.

Nice recommendation. One only needs LOTS of time to do it all! And who would bother with some old VHS footage...

[Maris 55]

Cignus 111,
You said you have a miniDV or Digital8 camera? Some of them have the Passthrough capability. There are so many benefits with this:
1. you don't need to buy a capture card like Canopus ADVC 55/110/300
2. these miniDV cameras do have Full-Frame TBC built in. In fact noone really knows what is indeed built in there, but the signal is improved- no jitter, less dropouts
3. very straightforward workflow- you just need a decent VCR (maybe a VHS HiFi is enough) because the TBC is in the camera, and the digital camera in Passthrough mode.
You get captured the AV from camera by Firewire to let's say WinDV as SD .avi file 720x576 PAL. 1 hour is about 12GB
From my own experience the camera captures much better than the Canopus ADVC 110 or 55. I have them both as well as a Sony miniDV TRV33.
BUT not all digital cameras do have Analog AV to digital Passthrough. And usually you even can't find that in the manual. One other popular model is Panasonic GS200 if I'm right.
The best thing is that the mechanics and optics of the camera may even be faulty, you don't need them and therefor the prices are low. If you go he VCR through DVR to capture card you need 1 extra device in your chain with no better results.