Capture from VHS- Use VHS or SVHS

[PolarBear]

Will an SVHS VCR improve quality of captures? I normally capture 352x480. Using my standard 4 head VHS vcr(lower end), the quality on some older home movies is poor. Will a higher end VCR improve that at all or am I stuck with post-capture cleanup attempts?

Thanks,
Matt

[Rasiroth]

Sorry, no solution on this one. However, I wanted to elaborate some. I was also wondering about VHS capture vs. SVHS capture. Will a good SVHS VCR (JVC?) increase the quality of playback on a standard cassette? Will that S-video port allow any color enhancement?
I recently priced a nice JVC SVHS at $169. It has a feature JVC calls Expansion Technology (ET). This, they say, allows you to record SVHS quality on a standard tape...400 horizontal lines and all.
Also, I recently got a Dazzle I. I know about all it's evils and have read just about all of the Dazzle bashing on the net. The fact is, though, I was only able to budget for a laptop because I'm required to have a laptop for my major. Dazzle seemed to be the best totally external capping solution. Back to the point...it appears, despite all the Dazzle bashing, that there is talk that if you cap SVHS at a high bitrate through the S-Video port and encode down, you get VHS+ results.

Anything anyone might have to offer on SVHS VCR playback of standard tapes and ET tapes, Expansion Technology performance and capping with Dazzle would be very helpful.

-Rasiroth

[dvbrazil]

Hi,

I think that capturing with SVHS input at resolutions below 480x480 will not improve quality, because the theoric horizontal resolution of SVHS is 400. But at higher resolutions it makes difference, especially in images with fine vertical details.
The main difference between composite and SVHS cables is that in SVHS, the luminance and color subcarrier use different wires. In composite, the both signals are mixed and separeted, causing loss of bandwith. SVHS delivers a much more "sharp" image.
I've been capturing from sattelite receiver through SVHS input at 640x480 with almost no loss.
Always use SVHS 75 ohm coaxial cables, ordinary cables cause quality loss.

Nelson

[Rasiroth]

Does an SVHS VCR deliver a sharper or more colorful picture from standard VHS tapes? What difference does capping res make if you are making a standard VCD from VHS on an SVHS player through S-Video?

[dvbrazil]

Yes.
For a VCD, using SVHS will almost not affect the image quality.

[4A-GE]

opps anyway this is what i have to say. To take advantage of s-video you will need to make svcd specs. 480*480. But be warned the time of svcd will reduce by half at max quality. SVHS VCR are always better then the regular VCR no matter what. Many professionals uses SVHS camcorders since the quality is much more superior to regular VHS. Everything is limited by the source and the output.

[WRCoach]

And...when all is said and done, SVHS still doesn't reach the qaulity of the original BETA format from Sony....but, in any case...I cap using a high end VCR with S-video output and the results are much better than composite (using a Dazzle I).

[CubDukat]

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On 2001-08-07 09:01:28, PolarBear wrote:
Will an SVHS VCR improve quality of captures? I normally capture 352x480. Using my standard 4 head VHS vcr(lower end), the quality on some older home movies is poor. Will a higher end VCR improve that at all or am I stuck with post-capture cleanup attempts?

Thanks,
Matt
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It might help to move up to a higher-quality VCR, but the quality of the source recording is a factor too. It doesn't matter if your recording was made on a pro-quality S-VHS deck--if the source quality is unfit, the capture will suffer.

Others will tell you that it doesn't matter whether you use a S-VHS deck or a garden variety deck to capture for VCD, but I believe that you're going to lose so much quality in the conversion process that you need to have as much quality possible in the initital capture.