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.