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A capture card to flawlessly record VHS

6885P5H

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Feb 7, 2015
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Location
Québec, Canada
I thought this might be something the people of this forum would know about. I would like to record VHS tapes on my computer but I am afraid at the kind of equipment that may be required to do this. Because I would like the resulting files to be absolutely identical in quality to the VHS. I have tried recording VHS with my antique capture card but it is definitely not suitable for the job.

I know nothing about this stuff... Would I need to get a capture card able to record 60 frames per second for example?
 
NTSC TV is only 30 fps (actually 29.97...), so no, 60 fps wouldn't be needed. A good Bt848 chipset compatible PCI card should capture OK VHS quality video, if you're looking for something retro. Or track down an Iomega Buz, which does MJPEG hardware based capture.

For modern USB based, there are some $40 or so devices that should work OK to capture NTSC video... USB 2.0 is plenty fast for regular old NTSC.
 
I just did this last week using a common Hauppauge tuner card (with composite input) on a modern PC. I recorded off a VHS VCR using the Hauppauge app (on windows 7) to a single MPEG2 file (2-hrs was about 7 GB) and then used a (free trial) program called VideoReDo TVSuite V5 to make simple cut edits and then output the result as MPEG4 AAC (for iPad, etc) with smart deinterlacing at PAL resolution (you would use NTSC resolution.) I'm happy with the result.
 
The hauppage cards work quite nicely, however my personal choice (if you've got a firewire port and a copy of premiere, that is) would be something from the Canopus AVDC line, like the AVDC-110. Some of them have onboard TBC (Time base corrector) and can be found if your patient for cheap. Friend of mine got his at an estate sale for $30 :cool:

Another option, if you've got access to a newer digital camcorder (again, firewire) is to use the pass-through option like so:
http://www.videohelp.com/dvanalog
 
You need a good VCR for playback and there are a number of options for new and old hardware to record. Most of the cheap old solutions have issues with audio sync after a few minutes. You also have to figure out what format you want the output to be in.
 
A Canopus AVDC seems like the kind of thing that would be really hard to acquire for me. Why do you need to have premiere by the way?

Time base corrector huh... My computer does not have any firewire ports (what computer does by the way hahaha) but I could probably add some with a card right.

Don't have any camcorder.

What format? Whatever's the best one I guess.

I have a Sears (Sanyo) VCR... Hahaha don't laugh, in some aspects it may leave to be desired but it's got a great picture and sound when it works right.
 
Remember that VHS is analog, so no digital conversion is going to be "absolutely identical" to the contents of the tape. And unless you use a lossless codec (which will generate huge files), there will always be some artifacting even if you don't notice it.
 
I've been told, the old ATI video cards with the Theatre 200 chip are close to perfect without getting $10,000 Matrox (or whomever) solutions. I have a whole pentium 4 setup for just such a task, with professional svhs tape decks. Just dont have the time to start recording. For the record, I'm referring to the late agp era cards like the 9800 or X850.
 
The hauppage cards work quite nicely, however my personal choice (if you've got a firewire port and a copy of premiere, that is) would be something from the Canopus AVDC line, like the AVDC-110. Some of them have onboard TBC (Time base corrector) and can be found if your patient for cheap. Friend of mine got his at an estate sale for $30 :cool:

I second this highly. I used to use an ADS Pyro A/V and it dropped out all the time on VHS tapes (it was fine with a composite signal from my Commodore). I upgraded to a Canopus ADVC-300 and I've yet to have a dropout since.
 
Personally, I cut the computer out of the loop and used a Toshiba kr10 dvd recorder. I hooked my vcr to it via s-video cables and got good quality copies to dvd. I got tired of fiddling with all the hiccups trying to use a tv tuner card and older media center software.

Once the recording is on DVD I can make an image .iso to the computer and play that .iso file with vlc, etc., and then transcode from the dvd if desired.

Oh, lots of vhs tapes will have a copy protection that prevents recording the tape. I got some little gizmo that would allow me to record such tapes to dvd,
 
Yes, you can get those kinds of Macrovision defeaters, or some devices will do it with an undocumented setting. My Canopus does, for example, though I also have a standalone Macrovision filter on my DVD player so I can use it with the TV/VCR (or else the DVD's synthetic Macrovision makes the disc unwatchable).
 
Don't use a capture card. Use a DV camcorder with analog passthrough, such as a MiniDV or Digital8 Sony Handycam -- or a Video Walkman if you are lucky enough to find one for an affordable price. They have built-in Time Base Correction and are immune to Macrovision encoding. The captured footage is rock-solid even on worn-out or damaged tapes, and the capturing and editing workflow is the same as with any DV source, which has been an industry standard for over 20 years. And with some editing tricks (as described in Trixter's video) you can get smooth 60fps video from it, that doesn't look half bad when upscaled to 960x720 HD:


The only catch is that you need a FireWire port, which has pretty much disappeared from modern computers (although if you have a Mac with a Thunderbolt port you can use an adapter to connect FireWire to it). If you have a desktop with PCI slots or a laptop with a PCMCIA or ExpressCard slot you can easily add a FireWire card, but if all you have are USB ports, you're SOL (no, cheap FireWire to USB adapters will not work).
 
DV camcorder with analog passthrough. Connect into computer with firewire. Capture with WinDV... Can you tell me what are some of the models that can do this? What is the one you showed in your video for example?

This time base correction seems suspicious to me by the way... So time base correction would be able to able to clean the signal recorded on a very very wrinkled area of a tape? Also I'm afraid that it might malfunction and mess up a good signal...
 
I run a high end SVHS decks with built in TBC here + external frame sync (to keep the capture card happy and not drop frames) + an AGP and PCIe ATI All-in-Wonder card (I have two capture rigs). Capturing VHS well costs money, just keep that in mind.

TBCs built into high end VCRs will clean up jittery tapes. If you have crinkled tape, it won't restore it to perfection.... nothing will, its a crinkled tape. Many of those high end decks will also have a noise reduction system that is particularly effective with chrominance noise, a common problem with the VHS format. TBC malfunctions are relatively rare, but the system can be turned off if they do happen. Its also one of the reasons to have multiple models of VCRs around.
 
It's very overkill for your specific application, however I bought a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro 4K last year. I purchased it to capture everything. I've transferred several VHS tapes recently and they have all come out great with some post-de-interlacing filters and softening filters (via mencoder). It is expensive though.
 
It's very overkill for your specific application, however I bought a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro 4K last year. I purchased it to capture everything. I've transferred several VHS tapes recently and they have all come out great with some post-de-interlacing filters and softening filters (via mencoder). It is expensive though.

Make sure you're not throwing away half the fields (see my video link above); your output should be 30i or 60p.

I'd read that the BMD hardware had issues with VCRs; do you run yours through a TBC before the BMD sees it? (My deck has a built-in TBC)
 
Many of those high end decks will also have a noise reduction system that is particularly effective with chrominance noise, a common problem with the VHS format.

I don't enable this because it's usually a time-domain averaging filter, which leads to chroma smearing during fast transitions/changes. I leave this off my deck when I capture, then I do noise reduction using NeatVideo in post-production.
 
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