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Post by garygraham on Jul 13, 2019 12:15:52 GMT
I struggled with a capture card... really struggled... spent ages trying to find a decent codec... ended up getting many dropped frames and a sub-youtube quality video before giving up. Then later got a vcr/dvd combo and the results were excellent and it couldn't be easier to use. As mentioned above, even a 15 year old laptop is capable of capturing SD with the HuffyUV codec, MJPEG or uncompressed. So in my experience dropped frames tend to be because the software is having problems matching up the audio with video. Some PC setups just don't seem to work well. A possibility is to to try a USB audio device instead of the usual sound card. Some inexpensive audio mixers and recorders have a USB interface now. So you input the sound through that. Software such as PowerProducer works well for capturing to MPEG2 and a copy comes with some USB capture devices. VirtualDub for AVIs. For AVI I would avoid any video codecs other than HuffyUV or MJPEG and capture the audio uncompressed. Xvid/DivX may be OK and you could try MP3 for audio.
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Post by martinjwills on Jul 13, 2019 18:12:56 GMT
I use Panasonic Blu-Ray Recorders, linked to a very late VHS Recorder, via SCART, and the Panasonic records it a XP mode DVD 720x576 PAL. It does it at 1to1 as the tape has to play. It will record the resulting Recording to DVD at High Speed, and to Blu-Ray at 1to1 Speed needless as it could do it at High Speed if it wanted too. With a bit of Hex Header tweeking in the Playlist File [rpls] it can be tricked into a [Direct Recording] as if it was recorded off of Freeview. A H264 file conversion can then be done on the recorder at 1to1 faster than when done on a computer using Videostudio or similar. HG to HL modes can be selected with HE being close to HD freeview Quality. Once converted they cant be reconverted with the recorder.
Blu-ray disks seem to be the most stablle and can store 25gb to 50gb on a single disc. at HE Quality about 12 Hours per disk at 25gb.
I still keep the original VHS,
as it takes 3 1to1 runs per tape, its a job i do in the winter months.
I have done this with 1980 Not The Nine O'clock News recordings, it seems that very early VHS only used 288 lines on these VHS tapes.
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Post by markboulton on Jul 13, 2019 18:52:19 GMT
The last two USB devices I have used seem to stabilise the picture in a similar way to a time base corrector. I first saw this sort of thing built into the affordable vision mixers that Panasonic produced 25-30 years ago and also some titling units around that time. At that time we were astonished to be able to lay titles over a signal that was just blank VHS tape and it was all perfectly stable. The Panasonic DVD recorders seem to have it too. Perhaps it doesn't give the full benefit of a TBC but is a world away from the sort of basic connection we had in the VHS tape-to-tape days. If buying a VCR I would again recommend Panasonic. I think any Panasonic VCR will give good results. I have compared a Panasonic SVHS VCR with a JVC one that I bought and the Panasonic is better. Ugh, really? I've gone between Sony and Panasonic for many years before finally landing my good JVCs, and out of all of them I have to say Panasonics are consistently the worst at all levels of all of them! I've had non-TBC and TBC Panasonics and they always give a softer, grainier, mistier picture and the TBC ones just seem to burn-in more noise and artefacts into the 'corrected' frame than it gives when TBC is off. I still have a Panasonic TBC VCR (NV-SV121) which I have only because some of my tapes were (out of desperation) recorded in EP mode (mainly BBC News 24 but was also a good way to record the radio for long spells) and no Sony or JVC models can handle EP, so the Panasonic has to be used for that. But I've compared many tapes between the Panny, JVC and Sony (non-TBC) and the Panny (even with TBC) is shockingly lacklustre - making VHS look squarely "like VHS", whereas even the Sony makes the same tapes sparkle.
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Post by John Smith on Jul 14, 2019 17:50:56 GMT
Or go the hardware route with one of these Datavideo units, mind you still need a TBC of some sort and firewire port for the old ones
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Post by garygraham on Jul 14, 2019 20:37:57 GMT
The last two USB devices I have used seem to stabilise the picture in a similar way to a time base corrector. I first saw this sort of thing built into the affordable vision mixers that Panasonic produced 25-30 years ago and also some titling units around that time. At that time we were astonished to be able to lay titles over a signal that was just blank VHS tape and it was all perfectly stable. The Panasonic DVD recorders seem to have it too. Perhaps it doesn't give the full benefit of a TBC but is a world away from the sort of basic connection we had in the VHS tape-to-tape days. If buying a VCR I would again recommend Panasonic. I think any Panasonic VCR will give good results. I have compared a Panasonic SVHS VCR with a JVC one that I bought and the Panasonic is better. Ugh, really? I've gone between Sony and Panasonic for many years before finally landing my good JVCs, and out of all of them I have to say Panasonics are consistently the worst at all levels of all of them! I've had non-TBC and TBC Panasonics and they always give a softer, grainier, mistier picture and the TBC ones just seem to burn-in more noise and artefacts into the 'corrected' frame than it gives when TBC is off. I still have a Panasonic TBC VCR (NV-SV121) which I have only because some of my tapes were (out of desperation) recorded in EP mode (mainly BBC News 24 but was also a good way to record the radio for long spells) and no Sony or JVC models can handle EP, so the Panasonic has to be used for that. But I've compared many tapes between the Panny, JVC and Sony (non-TBC) and the Panny (even with TBC) is shockingly lacklustre - making VHS look squarely "like VHS", whereas even the Sony makes the same tapes sparkle. All I can say is that since 1980 I've had all kinds of VCRs. The very top of the range JVC, Panasonic and Mitsubishi machines in the 1980s and early 1990s, portable VCRs and used a VHS edit suite. I would say JVC was excellent until around 1990. Currently I have four Panasonic VCRs one of which is SVHS and one JVC which is SVHS. The JVC has various settings for picture sharpness but invariably is very slightly worse than any of the Panasonics. I think the quality I get is pretty staggering and the best the tapes have looked in nearly 40 years in some cases. It's basically equivalent to BBC iPlayer standard definition but looks better because it's interlaced. I also have an HD projector and sometimes watch on that. Maybe you could post a frame so we can see what you're getting? Attachment Deleted And it's goodnight from him.
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Post by markboulton on Jul 14, 2019 22:59:54 GMT
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Post by garygraham on Jul 15, 2019 10:40:11 GMT
Well get you Gary! I'm sure no-one else has such wide experience! Very interesting! Are those SVHS machines and a VHS recording? Compare these two results from my Panasonic VCRs. In both cases the grabs are from a transfer to MPEG2 on the same Panasonic DVD recorder. The connection is composite from the VHS player into the DVD recorder and SVideo into it from the SVHS player. The result from the VHS player is very slightly warmer and the level is higher. There are some differences in colour saturation and detail on the bright red and blue particularly. But it's hard to say the SVHS version is a benefit. Perhaps the SVHS machine gives the tiniest bit more sharpness. But is that actually more quality or is it just artificial sharpening? And is it an advantage when going onto MPEG2? I've always felt that part of the superior SVHS picture was achieved by sharpening the picture slightly. Is the grain on your screengrabs due to the TV aerial at the time, perhaps filtered/smoothed out by the JVC somehow but not the Panasonic? As you can see, I don't get that from this recording. Nor do I see it on videos made with an SVHS camcorder. Could it be due to a worn head in the Panasonic player? Attachment DeletedAttachment Deleted
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Post by garygraham on Jul 15, 2019 11:54:57 GMT
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Post by John Smith on Jul 15, 2019 13:49:29 GMT
Yes you can see the JVC is doing some additional filtering but the Panasonic is playing it as is warts and all
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Post by Ronnie McDevitt on Jul 15, 2019 14:31:33 GMT
All this technical talk of Time Base Converters and the like is way above my head. I dub from a JVC Super VHS machine directly to a Panasonic DVD recorder. Anything of value is only ever copied in XP mode and I am more than happy with the results with no sound distortion and - to my eye - identical picture quality. I do of course keep hold of the tapes. For many this defeats the purpose as their intention is to save storage space whereas I am making back up copies. I too have a part time job in a museum and recently found out someone is gradually copying the VHS collection to a digital format. It was only after I learned of this that it occurred to me they may be making the mistake of dumping the originals. Further enquiries assured me the tapes are returned to storage once copied. Not sure what process they are using but I aim to find out more information regarding this.
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Post by garygraham on Jul 15, 2019 15:09:23 GMT
All this technical talk of Time Base Converters and the like is way above my head. I dub from a JVC Super VHS machine directly to a Panasonic DVD recorder. Anything of value is only ever copied in XP mode and I am more than happy with the results with no sound distortion and - to my eye - identical picture quality. I do of course keep hold of the tapes. For many this defeats the purpose as their intention is to save storage space whereas I am making back up copies. I too have a part time job in a museum and recently found out someone is gradually copying the VHS collection to a digital format. It was only after I learned of this that it occurred to me they may be making the mistake of dumping the originals. Further enquiries assured me the tapes are returned to storage once copied. Not sure what process they are using but I aim to find out more information regarding this. I'm not an expert but this is my understanding... Video signals have sync pulses much like the sprocket holes on a film. In the past if you wanted to mix signals from two cameras or video machines you had to make sure they shared a common sync otherwise there would be disruption when you cut from one to the other. Just the same as if you didn't match up film holes. The timebase generator or corrector did this. Home televisions were very tolerant of all sorts of wobbles and glitches from signals including VHS but we all remember the wobbles there were sometimes and we even used to see it when regional ITV companies switched to the network, until the early 80s. About 25 years ago technology began to be added into home equipment that acted a bit like a timebase corrector to provide a good sync track and avoid any problems. It was once described to me as some sort of frame store/delay. Some USB devices and DVD recorders seem to have this built in. In the past if you tried to copy a section of blank VHS tape (snow) to a second VHS machine there would be no stable sync pulses so the receiving machine wouldn't be very happy. Now you can do that to a DVD recorder no problem. Some of the top of the range Panasonic home video recorders were marketed as having a timebase corrector built in. How this differed to what is now in USB devices and DVD recorders I'm not sure. I definitely think it's a good idea to keep the original tapes. Recently I bought the DVD of Granada's 1980 series Lady Killers. There are a lot of drop outs. I understand those are from the more recent digital "master" tapes it was transferred to and unfortunately the original 1 inch or quad tapes are long gone. One must assume that much of Granada's archive will be similarly affected!
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Post by Ronnie McDevitt on Jul 17, 2019 13:05:45 GMT
All this technical talk of Time Base Converters and the like is way above my head. I dub from a JVC Super VHS machine directly to a Panasonic DVD recorder. Anything of value is only ever copied in XP mode and I am more than happy with the results with no sound distortion and - to my eye - identical picture quality. I do of course keep hold of the tapes. For many this defeats the purpose as their intention is to save storage space whereas I am making back up copies. I too have a part time job in a museum and recently found out someone is gradually copying the VHS collection to a digital format. It was only after I learned of this that it occurred to me they may be making the mistake of dumping the originals. Further enquiries assured me the tapes are returned to storage once copied. Not sure what process they are using but I aim to find out more information regarding this. Some of the top of the range Panasonic home video recorders were marketed as having a timebase corrector built in. How this differed to what is now in USB devices and DVD recorders I'm not sure. Well that would certainly go some way to explaining the results. Of course using a SVHS machine for the output as opposed to a cheap 2 head VCR will also help. I have never had any tracking problems with any VHS recordings on SVHS machines.
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Post by garygraham on Jul 17, 2019 16:28:18 GMT
The VHS machine used for the transfer in the examples above is a Panasonic NV-FJ610 which was just a standard Panasonic VHS recorder when I bought it. I use it for tapes that have a linear audio track and adjust the audio head.
There are some slight differences on the transfer made from the SVHS machine via an SVideo connector but whether it is better is open to question. Neither of those machines has a time base corrector. The signal goes through the Panasonic DVD recorder and that has some sort of TBC. I should mention that even a cheap Sumvision DVD recorder that I have seems to have something like that built in.
Bearing in mind that DVD recorder seems to do some subtle clean up and that MPEGs compression works in part by smoothing out the picture I wouldn't worry too much about playing back VHS from an SVHS machine. It could be said that the colour in the VHS transfer above looks more pleasing than the result from the SVHS player which looks a bit grubby?
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Post by darrenlee on Jul 17, 2019 20:20:57 GMT
I've not tried using a DVD recorder for this purpose, but, according to the experts who've tested all sorts, the only two DVD recorders which can have a substantial repairing effect on a VHS signal are the Panasonics DMR-ES10 and DMR-ES15. Does this mean it's worth trying simply recording to one of these as an uncomplicated way to digitise the videos? Other recorders have much weaker TBC-type effects, if any, apparently.
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Post by John Wall on Jul 17, 2019 21:00:33 GMT
The quality of the responses here has been phenomenal 👍 Having considered, and discussed, things I wonder if anyone with the appropriate knowledge/equipment is near to, or convenient for, Woking? The museum in question is the Hockey Museum www.hockeymuseum.net/ which is just across the road from Woking Station - less than half an hour from Waterloo. What’s needed is to get the VHS tapes digitised and onto the museum’s server, which is triple backed up. At present we can’t take Blu-Ray so it’s DVD or FTP. Any travelling, etc expenses can be covered. Anybody willing to help give a future to hockey’s past?
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