Go-to method for VHS capture

[Kreeep]

I have a decent enough VCR I believe. What would be the best and/or easiest means to capture VHS? Also curious what filtering processes ought to be performed during capturing or after the fact. Thanks.

[alleycat]

Sorry @Kreeep, can't really help here - I've processed captured video plenty of times but I've never actually captured it. I'd suggest having a read of this:

https://fanrestore.com/thread-933.html

Then maybe have a google and look for capture guides on digitalfaq and videohelp. As I understand it you are best capturing raw and then processing afterwards.

In terms of post capture processing, my starting program is avisynth for basics like cropping and deinterlacing. Then it depends what sort of problems your footage has. This is a useful guide (although personally I wouldn't attempt color correction in avisynth):

https://www.engon.de/audio/vhs4_en.htm

Once you have identified the issues then you can start looking into the options. You might have chroma bleed and in the past I found that Phoenix worked very well with that. You might have dust/dirt that Phoenix/PFClean is great for. Neat video is good for denoising. Just depends on how much time you want to spend cleaning the footage.

Hope this helps.

[alexpeden2000]

I have a decent enough VCR I believe. What would be the best and/or easiest means to capture VHS? Also curious what filtering processes ought to be performed during capturing or after the fact. Thanks.

What sort of VCR do you have Kreep? One with decent TBC seems to be essential from everything I read online.

I use a Hauppage USB Live 2 to capture into my laptop and use AmarecTV for lossless captures (couldn't get VirtualDub to work well for captures).

Then I deinterlace with QTGMC and crop/resize in Virtualdub. I don't do any cleanup/upscaling as I've never been able to make them look any better. Sometimes a bit of contrast & saturation boost in VDub if it's needed.

[bronan]

Based off my experience so far, I don't think a line TBC is make or break for a VCR. On my JVC I ended up turning it off a lot since you need a microscope to see the difference and you can't have video stabilization enabled at same time. Some of my tapes were jumping all over the place so I'd rather have a stable picture than less jaggies on the side personally But if you are dropping big cash on one, probably better to have than not.

A frame based TBC may be necessary if you are dropping fields when capturing video. Apparently your mileage really varies on this depending on your capture card, and there are older ones that handle fluctuating analog times way better than newer ones. I see the ATI 600 and Pinnacle USB recommended often at digitalfaq.com and highly recommend that site for studying up on this stuff.

[PomSpitz]

Hello everyone!

So my USB capture device arrived today and I'm excited to start capturing the audio from some of my Laserdiscs (I've got nearly 500, PM me if you'd like my Lddb list). I'll be taking requests!

A thought occurred to me while I was unboxing this USB device... could I also capture audio from VHS using this?

I was planning on using my old miniDV camcorder for all my analogue pass-throughs, but I'm using a progressive scan JVC VHS deck in my home theatre (a HR- XVC37U), which allows me to output VHS video by component RGB as well as audio output by TOSlink (I send both to my AVR).

Would there be any benefits or disadvantages to using the optical output on the VHS deck when capturing audio to my computer?

Any advice would be appreciated!

[jonno]

You're unlikely to notice much difference. However you approach this, there will be an analogue to digital conversion taking place - it's just a question of whether you entrust that to your VHS deck or your camcorder. Both the optical and firewire connections will provide PCM audio so there's no real difference in terms of data transfer - I'd go with whichever device produces the most pleasing picture (which is probably the VCR, since it's specifically designed to process VHS material for large-screen viewing).

Progressive scan VHS is an interesting development - those were never marketed here in the UK (not so useful for a PAL-dominant territory, I guess). How does it work with non-film material, such as broadcast NTSC? Does it attempt any frame interpolation to give you smooth 29.97p?

[PomSpitz]

You're unlikely to notice much difference. However you approach this, there will be an analogue to digital conversion taking place - it's just a question of whether you entrust that to your VHS deck or your camcorder. Both the optical and firewire connections will provide PCM audio so there's no real difference in terms of data transfer - I'd go with whichever device produces the most pleasing picture (which is probably the VCR, since it's specifically designed to process VHS material for large-screen viewing).

Progressive scan VHS is an interesting development - those were never marketed here in the UK (not so useful for a PAL-dominant territory, I guess). How does it work with non-film material, such as broadcast NTSC? Does it attempt any frame interpolation to give you smooth 29.97p?

I'm still running tests with Laserdiscs at the moment, but I'll definitely try the optical output on the VHS deck soon. I might also attempt to use the deck as a "passthrough" device for analogue Laserdisc tracks and Beta tapes as well.

I don't currently have a capture card that will accept a component input, so any analogue video transfers will have to be passed through the camcorder via FireWire. Reading threads elsewhere on here, it doesn't look like FireWire is recommended for video, so I'll likely hold off on any serious video captures for the foreseeable future. I'm just focused on getting bit-perfect audio right now.

So far, I've only used the progressive VHS deck for watching major studio films transferred to video, but nothing natively interlaced. I was never curious about it until now! I'll let you know what I find!

Thanks for the advice Jonno!