Advice on VHS capturing tools

[MrTemplar]

Hi,

I want to digitalize old VHS cassettes (PAL/europe). I've already tried a video grabber device from Plexgear which after some fiddling worked out OK, although I wasn't completely satisfied with the output. So, I would like to know which way to go from here.

I've read about tbc's, vhs/dvd combos, internal and external video capture cards etc, but to be honest, I'm feeling overwhelmed when browsing the Internet in search for information as there seem to be as many opinions as there are solutions.

Therefor any simplified and straight forward advice would be highly appreciated.

Here are a few questions:

1. Will the means of capturing (dvd/vhs combo vs. video grabber card etc) affect the output quality, i.e. are there good and bad ways?

2. Can a dedicated onboard or external video card help me overcome or minimise jitter, degenerated picture quality after capturing, and if so which one should I get?

3. Should I replace my old vcr's (I've got one vhs player (Nesco) from around 1988 and a 2nd (LG) from 1998 (offering only (euro)scart output)?

4. How would either of Canopus ADVC-55, ADVC-300 or the TBC-1000 help? They seem rather pricey...

5. Which software should I pick? I've tried Movie Maker and Premiere Elements 8.0 (trial) briefly, and I know there are other applications as well, but I can't decide which one would suit my needs most since I'm a novice.


Thanks in advance,

Anders

[Alex_ander]

An internal TV card (like Beholder etc.) can be an inexpensive and reliable (compared to e.g. video cards with VIVO option) solution. Probably that's due to effective AGC system such cards have for normalizing TV signal level, the same thing is important for old VHS. As for software, I prefer iuVCR + HuffYUV codec.

[jagabo]

The single most important piece of equipment would be an s-vhs deck with a line time base corrector. You can seem some examples in these threads:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/230650-Confused-Why-a-VCR-with-TBC-if-separate-TBC-needed-anyway
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/232830-Test-of-various-VCRs-Image-Quality-from-VHS-...%28Big-Pics%29
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/306272-Computer-video-capture-vs-vcr-to-dvd-combo?p...=1#post1882662

That will clean up the TBC errors that cause horizontal jitter and "flagging" (horizontal distortion, usually at the top of the frame). This jitter can't really be fixed with software. If you are going to DVD or any other high compression format this random motion between frames eats up bitrate.

After that, if your tapes are in poor condition, you need a full frame TBC to provide a continuous clean signal even when the signal on the tape drops out (damaged tapes, badly misaligned recording device, noise between shots, etc.). This helps prevent audio/video sync errors. And some capture devices will simply stop capturing when the signal drops out.

An analog processing amp can help get the levels and colors right (maybe sharpen the picture a bit) before the video is captured. While the video is analog there are infinite steps between black and white. Once digitized there are usually only 256 steps (8 bit precision) between black and white so you are more likely to get posterization artifacts if you use software filtering to fix levels and colors after capture. Better capture cards perform the initial A/D conversion with more than 8 bit precision and have built in proc amps so you can adjust levels before the video is saved with 8 bit precision. This gets around the posterization problems (especially with noisy VHS) but some people like to sit there and ride the pots, fine tuning the video for each shot, while capturing. I don't know of any capture programs that let you do this, but it's possible with some devices to use a separate program (GraphEdit) to do this while the main program is capturing.

Last is the capture device. If you want the best possible data for further filtering you need a capture device that outputs uncompressed YUY2 (or other YUV 4:2:2 format) video. Then you need to save that with no compression, or lossless compression. That will give you very large (30 to 70 GB/hr) masters from which you proceed with your filtering and final compression. Second best, and nearly indistinguishable from that (with VHS and proper processing), are DV capture devices like the Canopus boxes/cards (13 GB/hr). Another benefit of DV is that most editing programs work very well with it. You can also archive onto DV tapes (without any losses) if you have the equipment.

Most people don't want to spend US$1000 on used (much of it isn't made anymore) equipment to do this. And don't want to spend all the time learning how to use the devices, capturing, filtering, and editing. A fair compromise (if your levels and colors don't need correction) is to use a DVD recorder with a built in line TBC and frame sync to record from whatever VHS deck you have. As long as you stick to 1 hour per DVD (2 hours with some) the video will look ok.

[MrTemplar]

An internal TV card (like Beholder etc.) can be an inexpensive and reliable (compared to e.g. video cards with VIVO option) solution. Probably that's due to effective AGC system such cards have for normalizing TV signal level, the same thing is important for old VHS. As for software, I prefer iuVCR + HuffYUV codec.

Thanks for the reply,

Pardon my less than modest insight here, but is Beholder name on the manufacturer or is it a product line?

Shall I look for VIVO feature when searching for a dedicated video card for capturing analog video?

iuVCR seems interesting. Beside the capturing capability does it (or any related codecs) offer editing tools?

I ask this because I've tried Premiere Elements 8.0 on trial, and what I want from the software is to be able to clean the picture and perhaps do some cutting etc. Would you say that Premiere Elements is a bit of an overkill for these purposes?

[MrTemplar]

The single most important piece of equipment would be an s-vhs deck with a line time base corrector. You can seem some examples in these threads:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/230650-Confused-Why-a-VCR-with-TBC-if-separate-TBC-needed-anyway
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/232830-Test-of-various-VCRs-Image-Quality-from-VHS-...%28Big-Pics%29
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/306272-Computer-video-capture-vs-vcr-to-dvd-combo?p...=1#post1882662

That will clean up the TBC errors that cause horizontal jitter and "flagging" (horizontal distortion, usually at the top of the frame). This jitter can't really be fixed with software. If you are going to DVD or any other high compression format this random motion between frames eats up bitrate.

After that, if your tapes are in poor condition, you need a full frame TBC to provide a continuous clean signal even when the signal on the tape drops out (damaged tapes, badly misaligned recording device, noise between shots, etc.). This helps prevent audio/video sync errors. And some capture devices will simply stop capturing when the signal drops out.

An analog processing amp can help get the levels and colors right (maybe sharpen the picture a bit) before the video is captured. While the video is analog there are infinite steps between black and white. Once digitized there are usually only 256 steps (8 bit precision) between black and white so you are more likely to get posterization artifacts if you use software filtering to fix levels and colors after capture. Better capture cards perform the initial A/D conversion with more than 8 bit precision and have built in proc amps so you can adjust levels before the video is saved with 8 bit precision. This gets around the posterization problems (especially with noisy VHS) but some people like to sit there and ride the pots, fine tuning the video for each shot, while capturing. I don't know of any capture programs that let you do this, but it's possible with some devices to use a separate program (GraphEdit) to do this while the main program is capturing.

Last is the capture device. If you want the best possible data for further filtering you need a capture device that outputs uncompressed YUY2 (or other YUV 4:2:2 format) video. Then you need to save that with no compression, or lossless compression. That will give you very large (30 to 70 GB/hr) masters from which you proceed with your filtering and final compression. Second best, and nearly indistinguishable from that (with VHS and proper processing), are DV capture devices like the Canopus boxes/cards (13 GB/hr). Another benefit of DV is that most editing programs work very well with it. You can also archive onto DV tapes (without any losses) if you have the equipment.

Most people don't want to spend US$1000 on used (much of it isn't made anymore) equipment to do this. And don't want to spend all the time learning how to use the devices, capturing, filtering, and editing. A fair compromise (if your levels and colors don't need correction) is to use a DVD recorder with a built in line TBC and frame sync to record from whatever VHS deck you have. As long as you stick to 1 hour per DVD (2 hours with some) the video will look ok.

Thanks for the extensive answer - and sorry for the late reply,

Can you give me examples of external TBC devices (affordable) and capture cards (with proc amp) and capture devices that offers "uncompressed YUY2 (or other YUV 4:2:2 format) video"?

For a novice as myself it is rather time consuming and difficult to look for and to find TBC's and video cards with necessary features so if you've got hands-on suggestions of good products it would really help.

Thanks in advance!

[Alex_ander]

is Beholder name on the manufacturer or is it a product line?

Beholder International Ltd. is a Taiwan based company currently active in my region. Their TV tuner line is named 'Behold TV'. The tuners (as usual, with VHS input) are based on Philips 7135 video capture chip.

Shall I look for VIVO feature when searching for a dedicated video card for capturing analog video?

I only mentioned it as an existing option in some display cards. When assembling my first PC I thought it would solve video capture problems as well and bought an ATI VIVO card. In practice it only worked well for capture from direct broadcasts and was not as stable with VHS cassettes. Installation of TV tuner completely solved the problem.

iuVCR doesn't offer editing. It is known to be good at keeping video/audio in synch and shows low frame dropping values. I can't compare it with Premiere Elements (I don't use it).

[MrTemplar]

is Beholder name on the manufacturer or is it a product line?

Beholder International Ltd. is a Taiwan based company currently active in my region. Their TV tuner line is named 'Behold TV'. The tuners (as usual, with VHS input) are based on Philips 7135 video capture chip.

Shall I look for VIVO feature when searching for a dedicated video card for capturing analog video?

I only mentioned it as an existing option in some display cards. When assembling my first PC I thought it would solve video capture problems as well and bought an ATI VIVO card. In practice it only worked well for capture from direct broadcasts and was not as stable with VHS cassettes. Installation of TV tuner completely solved the problem.

iuVCR doesn't offer editing. It is known to be good at keeping video/audio in synch and shows low frame dropping values. I can't compare it with Premiere Elements (I don't use it).

I use a Swedish price comparison web site to look for TV cards and I don't know what search options (features) to check, for instance "Composite in/out", "S-video in". Any ideas?

Cheers!

[Alex_ander]

Unless you own some hi-end VCR with S-video (S stands for Separate luminance/chroma video signals, 4-pin mini-DIN connector), you want it with 'Composite in' for connection from VCR's output.

[jagabo]

When using composite inputs you want a capture device with a 3d comb filter. ATI 650 based devices are good for that. Not many others have a 3d comb filter. Example:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/313735-Capture-card-for-Laserdisc-and-VHS-Good-card...=1#post1940519

I'm not an expert on standalone TBCs but the Datavideo TBC-1000 and TBC-3000 get mentioned a lot around here. They aren't cheap. You should also consider a used Panasonic ES-15 DVD recorder. It has a line TBC and frame sync that are active in pass-through mode (ie, you don't have to record, just pass the s-video or composite signal through the machine). If you want to record VHS onto DVD with the ES-15 you should probably stick with the 1-hour mode. You can find used ones for about US$50.