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05-17-2019, 03:27 PM
jharmon203 jharmon203 is offline
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First, my apologies for creating another thread on this. I did search these forums quite a bit, but I could not find an "updated" thread with regards to current SSD prices and software presets. I searched mini DV, vhs, and other things on this forum, but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Lord Smurf I have read a ton of your responses and you have some great information so thanks for all your time you have already put into posting.

I have finally gotten serious about getting all my family VHS tapes and MiniDV tapes on my hard drives. I wanted to create a solution that future proofs the archive with regards to non-deteriorating media format that is also easily accessible. I decided to basically create external hard drives out of the cheapest M.2 SSDs that I can find. WD blue series seems to be a good option. I will give an external SSD to several family members with all the videos sorted in folders and the like. This way they can easily click on whatever video they want to watch and easily sort through content.

I don't like the idea of using DVDs, blue ray, or any type of media that requires careful handling and storage. Disc media scratches and degrades overtime. Non-volatile storage like SSDs carry a bit more of a premium price vs HDD, but not like they used to and they will have a far better life expectancy that an HDD.

Feel free to refute my thoughts or findings.

I used a Canopus 110 to convert the VHS

I used a miniDV camcorder with firewire port to get the miniDV tapes.

Now to my questions:

1) Do you really see any reason not to compress the footage into H.264 format? I have zero plans to make any additional media cuts or anything artsy and I am fairly confident any family member won't really care either. They would rather just have a video clip to click on and enjoy.

2) I have adobe premiere CC 2019. I know it's been said on here that adobe isn't really recommended for the captures. Has it gotten better at all? Will it really be that bad to use this software. How will I notice if it isn't doing a good job.

3) I was planning on upconverting both VHS and MiniDV to 1080. I have tested this out already and it appears decent enough. (probably some of you are out there cringing already) What presets or settings would you recommend for both vhs and mini for the upconvert on these? Or or what settings in general from adobe would you recommend? Or perhaps even another program.

If you made it to the end and plan to offer advice, congrats and thanks a ton from this newbie!
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  #2  
05-17-2019, 06:52 PM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Glad to help.

The Canopus was a mistake. You lost 50% of the color data/quality, if NTSC video (North America).

Never use external USB drives for capture. You'll get dropped frames. Yes, even on SSD. The bottleneck is USB, not the HDD/SSD. Yes, that includes USB3/3.1.

SSD actually has less lifespan than HDD, but it doesn't matter as much as using multiple media. HDD/SSD + optical. Because you can never have too many backups. Good backup policy insists multiple media types be used.

H.264 is a delivery format, meaning it can never really be edited. It's lossy. At worst, keep a high bitrate 15mbps MPEG-2 file. I guess you can compress to higher bitrate H.264, meaning better than Youtube, and using quality software. NOT HANDBRAKE! I strongly suggest learning selur's Hybrid, and use it. Amazing freeware, and I actually find myself using it more than MainConcept lately ($$$ payware).

Do not capture with Premiere. VirtualDub is better. But you're using a low-quality Canopus DV box, so WinDV is suggested. Or Scenalyzer.

Don't upconvert. It gets worse, never better. Leave it max SD, 720x480 resolution. You will never upscale as well as a TV. Let the TV upscale if it must.

You're definitely headed down the wrong path. Hopefully this gets you veering back on a good path.

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  #3  
05-17-2019, 07:19 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
First, my apologies for creating another thread on this. I did search these forums quite a bit,
As far as I can tell from your post, you might have read "quite a bit" but you either misread most of it or you were mistaking another forum for this one. Don't attribute your methods to this forum's advice. Except for using a DV camera and Firewire for MiniDV source, you have used none of the recommendations, guides, or methods advised in this forum. I felt it necessary to caution our readers that none of the advanced users here would advise doing anything with video that you've done so far except store your low quality videos on SSD.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
I used a Canopus 110 to convert the VHS
Whatever makes you happy. We recommend against it. Always have. Always will.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
Do you really see any reason not to compress the footage into H.264 format?
At this point it doesn't matter. If they don't have a DV codec on their PC or TV, they won't be able to play any of this stuff anyway. You'll have to go with something more universal such as MPEG or h.264. DV codecs don't come with PC's any more since Pentium III died and DVD/h.264 took over digital video. Some PC media players will handle it, some software editors come with it, but the internet won't accept it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
I am fairly confident any family member won't really care either.
That reveals more than you know. But we do get that what you're saying is that the less you care about the material, the more they'll enjoy it. That could be true. No one here can say.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
I have adobe premiere CC 2019. I know it's been said on here that adobe isn't really recommended for the captures. Has it gotten better at all?
. No.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
Will it really be that bad to use this software. How will I notice if it isn't doing a good job.
You won't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
I was planning on upconverting both VHS and MiniDV to 1080. I have tested this out already and it appears decent enough. (probably some of you are out there cringing already)
I started cringing a long time back, but this just made me laugh. Why would anyone spend money and time with displays and TV and whatnot that can't upscale to fit a screen? It must be a lot of trouble to have to upscale every DVD and TV program that doesn't come into your house as 1080.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
What presets or settings would you recommend for both vhs and mini for the upconvert on these? Or or what settings in general from adobe would you recommend? Or perhaps even another program.
You spent all that money on Adobe, and you don't know how to resize with it? What you do is click on the menus until you find something that says "resize". Better yet, since you're paying for this baby, try the user's guide.

And yes, Adobe is very mediocre at upscaling SD material, which you shouldn't be doing in the first place. What you should be using is nnedi3_rpow2 and Spline36Resize in Avisynth. If you've been reading as much here here as you say you have, you would see it described and demonstrated in some posts over the past few days.

Sorry about all this, but we really don't want to leave our readers with the impression that what you describe is what we would recommend. If it makes you happy, fine.
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  #4  
05-17-2019, 07:42 PM
jharmon203 jharmon203 is offline
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I appreciate the feedback from both of you. Let me address a few things here:

1) I do not intend to mislead anyone on here as to what I read. I did searches on minidv, vhs, encoding, upscaling, etc. Many of the threads were a bit old so I wasn't sure if a few things were updated. Again if I failed with my search I apologize and appreciate the feedback.

2) With the storage of hard drives being a bunch cheaper if that was just an acceptable option. While the SSD media is more limited on write cycles, it doesn't have any moving parts. Mechanical parts tend to fail first. This

3) My father purchased the canopus ADVC 110 box quite a while ago as, if I remember correctly, it was the only model at the time that didn't have sync issues with the audio and video. I did a search on this site for that model to see what recommendations there were and the responses that I found were to basically stay away from the 300 and that the 110 would be ok, but that the TBC-1000 was a better option but is difficult to find. This is why I proceeded with the canopus box. Or is something else recommended.

4) All of my captures were done on internal hard drive via firewire. I must have mis-spoke on something. I am just transferring them to external hard drives after I complete the import.

5) I thought maybe if I up scaled in premiere, the TV wouldn't have to do the work and it might be a better product. This probably shows my complete ignorance.

6) "That reveals more than you know. But we get your point: the less you care about the material, the more they'll enjoy it." You are probably correct on this and I don't know what it reveals but I guess I felt the most important thing was getting the video converted in the first place. It takes a ton of time and now I am reading that I used the wrong gear. Heart sinks a bit on this, but correction is still possible and I am trying to learn.

7) I do know how to resize with adobe, but I was wondering if anyone had any settings recommendation in this program for the export like de-interlacing, or anything really. There is alot of terminology I don't know and I am trying to learn. The sponge in my mind is soaked and trying to soak up more. I came to this website thinking that adobe might be a good software to use as that's what was introduced to me years ago so I figured it was a good program to use.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your valuable time and energy in posting. I DO want to produce a good video memories project for my family, I was just trying to get it in a format that was easy for them to access that that's the number one goal. No DVD players really anymore, no blu-ray, but hooking a hard drive into a smart tv is certainly something they can and will do. I just like the idea of having everything in one device and duplicated to be stored in many houses.
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  #5  
05-17-2019, 11:10 PM
traal traal is offline
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I think 1080p for DV is overkill, but Apple Compressor is pretty good at deinterlacing and upscaling DV to 720p. H.264 is fine as a distribution format but always archive the original capture file!
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  #6  
05-19-2019, 02:32 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by traal View Post
I think 1080p for DV is overkill, but Apple Compressor is pretty good at deinterlacing and upscaling DV to 720p. H.264 is fine as a distribution format but always archive the original capture file!
1080, 720, 4K, 8K ... all pointless for VHS. No reasoning for any upscaling. The only exemption is because you're making a mixed-source edit project, usually a documentary. Those are often not just different resolutions, but framerates, or even PAL/NTSC/SECAM. It gets messy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jharmon203 View Post
Many of the threads were a bit old so I wasn't sure if a few things were updated.
With video capture, nothing has really changed in 10 years.

Quote:
While the SSD media is more limited on write cycles, it doesn't have any moving parts. Mechanical parts tend to fail first.
Both SSD and HDD can fail from storage (lack of use).

Quote:
3) My father purchased the canopus ADVC 110 box quite a while ago as, if I remember correctly, it was the only model at the time that didn't have sync issues with the audio and video. I did a search on this site for that model to see what recommendations there were and the responses that I found were to basically stay away from the 300
Worth mentioning: I'm not entirely anti-DV, but you must understand you're losing lots of data (with NTSC). And there are better methods. For varying reason, sometimes DV is forced on you (work, boss), or the only option (usually Mac). As I always mention, DV conversion was made for Pentium III computers in the 90s. It's been obsolete since lossless in the 00s.

Quote:
and that the 110 would be ok, but that the TBC-1000 was a better option but is difficult to find.
The statement makes no sense. The Canopus is a DV converter (capture box), the TBC-1000 is a TBC. Completely different items. A quality workflow needs an external TBC, and workflow requires a capture card/box/stick.

Quote:
5) I thought maybe if I up scaled in premiere, the TV wouldn't have to do the work and it might be a better product.
Nope.

Quote:
6) "That reveals more than you know. But we get your point: the less you care about the material, the more they'll enjoy it."
I'm glad you understand that. I don't.

I give every video my best capture treatment. Otherwise what's the point of capturing it at all? (Only my software restoration work is rationed, for most important tapes, or if paid.)

Quote:
It takes a ton of time and now I am reading that I used the wrong gear. Heart sinks a bit on this, but correction is still possible and I am trying to learn.
Video takes time. And you still have time for a course correction.

Some of your existing capture may be fine, or "good enough" (a term I dislike most of the time, as it's often used as an excuse to makes crap). Post them, let us look. Probably not. But maybe. I'm all for saving work, though not at the expense of doing a good job.

Quote:
7) I do know how to resize with adobe, but I was wondering if anyone had any settings recommendation in this program for the export like de-interlacing, or anything really.
Do not deinterlace.

Quote:
There is alot of terminology I don't know and I am trying to learn. The sponge in my mind is soaked and trying to soak up more. I came to this website thinking that adobe might be a good software to use as that's what was introduced to me years ago so I figured it was a good program to use.
Adobe is an excellent NLE, I use it often. For editing. Not capture, not restoring. Premiere is a tool. Use the correct tool for the task at hand. Don't beat a nail with a screwdriver, and don't beat a screw with a hammer.

Quote:
but hooking a hard drive into a smart tv
Just FYI, this is often a nightmare as well. Smart TV are really dumb. Terrible integrated players. Even a Chinese-made generic media player box is better almost always.

Quote:
I just like the idea of having everything in one device and duplicated to be stored in many houses.
Me too. Get those 5tb USB3 HDD from Seagate.
https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Porta...language=en_US

Quote:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your valuable time and energy in posting.
Glad to help you.

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  #7  
05-19-2019, 12:41 PM
sdf1 sdf1 is offline
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Hi lordsmurf,

Thank you for all your help, it is greatly appreciated! In regards to that VCR that you sold for me, can you check your private messages? Thanks!
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