Equipment purchasing for largescale restoration and archiving project.

[MorlockMan]

That'll cut down on time requirements too.

I'll only have to preview the final DVD for each tape to make sure I'm not introducing any errors.

Are there any issues with using Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 for DVD creation? I made a quick DVD copy using APP and one with the DVD recorder to demonstrate how the Sony copier was introducing digital errors through poor digital-analog conversion. However, when trying to play the two DVDs through windows media (without a proper mpeg2 decoder installed) the DVD produced by the Sony played properly while the Adobe Premiere Pro DVD skipped.

I also used two different brands of DVD for this test.

Both DVDs played fine on my computer with the proper decoder installed.

Anything I should be aware of in regards to how APP compiles DVDs?

[thecoalman]

I also used two different brands of DVD for this test.

That is most likely the problem especially if the computer playback doesn't produce any problems. Computer drives are much more robust and forgiving that those found in DVD players.

Lordsmurf another member of this site has a excellent guide for media, put on your reading glasses its quite lengthy:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/

[MorlockMan]

I also used two different brands of DVD for this test.

That is most likely the problem especially if the computer playback doesn't produce any problems. Computer drives are much more robust and forgiving that those found in DVD players.

Lordsmurf another member of this site has a excellent guide for media, put on your reading glasses its quite lengthy:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/

No, they were both computer DVD drives.

[FulciLives]

Adobe should export to MPEG-2 DVD spec rather well as it uses the Mainconcept MPEG encoder. What did you use to author the DVD?

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[MorlockMan]

Adobe authored the DVD that wouldn't play properly in the other DVD drive.

It may have been that I was using a budget brand of DVDs for that particular copy, leaving the DVD drive with a difficult read, or the computer may not have had the proper decoder installed. However, since the other DVD authored by the Sony played correctly in this computer, I assumed the latter was not the case.

[edDV]

Adobe authored the DVD that wouldn't play properly in the other DVD drive.

It may have been that I was using a budget brand of DVDs for that particular copy, leaving the DVD drive with a difficult read, or the computer may not have had the proper decoder installed. However, since the other DVD authored by the Sony played correctly in this computer, I assumed the latter was not the case.

DVD authoring is a fairly mature technology. You are tuning a production process. Don't assume the component parts are faulty. Your problems are local.

[FulciLives]

Adobe authored the DVD that wouldn't play properly in the other DVD drive.

I would try another DVD Authoring program. I've heard of other's having issues with Adobe when using it for DVD Authoring. Granted you can still use Adobe for editing and export to MPEG-2 DVD spec files ... just don't use it for the DVD Authoring stage.

As I think I mentioned before ... TMPGEnc DVD Author is easy-to-use and works well.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[MorlockMan]

Good enough. I'll run a few tests before I get into the meat of the project just to make sure I'm not producing crap DVDs.

I've performed home video archiving before, but never a project of this size. It's a little daunting.

Thanks for all your advice, though. It's greatly appreciated.

[thecoalman]

No, they were both computer DVD drives.

That still doesn't absolutely rule out the possibility it was the media.

[MorlockMan]

No, they were both computer DVD drives.

That still doesn't absolutely rule out the possibility it was the media.

That'd be what I'm leaning towards now. The one that pulled the error was a budget brand I picked up for dirt cheap. The other was a Fuji.

[StuR]

MM, had a read though now. Lots of good advice already.
The pana 1980 should be available for a lot less than $750-$1700 (USD??). There's a 1970 too (poss. half frame TBC though). Do I take it that the money funding this is not your own i.e. your not paying? With all those tapes I seriously think you need to re-think, make things simple, or it may send you mental.
A good dvd recorder with HDD will allow you to edit out ads, top and tail titles, then put them on a disk with a menu with a background, an image for each title and name. Then select the best rate to fit on a disk an burn disk. done.
A box between the VCR and DVDRW can alter colour/brightness... ect. done.

The toshiba XS34/35 have some picture adjustments for input signal, as do some pioneers. The pioneer HDD do look good, haven't used one though. The tosh xs create the best dvd menus, but think how important that menu is!
As to quality how important is this video, if you record as near to HQ as you can to reduce compression, you'll find it looks OK. Don't be put off by your Sony DVDRW experiance. My JVC MH300 stretches beyond 2hr with full frame DVD remarkably well if you dual-pass (copy to HDD then re-encode to disk). If you keep it at 90mins/disk then how many titles are you going to get to a disk? Surely that'll mean one or two on the disk menu, like mine end up, so why worry to much about altering the menu. Maybe start with this method and see how you feel you can improve the PC side later. You'll have to get a good VCR, and some 'ext. TBC/sych/procamp' box so thats probably where to start.

Just a scan on ebay US brought up these
basic TBC/sync
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Time-Base-Corrector-TBC-1000_W0QQitemZ330181555795QQihZ014QQcate...QQcmdZViewItem
couple of Toshiba XS
http://cgi.ebay.com/TOSHIBA-DVD-REC-160GB-HD-RD-XS52-NEW_W0QQitemZ140170504189QQihZ004...QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/TOSHIBA-160GB-HDD-DVD-Recorder-RD-XS35-DVR_W0QQitemZ190166708829QQ...QQcmdZViewItem

And this link shows the kind of custom menu toshiba allows you to create, much quicker and easier than using a PC. Use Verbatum -R after you've edited and your done. It won't take many tapes transferes before this looks like a good option.

[MorlockMan]

Unfortunately, it appears that DV archiving is the way we're going to proceed. This will allow for a final archive of editable material stored on several hard drives in a vault. This way once the project has been completed the capturing will never need to be done again.

As for the equipment, it will all be owned by the Institute afterwards as part of their archive. That way should more tapes need to be digitized at a later date, the required equipment is already available. Therefore, all equipment will be purchased new and they're footing the bill.

I've already got the basic outline of the proposal completed, including the methods and material cost. It's getting a little pricey than first expected, but since this is aiming at archival quality rips the process becomes a little bit more painstaking.

I should be passing off the proposal sometime tomorrow, provided by reviewer doesn't see any major difficulties with how I'm assembling the document.

[StuR]

MM, Right that wasn't clear to me, I may have scanned over some info in the posts. If it a commersial/educational instituiton then they have to pay. Actually I've noticed alot of scientific/educational/media use of svhs in US colleges seems to be with the pana 1980 it looks to be the prefered option before large full pro units.
I don't know if ease of use and access has been consider much as DVD is a very universal medium, PC's, laptops, playstations ... and blueray players will be backwardly compatable. DV and HDD will have limited access and there's probably not going to be a much better conversion format soon. It reminds me of the UMatic tapes that had some college work on which where better quality transferes than vhs storage option. Unfortunatly the Umatic players were scraped and the tapes? who knows.

[themaster1]

Damn these tapes must be precious.What all these tapes are about, just out of curiosity?

You've made an intelligent choice: the DV format
How about using a good s-vhs unit with tbc+noise reduction then using a dv camcorder to record/digitalize the signal and finally using avisynth with some kind of "generic script" for all your tapes ->re-encoding in dv(final result)

All this at the same time (if that's possible, dunno about the avs part)

You would need
-1 s-vhs unit (jvc or panasonic)
-1 fast computer (p4 bi processor)
-1 dv camcorder (dunno what's good for that)
-Several external hdds, preferably 1TB each
-A tape cleaner to clean them before playing them in the s-vhs player so that you would have optimal results & no damages on the device/heads. your tapes are "old" according to you

Don't seem too pricy to me


project :700 tapes
2 tapes per day basis (one before going to work one after he work hehe) x 365 days = 730 tapes in 1 year i say that's feasible

So everything will be in external hdds tis way you can bring these whereever you need and you could BURN the best digitalized tapes onto dvds.

Don't forget the electricity bill into the equation hehe

[MorlockMan]

I've got most of the details hammered out, I think...

Some of the tapes are the only remaining copies of early camcorder footage from the northern native settlements.

[StuR]

Sounds like you think - and they probably do - have historical significance so I can understand the bias towards lower compression such as DV or HDD archiving.

[vhelp]

Hi. I'll try and be brief about this cause I have so many projects
going on at once, at the moment.

This is a project that goes beyond several orders of magnitude.
Roughly 700 vhs tapes to process into (presumably) dvd's. This
assumes that no advances features such as Menu's, etc., for
this huge project.

Here's some rough numbers I quickly punched into the calculator.
The calculated project size is based on the source medium to be
DV format. A one hour video source in DV .avi would be aprox
13.5 gig in size. The numbers below assume an even 13 gig.
Also, this assumes that the going rate of HDD unit sizes are,
for 1 terrabyte (Tb) per hdd unit.., for 2 Tb's would be 2 hdd
units, and so on.. .. .. and as far as price goes for each hdd,
well, I'm not up-to-date on the pricing for this size type.

Assuming all videos are 1 hour in length and SP playback:
--> (700 * 13 gig_avi's) = 9.1 Tb (terrabytes) or 10 Tb HDD's.

Assuming all videos are 2 hours in length and SP playback:
--> ((700*2) * 13 gig_avi's) = 18.2 Tb (terrabytes) or 19 Tb HDD's.

Assuming 1/2 videos are 1 hour, and 1/2 videos are 2 hours in length
and SP playback:
--> (350 * 13 gig_avi's) = 4.6 Tb (terrabytes) or 5 Tb HDD's.
--> ((350*2) * 13 gig_avi's) = 9.1 Tb (terrabytes) or 10 Tb HDD's.
Total: 15 Tb HDD's

So, you would need aprox 10 Tb HDD's (hard disk drive units)

Now, you could lower that significantly by going the hardware MPEG
capture route, but then you have the possibility with editing them
(of this magnitude) if you find you have to do these things, and
this requires a bit more work to "prepare" the captured mpeg's for
(psuedo avi) frameserving, etc. This would mean a slower job because
the mpeg's have to "decoded" first, into actual video source frames.

(the compression is designed such, that within a group of pictures
(GOP) you have -partial- pictures spanning across these pictuers,
and the decoder has decode each GOP and bring all these -partial-
pictures together as one pictire or frame -- this is slow'er pro-
cess, and the reason why its better go with something more faster,
like raw uncompressed avi or DV avi, to name a few popular formats)

Q: It might help us to help you if you (further) if you mention the
following additional details ??

** describe the videos on these VHS tapes
** what are the conditions of each tapes
** what are the contents of the videos.. ie, all Interlace or Telecine, etc.
** BW (black/white) or Color
** and, any or combination of all the above
** age of the video (vhs) tapes
** age of the actual video contents recorded
** how were they recorded, and by what means, recorded to tape
** recorded video speed (determines quality) SP vs. EP mode
** do you know the equipment/brand/model used to record these tapes
** last, do you happen to know the peson's name who recorded these

Note, if you have already decided to go the DV route, I would suggest
*against* the dv cam route. Its just not a practicle way of going
about such a vast project. Carying around a dv cam for capturing is
not profesisnal'like (if that makes any sense) although you can do so
peronally, its not practicle from a professional point of view.
Besides, it looks better when these things all come together and look-
ing like a capture studio or something. I don't know. I'm just trying
to make sense out of nothing, I guess Anyway. Better for you to go
with a dedicated DV capture device. Yes. I would suggest the Canapus
line of these dv devices. There is the very popular ADVC-100/110/55 etc.

Encoding.. well, that's another story. At 700 pops, you gotta lot'ov
hours/days/weeks/months/years ahead of you. My suggestion in this
regards, is to go straight with a CBR and high bitrate encode, and do
skip VBR, particulary, 2-pass type VBR, because 700 tapes is just go-
ing to double/quadrople your processing time. And this assume that
you will not being incorporating any form of (software) filtering, as
used in cleaning up video captured from vhs mediums, which is almost
always a part of this type of project. Thus, if you go the CBR route,
(and high bitrate.. ie, I like to use 9000 bitrate) you may get by
without needing any filtering applications.

The after-math of the capturing and archiving the captured sources avi's.
My suggestion would be to keep the original dv avi files as-is, with
NO filtering of any sort done to them. You would keep these as the raw
source. This means keeping the overscan junk, as well as the
resolution, and no filtering. This way, should a later
re-processing be necessary or a better processing come available, etc.,
then you can use the orginal (raw) archved/saved video for this.

-vhelp 4430

[2Bdecided]

DV tapes are very cheap at the moment. (£1 per hour in the UK - cheaper than HDD space). Probably because they're about to become obsolete.

The obvious answer is to keep a copy on DV tape, and a copy on HDD. This takes no more time since you can record to the tape and HDD at the same time.

If you're not putting anything on to tape, then I hope the institution understands the rigorous procedures required to preserve digital data. Just putting HDDs (even multiple copies) in a vault and leaving them there for a decade or so is about as good for their survival as unspooling the original tapes and using them to tie up your Christmas presents!

Someone clearly thinks this content is important. It sounds like it's such poor quality that no one will ever make use of it, but anyway...

1. Keep the originals safe. They do not become disposable after the digital copies have been made.
2. Get a good deck, good TBCs, but understand that some tapes will work better with the line or frame TBC switched off.
3. Record 3 copies simultaneously. I'd suggest raw (un processed) to DV and AVI, and "cleaned" straight to DVD-R.
4. Rip and edit the DVD-Rs using VideoReDo or Womble video wizzard. Add chapters, standard template menu. Burn the result back to DVD-R and save to VOBs on HDD too.

That's it. You have DVD-Rs for use, archived versions of them, and raw footage for anyone who wants to to play around with in the future.

There's no point burning raw (unprocessed / cleaned) footage to DVD-R - the MPEG-2 encoding will make it useless.

There's some point recording the cleaned version to AVI - but none of the processors you've mentioned even puts the chroma back in the right place (VHS shifts it down by 1 line per field per generation), so better (but slower) results can be had from dedicated software. Whether that software is still around when someone comes to play with this stuff remains to be seen. As long as whatever you've done makes it better, rather than worse (are you an expert? Do you even know what to look for? If not, definately archive the raw version), then it might make a good starting point.

Cheers,
David.