equipment for video restoration/archiving (umatic/vhs to dvd)

[mark23]

I work at a local community channel and I have taken on the project to archive old shows. Most of these are on Umatic, while some are on VHS. At the office we have regular pioneer dvd recorders with hard drives purchased from futureshop and a umatic player and vhs player. Was wondering if going through a pc via a canopus device or something would be better than just using a tbc and recording to the hard drive of the dvd recorder. Most of the shows we have are good quality, but just taking up a lot of space, however they have not been stored properly for some time. Would cleaning be available for umatic and vhs tapes? safe?

I would like the quickest way possible to archive, however mostly concerned with providing the best quality. Can an overall better quality be achieved by archiving to a pc or would it matter? Also, would there be degradation in going from umatic to DVD? We are using betaSP now and when we convert to dvd we notice quality differences using the pioneer decks even at XP quality.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Mark

[orsetto]

It is impossible to combine "speed" with "top quality": you will need to pick one as the priority and work the other into it as the best compromise you can manage. The professional BetaSP format is superb but cannot be captured in all its glory to DVD. The only way to preserve as much of the original quality as possible would be to capture as a DVI file to a PC. This would not give you a DVD, but it would give a pristine "library" file which can be "degraded" to DVD quality when a DVD actually needs to be made. Of course you would need to dedicate one (or several) external hard drives to storing these large files, and there would always need to be someone on staff who knows how to convert them to DVD as necessary, unless you make both a DVI file and a DVD of each program as you go along.

If you'd rather do this just once, and replace all the tapes with DVDs without the bother of making and storing DVI files, the quickest route is going direct to DVD recorders. Dub the tapes to the recorders hard drive, so you can perform simple edits and basic authoring and then make multiple high-speed copies to its DVD burner. You will absolutely see diminished quality from the original "pro" tape sources, but this is inherent to "prosumer" MPEG2 hardware. DVD is not a lossless format. Instead of the default 'SP' speed of two hours per disc, shorter programs (60 mins or less) can be recorded in the highest-quality XP 'speed' using your Pioneers, this uses up the entire disc space for an hour program and might look better. You will have to talk this over with your group and decide whether "good enough" will be sufficient for your archives. Going the PC capture route does allow a great deal of fine tuning and perfecting, whether your target file is DVI-AVI or MPEG2. If you have someone on staff who is truly expert with the necessary software and can devote the time to this project, you should be able to achieve exceptional results, but it isn't easy. The incredible results you see on commercially pressed Hollywood DVDs are due to incredibly expensive mastering which you may or may not want to bother with.

Videotape can withstand bad storage better than you might think. U-matic cassettes are pretty much completely sealed until loaded into the recorder, and VHS should not get too dirty if they are in sleeves. The tapes could be cleaned by a tape cleaning device but it is rarely necessary unless they were lent out repeatedly to other parties: I don't think you need to worry about cleaning them (wipe the dust off the shells, yes, clean the actual tape, probably not.)

When you make the DVDs, make two or preferably three copies of each program, on different brands of DVD. At minimum, use Taiyo Yuden (TY) 8x Premium Silver DVD-R and Verbatim DataLife, plus perhaps Sony or another DVD-R brand. This increases your chances of having a viable copy last over time, occasionally a burned disc which seems OK is actually borderline and will fail after a few months in storage. Speaking of storage burned DVDs need to kept in dark storage, like photographic slides.

[2Bdecided]

We are using betaSP now and when we convert to dvd we notice quality differences using the pioneer decks even at XP quality.

How are you copying them? BetaSP is a component format - even sending it via S-video compromises the quality. There are very few DVD recorders with component inputs. Gentle noise reduction and good MPEG-2 encoding will create a good DVD from BetaSP via component. Cheap real time MPEG-2 encoding may not.

As for Umatic and VHS - try with what you have. If the results disappoint, try something better. (!).

Cheers,
David.