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  #1  
10-12-2019, 09:58 AM
Paul77 Paul77 is offline
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I have about 20 to 30 old VHS tapes that I would like to convert to digital format. The tapes were recorded from TV in SP mode, mostly during the 1990s. The tapes are in good condition, though obviously they are old.

When I play these tapes on my Toshiba VCR connected to my Sharp HDTV, the picture looks as good as can be expected for 25-year-old VHS tapes. I'm happy with the picture quality when I watch these tapes on TV, and there are no major issues with color.

I purchased a cheap analog-to-digital converter that plugs into the yellow video output and red/white audio outputs of my VCR, and on the other end plugs into a USB port on my computer. Rather than using the software that came with the converter, I am using OBS Studio software to capture the video on my computer.

The issue is that I cannot get the color on the captured video to look nearly as good as the color that I see when I watch these tapes on my TV. I am able to fix some of the color issues by tweaking the color settings in OBS Studio. But no matter what I do, there is a discolored horizontal stripe across the top of the picture that covers maybe 20% to 25% of the screen height. The only way I can entirely get rid of this discolored stripe is to set the color saturation to its minimum value, so that I am essentially capturing black and white video. If I do that, I get black and white video that looks fine, but obviously I would like to have the video in color.

I'm guessing that the solution is to buy a more expensive and higher quality analog-to-digital converter. But before I spend more money, I want to ask your advice. First, is it likely that a better converter will capture the video without the discolored stripe? And if so, is there a particular converter that you would recommend? Finally, is OBS Studio a good program to use for capturing the video, or is there something else you would recommend? (OBS Studio seems good from the little time I have spent with it so far.)
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  #2  
10-13-2019, 05:55 AM
Eric-Jan Eric-Jan is offline
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check (everywhere) if you have settings like PAL/NTSC, frame rate, correctly set, this might be the problem. then look for some other capture software, OBS is more for streaming use,
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10-13-2019, 08:29 AM
Paul77 Paul77 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric-Jan View Post
check (everywhere) if you have settings like PAL/NTSC, frame rate, correctly set, this might be the problem. then look for some other capture software, OBS is more for streaming use,
Thanks. I will go through and try tweaking whatever settings I can find.

Is there any particular video capture software that you would recommend? I may try the software that came with the converter, though I'm not hopeful. (Several reviews for this converter said that the converter worked fine with other software, but that the software that came with it was not so good.)
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10-13-2019, 11:45 AM
Eric-Jan Eric-Jan is offline
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Depnding on the technical features (chipset)of your capture device, your operating system (suitable driver) sees it as a capture device, then any editing should connect to it, i don't know if your capture device has an Mpeg encoder build-in, if it encodes directly to Mpeg you should not re-encode this with any editor, because each time you do this, you loose quality,
depending the original quality, this would be more or less visible at the end.
If you can discover which type of chipset is used in your capture device, this would help finding good software/app support for it. A lot of different devices use the same chipsets.
An uncompressed capture needs a lot of your (operating) system resources, some sort of virtual lossless capture encoder will help you and will lower the data rate during the capture to your storage media.
A badly configured/weak operating system will also not help.
an USB 3 capture device will give better performance over an USB 2 one.
You use windows M$ or are you on a MAC ?
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10-13-2019, 12:53 PM
jwillis84 jwillis84 is offline
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I think more and more the capture path for newbies is dictated by the eventual purpose of the transfer.

If its to post to Youtube then picture quality doesn't matter as much since the viewing window will be more likely a cell phone or tablet.. and resolution and detail just won't matter. The image will be shrunk down when played back and non one will care about the picture quality. In which case the audio quality might be the most important factor.. but a lot of VHS was mono only, stereo in the last days of VHS.

Archivists.. people seeking to preserve rare recordings or camcorder video of historic events really do need Uncompressed and highly detailed video and definitely should be seeking rarer and more expensive equipment. Compressed dongle things at the end of a USB cable are silly for recordings over 2 hours for a bazillion reasons.. not the least of which is the total stability of the capture system and the playback system. A VCR did not record 8 hours straight.. so capturing a playback 8 hours straight is a crazy idea. SP helps in that regard.. since they did not make 8 hour length SP tapes.

SP was also the best of the recording formats.. if you used the right tape and its been stored well.. but you need a good VCR to play it back.. it would benefit from a good VCR, possibly with a line TBC to square up the edges and eliminate flaging and swim within the image. And external TBC would eliminate jitter and minimize frame drops which would help with de-synchronized audio and video. But understand this is a costly leap.. and the gear is getting harder to find.

Capturing hardware, AGP, PCI, PCIe or USB is really broken down by the Operating system available to you and whether or not you can find one of the better capture devices. You can buy retro gear and build it yourself, or buy a capture "system kit" from a person who knows video capture.. but again its an order of magnitude higher in cost.. you won't find this stuff under a tree for 9.95 usd.

Getting someone or a business to do it for you.. might be the better option for so few tapes.. but finding a good shop to do it.. can be time consuming.

Capturing direct to Compressed MPEG or h.264 ready for DVD with a used DVD recorder is another option as Eric-Jan mentions you should not plan on editing and then re-compressing the result because you will get a loss in video quality every time its re-compressed. But if your not planning on post-editing and "tuning up" the resulting video.. then its acceptable for most people. -- and recently you can now capture this way and not even have to burn DVDs.. just capture direct to hard disk files and skip the PC entirely. But it depends on where your going.. if you need Uncompressed capture to catch every bit of resolution.. and plan to playback on a big screen HDTV.. this would not be a good path.
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  #6  
10-13-2019, 02:05 PM
themaster1 themaster1 is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul77 View Post
Thanks. I will go through and try tweaking whatever settings I can find.

Is there any particular video capture software that you would recommend?
try virtualdub that's generally the best for capturing (that's in: " File>capture avi") then there is a bunch of settings to fine tune before doing anything (enable overlay , set custom format to 720x480 for ntsc, in YUY2 (not rgb!!) etc...
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