VHS to DVD .... please HELP!

[nameless1]

Hello 2 all,

I don't know if I posted this thread in the right place as I am new here. If I posted wrong, please (admin) move it were it belongs.

I've got some questions for the professionals and for the people that have experience in this kind of stuff.
So here it goes:

I want to transfer VHS tapes to DVD.

1. What's the best/one of the best (by best I mean to achieve the best quality) hardware/equipment to do that ?

From what I've searched on the internet there are a couple of ways to do it:

a. VHS/DVD recorder combo
From what I've red this is the easiest way to do it. But some of the people that used it complained about the quality of the DVDs.However, I know that some people expect their converted DVDs to be HD-like quality, so I don't know if the ones that gave bad reviews complained about something serious or about something that is imposible to achieve in the first place.
Also others complained that their VHS/DVD recorders didn't have TBC, so their DVDs had poor quality.

b. VHS player -> TBC -> DVD Recorder
I've red that hooking up your VHS player directly to your DVD recorder won't create good quality DVDs, but if you put a time base corrector between them, you will get good results.

c. VHS player -> Camcorder -> DVD Recorder / PC
Another option i found would be to connect your VHS player to your camcorder and your camcorder to your PC or DVD recorder.

d. VHS player -> Capture Card -> PC
And the last option that I've found would be to connect your VHS player to your PC.However here are two options:
d.1. capture card that you put in your desktop
d.2. USB DVD recorder (for example Dazzle, Roxio etc.)

If there are better ways to transfer VHS to DVD please tell me. If not which of these will give the best quality end result. PLEASE select them from best to worst, for example : In my opinion C A B D1 D2 ; C being the best quality end result and D2 being worst than the others.

2. From what I've searched on the internet one of the best way would be to buy a good capture card, connect your vhs player to your PC and then edit(improve) your video with some good software and then burn it to a DVD. However this takes a lot of time in comparison with popping in a VHS and a blank DVD in your VHS/DVD recorder.
Will the quality of the video between those 2 be noticeable by the normal everyday user ? Or will the differences be noticed only by a pro ? Because i saw a couple of VHS/DVD recorders (I don't know if they have TBC or not) that have very many positive reviews.

I have almost no experience in this field so please try to explain it to me as you would to a child

Thanks in advance!

[jman98]

You understand more than I would expect any newbie to, so kudos for that. However, if you want help from others, I have some additional questions you haven't answered.

1) Exactly how many tapes do you have to do? If it's a small number it can actually be cheaper to pay professionals to do this for you.
2) Be honest - are you REALLY willing to spend many hours, weeks and maybe months learning how to do this correctly? Or are you really looking for something like "What's the best quality I can get as quickly and with as little hard work as possible?".
3) Exactly how picky are you? VHS tapes are fairly poor quality to begin with. You cannot expect BluRay clarity from VHS tapes. Hell, I think you can't even expect DVD clarity from them in many cases. Also, if you are never satisfied then don't even start this. You really do yourself no favors in my opinion if you start getting to that crazy place where you are spending weeks working on tapes just to get 1-2% improvement in quality over a quicker workflow that just gets them done.

If you really care about quality, d is your best choice, but it requires the most work from you after the capture to edit/filter your captures.

[jagabo]

e. S-VHS deck with line TBC -> Full frame TBC -> PC Capture device with lossless compression

Then spend many hours filtering your captures.

[nameless1]

First of all thanks for the quick reply!

1. Personally i have like 10, but after I told my family/friends I ended up with a whole box (30-40)..... for now....but there may be more coming

2. Honestly at the beginning I wanted something to do it GOOD and FAST. After I've red a couple of forums about it, I realized that "best quality" and "fast" can't be used in the same sentence.
I would be willing to spend more time to convert the VHS tapes, but also wanted to know if the extra time I would spend at PC will be noticed in the video quality.
I mean after I edit the video on a PC will the quality be 40% better than the quality of the DVD from the VHS/DVD recorder ? Or will the PC editing just improve it by like 10%-20% ? Because I really wouldn't waste a couple of hours for a 10% improvement.

3. I'm not picky at all. Actually I'm very realistic. I really don't understand the people that are disappointed about the DVD / VHS-DVD recorders when they see that the end DVD isn't HD quality. I mean how can you get better quality from a video than the original quality in which it was made ? I mean it's impossible right ?
If I get the same VHS quality copied to a DVD I'm MORE than happy.

[redwudz]

I had about 200 VHS tapes of my own a few months ago to convert. Most were old TV type recording, many at low speed with three videos on each tape. A few were just trash. I didn't have a properly working VHS deck. The two I did have had spent a few too many years in storage. So I took a gamble and bought one off Ebay. It turned out to be a mono deck, but that was OK for my purposes. I didn't want to invest in a TBC or a SVHS deck.

I had a converter box/capture card (DVDExpress DX2) that captured directly to MPEG. Since I mostly use MKV format, I then batch converted the files to that format. MKV/H.264 softens the image a bit and the resultant files were decent. Not much difference from the VHS originals. Since they were for PC playback, I cropped the bottom edge noise during conversion. Some of my tapes had Macrovision and if any of your tapes are commercial ones, you have to take that into account.

Sorry about the long post, but my point is that sometimes you can get lucky without a TBC or SVHS deck and still get decent results. I would try that first.

If you plan to try to convert tapes from various other VHS decks, good luck. In my experience home decks can vary widely in settings and quality and you may have difficulty with some with whatever deck you use for playback.

Most editing would include filtering and re-encoding. That may improve the video visually, but reduce the quality at the same time. I opted to only use the H.264 filter for filtering.

If you want to do extensive filtering, then you might want to capture in a lossless or near lossless format. HuffyUV or Lagarith are a couple. For hardware near lossless formats, maybe DV. I have a DV conversion box (ADVC 100) that produces a format that is easy to filter and edit, but creates files of about 13GB an hour. The two lossless formats I mentions produce very much larger files, so you need lots of hard drive space. And a fairly fast computer.

And welcome to our forums.

[nameless1]

Sorry about the long post, but my point is that sometimes you can get lucky without a TBC or SVHS deck and still get decent results. I would try that first.

No problem. The longer the post = more explanation = me happier

1. If I buy a VHS/DVD recorder combo for the VHS tapes playback to the capture card, will it be the same as if I buy a VHS player ? I mean will the quality of the playback be the same ? For the sake of this discussion, let's say their both brand new.

2. I've noticed that Panasonic (both DVD recorders and VHS/DVD recorders) are more expensive than the other brands + they a lot of models.
Is Panasonic a little bit better than the other brands when it comes to this kind of stuff ? Or are the others the same (good) ?
What brands do you suggest ?

Thank you!

[smartel]

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/286055-VCR-buying-guide-(S-VHS-D-VHS-Professional

[sanlyn]

I would avoid looking for models listed in that lead article, which has not been updated for quite a whiule. Not that it's innacurate, but searching for one of the recommended VCR's that actually is in good owrking order is going be an exhausting effort at this point in time. Most ost of the JVC's listed don't track old/damaged tapes that well, and few if any of them are still alive and well.

If you haven't heard of Panasonic's product line, I don't know where you've been spending your time for the past 30 years. Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and AWIA have also marketed very good players and recorders over the years. You might search the forum for the many posts by username orsetto, who appears to have used or looked into every VCR made for a number of years and offers excellent info and detail about many players from the big-name makers.

DVD recorders: Panasonic and Toshiba made probably the better of DVD recorders between 2000 and 2005, with some goodies popping up now and then from other makers. Anything made brand-new today, or introduced during the past 5 years, would be inferior to DVD-R's of the past. Today's new models are not "made" by the company whose name is on the label. It's all outsourced to one or two manufacturers who make very much the same units with different labels on the front.