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Capturing VHS from a WinTV device

falter

falter

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So I have this VHS tape I'm trying to capture some stuff from, and holy cow... I just can't win.

To do this, I found a MSI WinTV card (713x BDA) in my inventory closet. NIB, never used. PCI. So I put it in a spare machine I have (running Win 10) that has PCI slots. Initially I couldn't get the thing to work - I tried MSI's own software and then one called AMCap. I found I could get AMCap to start capturing from the card *if* I unloaded the driver for the WinTV and then reload, until I closed it.

I then found Virtualdub, and that captures video reliably but it completely messes up the audio... plays it in slow motion. Tried every audio setting I could and absolutely will not capture it right.

Does anyone know any better, free capture software that isn't this finicky or difficult to work with? Just want to capture about 20 min from an old VHS tape before it dies. Didn't think it would be this hard!!
 
There are generally severe phase errors and signal jitter from old VHS tapes. And they keep getting worse with each pass of the tape. My advice if you wanted to get this into a digital medium to capture parts of it, have it dubbed to a DVD first, use the VHS video & audio outputs directly to a less vintage DVD recorder, and preferably via a TBC (timebase corrector), but even without one, it will be improved for sync stability and hardly degraded in the video. The recorded disk will have a much more stable signal and will be more easily processed in a computer with many software packages, though it sounds like you are almost there anyway with Virtualdub, if you could fix the audio. Also you will have the disk as another backup of the material.
If you get stuck there are still some companies that offer a VHS to DVD dub.
 
If VirtualDub actually records a perfect copy of the video, you could always record the audio separately and merge it back in with FFMPEG. Although I'd expect VirtualDub to do this well, too.
 
Virtualdub will almost always desync the audio from analog sources if you don't go into the video>frame rate menu (CTRL+R) and select "change so video and audio durations match".

Video from unstable sources like VHS tapes may create frame rate issues since Virtualdub will try to match the frame rate to the audio track length, but the audio will at least be mostly in sync.
 
In VirtualDub's capture mode, goto the "Capture" menu then to "Timing" . Set Resync mode to "Do Not Resync between audio and video streams" to fix the slow audio problems. This won't fix dropped frames do to poor sync from VHS tapes though. Most capture devices won't tolerate anything less than perfect sync (and this includes the input on DVD recorders folks) and will drop frames without an external TBC in the capture chain.
 
Hrmm... control-R doesn't seem to work and I don't see a frame rate menu.

I did try the 'do not resync'.. but what it does is bizarre.. the sound starts out like someone's slowed it way down... and then it gradually sort of picks up and almost gets to normal but then can't stabilize.

I had another thought -- what about just doing a 'playthru' on virtual dub and use a PC screen capturer to get it?

Or I suppose I could reinvest in a USB capture device (I think they have modern ones that would improve things?). Only have this one tape really. Rest are Super8/etc which I've had no problem ripping using Sony's picture motion browser software. I should check and see if that supports devices other than Sony's cams.
 
Your audio settings aren't quite right. I don't use VirtualDub enough to tell you what's wrong, not being in front of it though.

If you do get a new capture device, don't waste your money on a "good" one. All the modern ones I can find are geared toward HDMI and the NTSC capture is an afterthought. The best ones are the cheap EasyCAP / Fuschicai / etc USB "dongles". These come with a plethora of brand names. They also come with scary Chinese spyware that doesn't even do a decent job of capture. VirtualDub is still the best choice.
 
falter said:
I did try the 'do not resync'.. but what it does is bizarre.. the sound starts out like someone's slowed it way down... and then it gradually sort of picks up and almost gets to normal but then can't stabilize.
Click to expand...

This is because you have "sync audio to video" which resamples the audio to try to match the video. This is normally a good thing, but the problem you're experiencing is that the tape you're trying to capture is stretched out, or the tracking is off, or the heads are dirty, and the timing isn't quite right and the WinTV is dropping frames. One or two drops a minute won't affect the audio that much, but if you're dropping much more than that, you get the wacky audio. It's a symptom, not the cause.

To fix this, ensure tracking is good and heads are clean. Worse comes to worse, you'll need a TBC between the VCR and the capture device.

If that doesn't work, go to Capture->Timing... and pick "do not resync between video and audio streams" and the audio won't be touched... but it might not sync up.

I had another thought -- what about just doing a 'playthru' on virtual dub and use a PC screen capturer to get it?
Click to expand...

That is a bad idea for different reasons.

Maybe this video can help? It's the settings I use for captures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_TDa9zY1c
Seek to 5m38s to get right to the capture stuff, although if you don't understand the difference between frames and fields, I encourage you to watch the entire video.
 
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