Seeking advice for digitalizating VHS tapes

[Tomi Avikainen]

Hello all!
Im in need of help on how to do this, what programs to use and how to get most out of my equipment. My "gear" is VHS recorder with scart to hdmi cable, connected to Avermedia live gamer HD 2. Here is a short video of what i got so far using OBS. Any help would be valuable.

[DB83]

I will probably come over as being uncharitable but to be blunt you have the wrong equipment for this task - I guess you acquired it for game capture which is a totally different beast.

Consider what you end up with.


Your VHS source, which initially would have been interlaced and should be captured at 25 fps (for PAL) has now been internally converted to 50 fps progressive. Aspect Ratio, which should have been 720*576 4:3 is now 1280*720 16:9. So all people are fatter than they should be (there is no 16:9 in VHS) and the upscaling has softened the image.


I do not know anything about this capture device so you can check its manual to see if these issues can be corrected. But there is another problem here.........


OBS is NOT an appropiate capture software for VHS. If the other things are changeable then try AmarecTV or Vdub


But if you have a lot of VHS to capture then you might be better off getting a usb capture device for this work.

[Alwyn]

Aspect Ratio, which should have been 720*576 4:3 is now 1280*720 16:9. So all people are fatter than they should be

I'm not convinced that this should be 4:3. The 4:3 version looks elongated vertically to me. With no head-switching noise, there appears to be some cropping going on.

[cholla]

Aspect Ratio, which should have been 720*576 4:3 is now 1280*720 16:9. So all people are fatter than they should be

I'm not convinced that this should be 4:3. The 4:3 version looks elongated vertically to me. With no head-switching noise, there appears to be some cropping going on.

That is probably because VHS was ripped using the wrong equipment.
So both the conversion to 16:9 & 4:3 were done incorrectly.

The best results I ever got going from VHS to DVD were done this way.

A S VHS player/recorder (I no longer have this unit as it finally failed).
A standard VHS player will work.
Use a S-Video cable to a Dimax Grex then a S-Video cable from the Dimax Grex to a DVD recorder.
Record a DVD & then rip the DVD to a computer if you need to.

So you know a Dimax Grex removes the VHS Macrovision.

[rgr]

Hello all!
Im in need of help on how to do this, what programs to use and how to get most out of my equipment. My "gear" is VHS recorder with scart to hdmi cable, connected to Avermedia live gamer HD 2. Here is a short video of what i got so far using OBS. Any help would be valuable.

It looks rather bad.
1) Bad aspect ratio (should be 4:3, not 16:9). But the characters look OK, so you probably have the top and bottom of the picture cut off.
2) It makes no sense to digitize in 1280x720 - it should be 720x576. Probably the hardware won't digitize the interlace so it should be 576p.
3) I recommend VirtualDub for ripping.

Use a DVD-Recorder and you will get much better results.
And don't use $5-10USD cable converters...