Capture VHS tips

[Psittac]

Not sure which section to put this in

 

Over the years I have captured old media from different formats.  Within the next few months, I'm going to set up a capture station for VHS and vinyl but wanted to see if anyone has any tips.  My dad has a VHS player that I can use and I have a Diamond One Touch Video Capture USB capture device.  Is there a better capture device or method anyone would recommend? Or is the limiting factor going to be the media and player?

 

I saw the video today about upscaling and what not and I'm certainly going to try the topaz labs software trial before I decide if I'll be buying the license.

 

Also while talking to my Grandma she claims that there is a lot of old reel film laying around and I wouldn't even begin to guess how to capture that.  Anyone got leads on that?

[Kilrah]

Some of these USB thingies are utter garbage, but can't really know by a product page. Some have hardware encoding built-in that you can't tweak or choose output size with (bad), some will just output the raw frame (best), leaving you with finding the best choice of program and settings to encode into something.

 

I've recently digitized 50 hours of VHS and used a combo VHS/DVD recorder deck for that, most painless yet good quality solution IMO. For best possible quality a DV deck/camcorder with DV in is even better but with more work.

Some tapes wouldn't play well on the built-in deck and I used another connected to the recorder's AV input which did better. 

[Needfuldoer]

There's always an xkcd a Technology Connections.

tl;dr: Connect a good VCR to a composite to HDMI scaler, then connect the HDMI scaler to a set top box that can record to a video file. You might have to scale the resulting file down horizontally by 33% in post to restore the correct aspect ratio. Black Magic DaVinci Resolve can do that, and it costs $0.

 

That will get you very good transfers without too much messing around with things like comb filters and procamp functions. (I have a Panasonic S-VHS deck connected to a Leitch DPS475 frame sync and an AJA Kumo PCIe card, but I also work in professional video so doing it the hard way isn't a huge deal.)

 

The quality of cheap consumer video equipment has come a long way, especially since we moved out of the analog realm and YouTubing took off. Back in the day I used to just use a cheapo ATI TV Wonder card to capture everything from TV shows to PC game footage. Results were... very not great.

 

7 hours ago, Caroline said:

Basically all it does is play the reel like a projector does but at the same time record a mirrored image of it with a camera that's also mirrored. Not sure why the price considering it's technically a very simple device, probably to rip off old people looking to save their wedding shoot or something like that, shame on whoever's selling it. Maybe because it's a rare piece of technology but still... 

My dad bought one of these so he could transfer 8mm film he shot in the 70s. It works fine, the trick is to buy one secondhand off someone who finished transferring their film and now they don't know what to do with it. I think he paid less than half that price, including shipping, off Marketplace.

 

If you think about sending your media off to a third party transfer service, be very careful to choose one that promises to send your originals back when you're done with them. Not all of them do.

[Kisai]

9 hours ago, Psittac said:

Not sure which section to put this in

 

Over the years I have captured old media from different formats.  Within the next few months, I'm going to set up a capture station for VHS and vinyl but wanted to see if anyone has any tips.  My dad has a VHS player that I can use and I have a Diamond One Touch Video Capture USB capture device.  Is there a better capture device or method anyone would recommend? Or is the limiting factor going to be the media and player?

 

For capturing from VHS tapes, you need something that is capable of understanding 525  line @59.97i NTSC for North American tapes. For this you need an older PCIe capture card that actually has component video, and a SVHS/DVHS tape deck that has componet video outputs. This is generally what you *need* if you are trying to maintain the video quality of the original tape. In practice, VHS tapes are rarely "HiFi", and unless you're trying to media shift a commercially released VHS tape library (as opposed to your own VHS tapes of home videos) most video tapes are not really 525 lines, but more like 220.

 

If you are trying to convert a Commercial VHS tape, you actually need something to strip Macrovision by stabilizing the video. These devices exist, but generally it is not worth the effort.

 

An alternative is a late-model VHS/VHS+DVD unit that was actually intended for this purpose.

 

 

9 hours ago, Psittac said:

I saw the video today about upscaling and what not and I'm certainly going to try the topaz labs software trial before I decide if I'll be buying the license.

 

Also while talking to my Grandma she claims that there is a lot of old reel film laying around and I wouldn't even begin to guess how to capture that.  Anyone got leads on that?

For films like that there's three general solutions:

1. Use a DSLR to record video by pointing it at a projector screen, and play the film on the original projector. This works, but is poor quality

2. Have each frame scanned (which is literately how old films are remastered) and re-assemble it as a video. This will suck if the frame rate is inconsistent, and take forever. Not recommended

3. Send it out to a lab that has the right hardware.

 

Scanning film negatives and slides is usually best done with a liquid-mount film scanner, which almost nobody has. Scanning really old materials is difficult and time consuming.

 

If they are really valuable, send it to a lab. If it's just something you want to capture, and don't care about the quality, there are all-in-one devices where you can capture film negatives frame-by-frame, but generally to a SD card, and usually to jpeg.

 

Or you can DYI. https://creativepro.com/bit-by-bit-a-gadget-for-film-to-tape-transfer/

Just swap the tape capture with directly capturing it with a digital camera.

 

[NativeBoyJames]

Which one woulnd work best one has mono audio the other 3+2 heads not sure what that means

[LogicalDrm]

On 11/7/2022 at 8:00 AM, NativeBoyJames said:

Which one woulnd work best one has mono audio the other 3+2 heads not sure what that means

Don't quite understand A) Your question, B) why did you necro/hijack someone else's 7mo old thread.

 

Both units have AUX connection. Top one has Out Left channel, Right channel and Video, bottom just video and mono audio.

[Motifator]

2 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Don't quite understand A) Your question, B) why did you necro/hijack someone else's 7mo old thread.

 

Both units have AUX connection. Top one has Out Left channel, Right channel and Video, bottom just video and mono audio.

I believe they're talking about the RCA's, technically those are RCA, neither one has AUX 3.5mm or 6.3mm, for clarification. Auxiliary RCA yes, but not AUX audio. The first one only has headphone in which is closer to AUX than RCA.

The first unit looks more capable. However, I'd be weary of the conditions of these things.

[LogicalDrm]

13 minutes ago, Motifator said:

I believe they're talking about the RCA's, technically those are RCA, neither one has AUX 3.5mm or 6.3mm, for clarification. Auxiliary RCA yes, but not AUX audio. The first one only has headphone in which is closer to AUX than RCA.

The first unit looks more capable. However, I'd be weary of the conditions of these things.

Meant to say RCA. But can't figure out what "3+2" is supposed to mean...

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, LogicalDrm said:

But can't figure out what "3+2" is supposed to mean...

The 3+2 is on the (overexposed) label at the top left of the first VCR, supposedly that means 2 heads are dedicated to recording.

 

OP's question is in context of "what's the best VCR of these 2 to use to capture footage like the LTT video was about".

 

My answer is that if those 2 heads are dedicated to recording they in theory wouldn't help for capture, but regardless of the marketing/features in practice since this equipment is old it's going to be a case of trying both and seeing what gives a better output since either might be in better/worse condition/state of degradation after all these years so there's nothing to take for granted, and it might vary with different tapes as well. 

I captured a bunch of VHSes a year or so ago, and while good tapes gave slightly better results on my "modern" 2005ish deck those in worse condition played better on my 1985 portable VCR (what I referred to in my earlier post).

 

[Kisai]

On 11/6/2022 at 10:00 PM, NativeBoyJames said:

Which one woulnd work best one has mono audio the other 3+2 heads not sure what that means

Neither of those are particularly good, and I can say with confidence the top one that is stereo is likely the older unit. It's at least 1994. The Toshiba is dirt cheap. Both of those are around 1994 vintage.

 

General rule for VHS tape decks, if you are wanting to rescue old VHS tapes:

Prefer in order

- Component video (RGB+LR)

- SVIDEO (4-pin din  + LR)

- Composite stereo (3 RCA connections, usually yellow, red, white)

- Composite mono (2 RCA connections, usually yellow, white)

- RF (75ohm coax)

 

Prefer in order:

- SVHS (Super VHS, more likely to have S-Video)

- DVHS (more likely to have component video, usually all have S-video)

- DVD+VHS combo deck (more likely to have component video, usually all have S-video)

- VHS (more likely to only have Composite)

 

Ideally you find a front-loading 4-head SVHS+(Component) or SVHS+(S-Video) VCR from late 1990's

 

The worst option will be top-loading 2-head models from the mid-80's. These may not even have composite video on them, and almost no television, VHS or game console that came out before 1991 had composite connections.

 

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/225243050769?hash=item3471883311

This would be a good unit to copy VHS tapes with. Most of the other units I see on eBay are S-Video at best.

 

If you only have the two units pictured, go with the stereo Hitachi one. The number of heads is generally irrelevant except if you are pausing the tape and frame-advancing it. A 2-head unit can't do this, half the screen will be covered in noise. Generally any other feature of 4-heads is only relevant for recording.