Any tips on capturing VHS with a Black Magic Shuttle?

[oln]

The built-in deinterlacing in a 10+-year old DVD-Recorder isn't going to be as good as e.g QTGMC. I would second dellsam34's thoughts. You can however capture interlaced throught component with maybe marginally less signal degradation than with S-Video, or from HDMI if you have a HDMI splitter that can evade HDCP.

There is a noise reduction (AV-IN NR) setting that's usually by default on panasonic's dvd-recorders. I think you can get to it with the "display" button on the remote if you would rather leave it off.

If you want to compress your un compresed files without adding any effects or edits, there's (a paid) converter, both for Mac and Microsoft available, called UniConverter

I would highly recommend against using this software (and giving them any money). It's mediocre shovelware that violate open source licenses (it's a ffmpeg front-end) and the company that sells it spams forums and search engines.

If you just want something that can convert, handbrake is free.

[Eric-jan]

Yes, some people report succes with a splitter "use" to evade HDCP, but only certain splitters are able to this, most of the time it's a "audio extractor" called (mini) HDMI2HDMI (it has a white housing)
UniConverter is not violating, it's from Wondershare, it's highly recomended by other sites, (you should not spread any fake information). i use it on both my Mac's (Sierra/Catalina) it's fast and does not give any errors with me, Handbrake does give errors with me, or the result is not playable on my hardware media player(s) i'm not that well techical underlaid, and in UniConverter you get clear options, and i have not got any problems on my hardware players.

[dellsam34]

btw. FIY: there isn't any capture device that will stabilize the video signal.

There is, you just don't know about them or tested them.

[dellsam34]

Only if you still watch your video on a CRT tv you should leave it in interlaced, most people watch now in progressive, on LCD/TFT/OLED/QLED, etc, like i said, you can try it for yourself, and see what you like, that's the whole thing with this, practice before assuming some one else's "theory".

That's just blatantly false, I've seen the after math of hardware de-interlacing, Horrible on flat panels.

[Neil-Betamax]

From the blackmagic, uncompressed or prores files at native resolution into an editor.

Generally for vhs capture, a commonly used final output resolution is 720x480.
Obviously, if you're capturing at a higher resolution, you'd retain that during the editing, then compare a 720x480 render vs native capture resolution to see if there's detail loss you don't desire, and choose output resolution based on that.

People say analog vhs/beta generally has no more detail than about 720x480, but your eyes can verify.

...

For maximum capability, h.264 mp4 files.
https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/HEVC-AV1-VVC-How-t...tors_selection

H.265 is newer, doesn't play on all media devices (will play fine on pc), but gives you better encodes at the same bitrate as h.264.

The only future codec to think about is mp5 (vvc).
https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Inside-MPEGs-Ambit...tors_selection
But it's not even out yet.

...

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Hardware-Based-Tra...aspx?pageNum=2

In the past, you'd have to sit through long cpu encodes, but with today's nvidia/Intel gpu accelerated encodes, you can have very good, fast encodes.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/cloud-comput...hite-paper.pdf
Coupled with h.265, you can get great gpu encodes in minutes vs the old days of sitting hours for cpu h.264 encodes.

....

As for what you do more than what you're doing now, depends on what you're trying to do.

Simply cuts and edits?
Titles?
Color correction and grading?
Stabilization?
Deinterlacing?
Etc etc.

Thanks BabygDav,

The software I use for capturing (Media Express) automatically defaulted the input to 720, so thanks for that, I previously thought SD would be 640 x 480 but its good to know this res would be best/good for VHS. Its also exporting at h.264, so far it's looking correct and the output is accurate enough, if not perhaps near perfect.

Thanks for the links, I'll give that a more detailed look later, although if h.264 is good enough for this I think it'd be best I stick with that till more devices are capable of supporting the newer formats like mp5 & h.265. I only understand the surface of codecs, there's a lot to learn as I discover over time
Looks promising though if it's going to be a great improvement.

At this point, I'm wanting to establish a few processes so I can capture a large collection of betamax and VHS. So since the uncompressed files turned out well from capturing in Black Magic's Media Express software, I'm currently thinking of the best way to compress these files whilst retaining as much quality as possible. I'm not too interested in stabalization, colour correction/grading as it appears the image is good enough for purpose. At a later stage I might look into those elements but for now I'm looking at the best ways to compress the uncompressed mp4 files.

[dellsam34]

What do you mean by uncompressed mp4 files? You are capturing to a lossy compressed codec already (H.264).

[babygdav]

Blackmagic gives you free Media Express and Davinci Resolve.
You typically use Media Express to capture.
I'd assume if it can't convert after capture, simply open up the uncompressed captures in Davinci, do your edits, color correction, titles, etc, then export.

https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/DaVinci_Resolve_16_Reference_Manual...=1583481611000
Chapter 168,169.

It's powerful enough to do everything, support all the major codecs you'd ever want to export to ( h264/265 mp4 QuickTime, etc), supports hardware encoding for speed, easy queuing, even 10 bit h.264, etc.

Quick h.264 and h.265 mastering presets, which you can adjust as needed.

Absolutely no need to pay for an encoder.

.....

Bitrate is the most important factor.
If you use the camcorders/cameras/dvd as a guide, you see 720x480 being recorded at 5- 10~Mbps SD, so 10Mbps for mp4 should be the minimum for decent encodes. Just double that without thinking further for great encodes (ie far more than enough bits). (For hd, Sony is recording at 28Mbps, so double that to 50Mbps~ for great encodes.)

That's just a rough rule of thumb that works because starting from a good bitrate and doubling is certain to give you great.

....

Interlacing. Davinci automatically detects and deinterlaces - see ch 168,169, so it should be decent. Test and see on a clip of fast moving scene/people.

...

Resolution.
Only for curiosity.
The shuttle can upres to hd on capture. Not sure if it's pulling the analog signal up directly, or capturing sd then upscaling.
If you're the picky type, you could do a quick a/b test on a clip with fine text or details to see if you actually get more detail, then do future captures in hd mode.

...

10-bit.
You can capture uncompressed as such, encode to mp4 in 10-bit in davinci.
RED colors tend to show issues the quickest in mpeg compression. Fine gradiations of a red dress, red flowers, etc become all one color block. 10-bit helps maintain smother color gradiations, especially knowing that color is a continuous signal range in analog. (Ie. If you use 8 bit, 0-255 is your digital range. Maybe that red is actually a 239.464, but in 8-bit, it becomes 239.)

[babygdav]

What do you mean by uncompressed mp4 files? You are capturing to a lossy compressed codec already (H.264).

I think that's a typo.
He's capturing direct to uncompressed raw video, then trying to figure out the best way to encode to mp4, etc. after any desired post-processing, effects, cropping, etc.

The shuttle can capture to mp4 directly, but live single pass mp4 encodes are never as good as multi-pass offline encodes.

Davinci Resolve would be my first pick since it's free, for sure opens the Shuttle raw videos, and the encoder can do just about everything.

[Eric-jan]

What do you mean by uncompressed mp4 files? You are capturing to a lossy compressed codec already (H.264).

The shuttle can capture to mp4 directly, but live single pass mp4 encodes are never as good as multi-pass offline encodes.

.

No. uncompressed or in 2 types of intra frame compression codecs: Prores422 (Apple) https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper.pdf or the Avid one.https://www.avid.com/products/avid-high-resolution-workflows

intra frame compression is something different than inter frame compression like h.264

[babygdav]

good eye.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/intensity/mediaexpress
" If you’re working on a Mac, Media Express supports ProRes which is compatible with software like Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and more. You can also use DVCPRO, MJPEG, DNxHD and more on both the Mac and Windows."

Skimmed too fast - though MJPEG was MPG. Who'd ever thought they'd still be using such an old format.

.....

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207249
Even more. Unless you have Apple Pro Video formats installed on your Mac, it won't even show the option for ProRes.

.....

One can still capture straight to MP4 however if using a 3rd party capture program that live encodes to MP4 and can see the Shuttle as video input device.

[babygdav]

[Attachment 52827 - Click to enlarge]

You can see the difference here between 8-bit regular MP4 encodes and 10-bit. The BB's shadow side - you can clearly see smoother color gradiation.

Anyways, you'll need a good monitor that supports true 8-12bit color display to see these differences clearly, otherwise, your monitor will make 10-bit look like the cheap 6-bit panel it is.

Clearly, it is ideal to encode to 10-bit if you have the ability and compatibility of the encodes work for you across media players.

You'll also notice that between H.264 and H.265 at the same bitrate, the lines on the surface of BB is much sharper and clearer due to the improved efficiency of H.265. This is much greater at low bitrates, but not so much at higher bitrates or auto (eg. Handbrake set to a certain CRF).

[Eric-jan]

Isn't DVCPRO one of the last digital tape formats ? (and sometimes still used ?) i recently saw it somewhere else mentioned, it is in the same row of intra frame codecs miniDV ProRes and Digital8 i thought,
i have no idea if DVCPRO is also used as a codec in files, i like the use of ProRes422 LT for me it's enough, otherwise you don't stop trying to get it even better, one has to be satisfied at a certain point, i try to balance the amount of compression in a "border area" of image quality and strenght of compression, also with special attention at scene's where there's a lot of fast movement, i recently also learned the use of proxy files in Davinci Resolve, how to set that it up, it is not that hard to do, and works perfect.
One keeps learning all the time, it never stops.

[babygdav]

Dvcpro hd, d5, hdcam sr - the few pro tape formats still around.
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#DVformats


For a Mac, prores never fails - Apple is built around it.

[Neil-Betamax]

What do you mean by uncompressed mp4 files? You are capturing to a lossy compressed codec already (H.264).

When I first capture the VHS video in black magic's media express, it outputs the initial file in mp4 format, as a huge sized uncompressed file (if I'm right, altho maybe it is compressed in some way?).

I think part of my confusion might be that I assumed media express is exporting an uncompressed file since the file size is so large (about 40G for 20 minutes).

[Neil-Betamax]

@Neil-Betamax you're in luck ! your DVD recorder (DMR-EX79) has also a component video output (the red green blue RCA's at the back) which you can connect to the Intensity Shuttle, This connection is meant for an analog input of a LCD tv/monitor, you can also set this connection to progressive in the system menu of the DMR-EX79, capturing this way saves you to de-interlace in post, you can try this, and see if .

Thanks for this info Eric,

Very helpful to know this, & yes, I'll be watching these videos back in progressive so if there's a way to de-interlace it on original output, it might improve the quality. Great to know this DVD Recorder has these functions. At present I'm just so happy to be able to get a smooth enough signal to capture anything at all, the image doesn't look too bad but the more I can improve it the better.

I really appreciate your thoughts on this. I'm making notes as a go along since there's so much to learn (as you say, the learning never stops!) and I'd like to try out a lot of these methods as & when I'm able to work on it, as there's a lot to take in.

But the next step, I'll give that a shot using component out & de-interlaced selection from the DVD rec. I have handbrake, although the paid one could be an option because although I've learnt enough so far, I'm not an expert, but getting to understand what's needed to get a nice enough result.

I'll have to get back to this thread again soon once I'm able to try out some of these methods, but so far it's looking really great and there's some really amazing techniques mentioned here by everyone which I can have a play with.

[Eric-jan]

What do you mean by uncompressed mp4 files? You are capturing to a lossy compressed codec already (H.264).

When I first capture the VHS video in black magic's media express, it outputs the initial file in mp4 format, as a huge sized uncompressed file (if I'm right, altho maybe it is compressed in some way?).

I think part of my confusion might be that I assumed media express is exporting an uncompressed file since the file size is so large (about 40G for 20 minutes).

In Media Express you have the choice to capture uncompressed, or compress in Apple ProRes422, or compress in Avid DNxHD codecs
both Apple and Avid leave you with big files, because of the intra-frame compression, uncompressed even much bigger files, after that, edit etc... you compress to h.264 where the inter-frame encoding makes it possible to shrink the file size even more, and to keep up when filming in UHD/4K there's h.265
you must be careful not mix things up,
remember that .MOV is a container file.... it's the extension you're seeing, it can hold uncompressed or compressed content, compressed comes like i said, in intra or inter frame encoding the compression of intra frame is only within one frame, and is made that way so you can edit the material, with minimal loss.

My experiences with Handbrake are not that great, maybe people who are more experienced, will love it, but when i used it, i made mistakes in setting certain values and the result wasn't playable, and i did not understand why, that's why i like software that has profiles, or presets that are clear to understand, and this way i have fast results, this will raise some questions with the "pro's" but i do not have their expertise and they hate when i say: "it works for me" so i don't care about that, and i'm happy with the result, i like also to try out different things, sometimes to improve, or sometimes for an easier work-flow, i now got my eyes opened up about the DV format, which i've been told of as a bad format, but really isn't. (thank you babygdav!)



It's true, de-interlacing is a compensation, you will not be able to do a perfect job with some of your captures, because the 2 fields in 1 frame can be very different, so there isn't a perfect solution, but only to do your best, that's why things are digital now

(I'm on MAC OS with 2 MBP's which is on 32bit OS and 64bit OS, but with Microsoft there are also tools that have no 64bit versions i guess,
Most of my life i used Microsoft pc/laptops but now i think the MAC OS is far better in many ways, yes, the hardware is expensive, you should not buy recent macs,
only 2ndhands from 2013 - 2015 period)

[lordsmurf]

This is yet another thread where the OP is being led astray by both false and mushed-up information.

This won't end well.

The main issue here is that Blackmagic cards capturing VHS very poorly. Nothing will change this. Wrong tool for the task. A capture card with consumer sources as the capture intention will be needed. Not an HD device with SD as a poor afterthough feature, and even then only with non-consumer/VHS sources in mind.

[Eric-jan]

This is yet another thread where the OP is being led astray by both false and mushed-up information.

This won't end well.

The main issue here is that Blackmagic cards capturing VHS very poorly. Nothing will change this. Wrong tool for the task. A capture card with consumer sources as the capture intention will be needed. Not an HD device with SD as a poor afterthough feature, and even then only with non-consumer/VHS sources in mind.

Again what i will say: there's nothing wrong with Blackmagic Design capture devices, more wrong is with the quality of analog VHS/video itself, for another capture device a TBC will also be needed, for any capture device, a good VCR, combo recorder, or DVD/HDD recorder, will be an realistic and good option, (as source or passthrough) against a expensive and hard to get (good) professional TBC.
When a consumer capture device is more forgiving with a VHS source, does not mean it's a better option, one needs to keep an open mind when other options get extinct.
I'm amazed by the different analog VCR/DVD equipment that was made, different options, and connections available, there's also some difference between NTSC and PAL equipment the PAL equipment did have the advantage of the SCART connection, that came with RGB for CRT tv's or aslo switchable to component YUV for beamers or LCD tv's, the ES10 can also play video output over YUV component i/p RCA's (red,green,blue RCA)