Ideal Settings for Capturing Betamax with Media Express & DVD Rec?

[Neil-Betamax]

Hi,

I'm capturing Betamax & wondered if anyone could
notice any part of my process which could be improved before
I start to capture a huge box full of tapes.

I wonder if my capture settings in Media Express & my DVD Recorder
can be improved as my main focus, but anything else you notice would be great.

Media Express settings:

* 625i50 PAL
* AVI Motion Jpeg

DVD Recorder:

Display Settings

* Playback NR - off
* Progressive - On
* Transfer - Auto
* Input NR - off

Function Menu > others > setup

* Comb Filter - On
* Still Mode - Automatic
* Seamless Play - On

Function Menu > others > setup > Connection

* TV Aspect - 16:9
* Progressive - On
* TV System - PAL
* HDMI Settings (N/A? Just using HDMI output to monitor)

Hardware:

Sony SL-F1UB+TT-F1UB Betamax:
Panasonic DMR-EX79
Windows 10 thinkpad Intel i7 Core 8th Gen (USB 3)
Black Magic Shuttle

Video:
Betamax Composite video out > Into DVD Rec yellow RCA Input.

Audio:
Betamax Composite RCA Mono (Mono to L+R RCA lead) into mixer.
RCA out from mixer into L+R Audio input on DVD Rec.

Video output from DVD Rec:
S-Video out from DVD Rec > Into Black Magic Shuttle
RCA Audio out from DVD Rec > Into Black Magic Shuttle
Black Magic Shuttle > USB 3 on Laptop (Media Express)

+ HDMI Out from DVD Rec > TV Monitor


I'd be interested to know if I shloud set Transfer,
from 'auto' to either video or film. I'm also thinking that TV Aspect should be
4:3 but it tends to be giving a good result as it is.

It seems to give good enough results but if anything can be improved,
if something stands out it'd be great for your opinions. I tested various
short captures of different settings in media express.
624i50 PAL seemed to work well but I'd be curious to know if perhaps 625p60 PAL
would be better, or 720p50 as my capture format.
I'm unsure if Quicktime/AVI uncompressed 8 bit YUV or 10 Bit YUV would be overkill,
as far as I've tested AVI Motion JPEG has worked ok.
If there's a noticable difference it could be worth a go, but its nicer to work with smaller
file sizes unless I'd be gaining a lot more clarity.
(my aim is to get the best I possibly can with what I have available)

Any thoughts would be great. It can be pretty bamboozling the more you go through
the trial and error & different areas of testing files.

Thanks, Neil

[dellsam34]

Not sure about 16/9, progressive on, That will be a hot mess.

[Neil-Betamax]

It's seemed to be ok whilst I've had it set that way, with 16/9 - progressive on. I'm due to do some more tests but after switching progressive to off, it's tending to give similar good enough results.

Thanks for input as always dellsam34. I've had a full day of testing today but when I return to it tomorrow I'll see what results I get with it switched to 4:3.
I had a few panic moments as I thought my Betamax tracking had gone wild, turns out it was down to a few settings I changed which I've now set back to how I had it as above. It was quiet a panic though because whatever I changed gave the same effect you'd have with bad tracking. Phew!!
I'll come back to this & have a play with those two factors, thanks again for helping me get this far over the years.

[themaster1]

Motion jpeg is old school suboptimal. The 576p thing i'd forget it aswell, just do the capture right the first time and do like all serious cappers do for a SD source : 480/576i, lossless codec( huff, lagarith, UT) / yuy2 color space ( 4.2.2), pcm/ wav audio. There are good reasons for these even if you don't understand them fully. The gist of it is they retain high fidelity (~90 % ballpark) of the infos on the tapes.

[Neil-Betamax]

Motion jpeg is old school suboptimal. The 576p thing i'd forget it aswell, just do the capture right the first time and do like all serious cappers do for a SD source : 480/576i, lossless codec( huff, lagarith, UT) / yuy2 color space ( 4.2.2), pcm/ wav audio. There are good reasons for these even if you don't understand them fully. The gist of it is they retain high fidelity (~90 % ballpark) of the infos on the tapes.

Hi,

Thanks for the tips there. I'm just trying to make more sense of what you're saying there in terms of what options I have available.
What do you think the best Capture file format is from what I have available here in Media Express?

AVI 8-Bit YUV
AVI 10-Bit YUV
AVI 10-Bit RGB
AVI Motion JPEG
Quicktime Uncompressed 8-Bit YUV
Quicktime Uncompressed 10-Bit YUV
Quicktime Uncompressed 10-Bit RGB
Quicktime DVCPRO 50
DPX 10-Bit RGB

I have more options available when I tried capturing using my macbook, although I had a lot of audio sync issues with that machine.
This is what I have available on Windows 10 on media express.

The first time I had a good result with capturing was in virtualdub, I'm just not too sure if "480/576i lossless codec or huff, lagarith, UT) / yuy2 color space ( 4.2.2)" relates to any of the options I have available here.

I remember downloading HuffYUV in virtualdub a long time back whilst using the macbook. As I recall I think virtualdub is a little more coherant in terms of knowing what the software is doing, I'm wondering if media express simplifies settings a lot for people like myself who might not have as much indepth knowledge in capturing?

[oln]

The aspect/film/progressive settings only do anything for the component/hdmi outputs so if you are using s-video those are not relevant. They will matter if you want to go the route of capturing the HDMI output and avoid the extra analog->digital->analog step (this also avoids the 8px blanking on the left and right of the image at least on the 2 panasonics I have) though you will need a HDMI splitter to avoid HDCP if you go that route and it can be a bit finicky. (alternatively using component would also skip encoding the color from component to combined color and back and not need a splitter but not sure if the gain from that is worth the hassle, not really tested component output on the panasonics much so idk how ell it works).

Media express is very limited when it comes to codecs on windows annoyingly, on macos you can use prores which is near lossless and generally a good option but on windows you only have mjpeg and dv which introduces compression artifacts or uncompressed. If you have a fast drive you can capture in avi or quicktime uncompressed 8-bit YUV (not sure if 10-bit is worth it for VHS) and compress in post with virtualdub or similar. I think those are 4:2:2 so similar what you would get if using virtualdub in the past but you would have to check to be sure. It should be possible to use virtualdub or amarectv with the blackmagic cards though as well which would let you use a more practical codec.

[dellsam34]

Use AVI 8-Bit YUV.

[Neil-Betamax]

The aspect/film/progressive settings only do anything for the component/hdmi outputs so if you are using s-video those are not relevant. They will matter if you want to go the route of capturing the HDMI output and avoid the extra analog->digital->analog step (this also avoids the 8px blanking on the left and right of the image at least on the 2 panasonics I have) though you will need a HDMI splitter to avoid HDCP if you go that route and it can be a bit finicky. (alternatively using component would also skip encoding the color from component to combined color and back and not need a splitter but not sure if the gain from that is worth the hassle, not really tested component output on the panasonics much so idk how ell it works).

Media express is very limited when it comes to codecs on windows annoyingly, on macos you can use prores which is near lossless and generally a good option but on windows you only have mjpeg and dv which introduces compression artifacts or uncompressed. If you have a fast drive you can capture in avi or quicktime uncompressed 8-bit YUV (not sure if 10-bit is worth it for VHS) and compress in post with virtualdub or similar. I think those are 4:2:2 so similar what you would get if using virtualdub in the past but you would have to check to be sure. It should be possible to use virtualdub or amarectv with the blackmagic cards though as well which would let you use a more practical codec.

Thanks for clearing all of those settings up for me, that's been really helpful. & thanks for explaining how I could go about fixing the 8px blanking, since I'm getting close to the most ideal process with what I have, I think I'll stick to S-Video.

I've taken Delsam's suggestion of using AVI 8-bit YUV which is available in media express for my capture file format. I'm using an SSD on both machines so they are good enough for the job as it seems.

[Neil-Betamax]

Thanks again Delsam34. AVI 8bit YUV is turning out great, with 625i50 PAL on media express.

I'm very near to nailing down a process now.

My uncompressed files have audio sync issues, but I've discovered that when the Betamax tape goes blank for a moment (due to the tape having a blank part between recordings), this is the point of reference I have to tweak the audio.
It took a while, but I've corrected the Audio sync issue in davinci resolve by manually moving it into place. The end result will be a series of large uncompressed AVI 8-bit YUV files which I'll keep, although audio will be out of sync, but I can use these files to edit and then compress - once I've nailed the best compression type.

At present I'm testing various compressed file types with what I have available on Mac and the Windows Machine in davinci resolve.
So far the best I've noticed was MP4 exported in ProRes on the Macbook as MP4 - H.264 720x576 PAL at 4:3 SD.
Tomorrow I'll try a few more formats till I reach the best compression possible.
I noticed that MKV isn't available on the mac, but since 10-bit YUV is the only option available to export with as an AVI, I'm probably better exporting to either MP4 or MKV on windows.