Capture Software from AV Source?

[therock003]

I just received my Reflecta AV Capture device today and i tried variou software to capture the feed, but nothing was showing or they were giving me errors (vlc/obs studio, virtual dub, etc.).

The Device ships with Honetech VH to DVD 3 SE and a serial number in the box. I dont have DVD on my laptop, and it is not available for download sinve this is an old version. I will try dumping it to an iso today this afternoon when i visit a friend that still had a dvd reader.

In the meantime what other software are there out there that can capture the feed?

[Alwyn]

On the face of it, it looks like a bog-standard digitiser.

No drivers need to be installed to bring the video grabber to the start. Simply plug it into an USB port on your PC and the device will automatically be recognized as an USB camera.

This caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise in suspicion. The cheap HDMI digitisers often don't have drivers but I've never heard of an analogue video digitiser not having drivers.

Could you elaborate on

nothing was showing or they were giving me errors

What was showing in the capture device window for VDub, for example?

In Windows, is it showing up in Device Manager under Sound Video and Game controllers?

If not, check the Windows permissions are set for allowing access to your "camera" and "microphone" as follows:

Windows Settings>Privacy and Security> Camera>Camera Access (at the top) switch it to On.

Below that, Switch On "Let apps access your camera".

And further down: “Let desktop apps access your camera”.

Go back and do the same for the microphone.

Try using AmerecTV to capture. I have written a comprehensive guide for that here.

If you still don't have any luck, perhaps your Honestech software will allow access. Honestech came with my VGB100 and included the drivers and the DVD software.

[therock003]

No it's okay after all.. I have dual boot on laptop and for some reason one of the OS partitions has trouble with the capture devices. The other captures no problem

My question is now how can I capture with the best possible settings so I can then throw the VHS tapes in the trash and save space in my storage closet.

The Honetech software has only some basic options like format Vcd/svcd/DVD/long DVD and quality. I set DVD and best quality and it outputs mpg. Is this the best I can get?

[Alwyn]

My workflow is frowned-upon so I'll leave that to the experts.

[therock003]

My workflow is frowned-upon so I'll leave that to the experts.

What do you mean? In regards to the amenrec setup? I downloaded it as well and I'll use that if it gives better results. BTW on the input tab it doesn't show composite/Svideo like on your tutorial.. the selections for my capture device there are empty and I want to use Svideo since its supposed to be superior

Btw when I connect the Svideo cable on my capture device, the result in amenrec seems worse somehow....

[therock003]

You can clearly see the difference especially in the Blue standby of the VHS player


https://youtu.be/O41mGAPMZrc?si=hN2CBnQP2FHf_9Yd

https://youtu.be/j-amtPuRvLw?si=ebb-UNXPKN3jpowL

[Bwaak]

The Honetech software has only some basic options like format Vcd/svcd/DVD/long DVD and quality. I set DVD and best quality and it outputs mpg. Is this the best I can get?

It is not the best, but if MPEG-2 works for you, verify that you get proper 25i instead of 25p (I can see ghosting even on this terrible screen grab with a smartphone) and then digitize away. Then again, if you don't have a DVD player, you may want to digitize into a format more suitable for watching on a computer and for uploading to YouTube.

[Alwyn]

BTW on the input tab it doesn't show composite/Svideo like on your tutorial.. the selections for my capture device there are empty and I want to use Svideo since its supposed to be superior

That will be a driver issue, but you are getting S-Video, which is what you want. One of my digitisers also doesn't show any input in that box, but it is completely dead. As to why you're getting that herringbone signal when the VCR isn't playing, I don't know; it is probably the quality of the digitiser. The video itself doesn't look too bad, but if you would like better critiquing from the forum then you can do proper snippets of your capture files using AVIDemux, then upload them here as attachments. I have written a short guide about snipping here (top section).

[therock003]

The Honetech software has only some basic options like format Vcd/svcd/DVD/long DVD and quality. I set DVD and best quality and it outputs mpg. Is this the best I can get?

It is not the best, but if MPEG-2 works for you, verify that you get proper 25i instead of 25p (I can see ghosting even on this terrible screen grab with a smartphone) and then digitize away. Then again, if you don't have a DVD player, you may want to digitize into a format more suitable for watching on a computer and for uploading to YouTube.

I dont want to turn them to DVDs i just want the best file output format to store them on an Archive HDD. Thanx ill watch that video for reference. So i need to deinterlace now the result and post process it?

[therock003]

BTW on the input tab it doesn't show composite/Svideo like on your tutorial.. the selections for my capture device there are empty and I want to use Svideo since its supposed to be superior

That will be a driver issue, but you are getting S-Video, which is what you want. One of my digitisers also doesn't show any input in that box, but it is completely dead. As to why you're getting that herringbone signal when the VCR isn't playing, I don't know; it is probably the quality of the digitiser. The video itself doesn't look too bad, but if you would like better critiquing from the forum then you can do proper snippets of your capture files using AVIDemux, then upload them here as attachments. I have written a short guide about snipping here (top section).

What you see is the Standby Screen of the VHS player, but in the S-video connection you can see the distortion is much greater (it has the herinboard effect you mention) while on composite, the result is much smoother.