#1  
04-10-2020, 08:48 PM
scotth scotth is offline
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I've recently undertaken the task of trying to capture some of my mother's old VHS tapes to digital. Almost all of them are old VHS camcorder tapes. I think one of them is a copy of an old TV documentary that would be cool to do as well.

The VCR that my mother has is a Philips DVP3340V DVD/VCR combo. It does not seem to be the best quality. It certainly does not have a TBC. It only has a composite output for the VCR.

I started without doing much research and got an Elgato Video Capture USB device for cheap and it seems to be working ok for me. I was not very happy with the Elgato software, which seems to be at least applying it's own lossy compression (it outputs as mp4), deinterlacing, and cropping, resulting in a pretty blurry output. This led me down the VirtualDub/Avisynth rabbit hole, thanks mostly to this site.

One of the reasons I got the Elgato, as opposed to a dedicated video capture card, is that I don't currently have the ability to budget hundreds of dollars on this endeavor. However, I would like to maximize my bang for my buck and get the best video that I can out of it, within reason.

I did not have luck capturing in VirtualDub with the Elgato, as I've seen quite a few reports of online. The audio was significantly out of sync by the end of a 45 minute recording with the Timing Menu drop/add frame defaults on. With them off, it was totally out of sync even at the beginning of the video, with no reported dropped frames. So, I used AmaRecTV instead, and it seems to have worked great, the audio is in sync.

I've captured the first tape to an avi with the huffyuv compression. Then, I've just used QTGMC to deinterlace it for viewing on the PC. I'm much happier with that result than what came out of the Elgato software. I'm interested in trying to improve that further, but definitely have a lot more to learn.

Can I significantly improve my capture by purchasing a better used VCR and/or DVD pass-through for less than $200 or so? I know some people say not to buy from places like eBay, but I'm not sure where else I would get something like this. I'm not afraid of trying to do my own maintenance/repairs (with a guide at least). I'm fairly handy and am competent at soldering, but I don't have a significant amount of experience troubleshooting electronics with unknown issues.

I attached a screen shot example of the difference in quality I have achieved so far with my efforts. (edit:hmm, it seems to have scaled down a bit on upload and isn't quite as obvious as the original screen shot)

Any and all advice on going further (or what i've done wrong) is more than welcome. Thanks!


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  #2  
04-11-2020, 01:14 AM
jwillis84 jwillis84 is offline
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One tip with what you have.

Be sure to "turn off " (Enable audio playback) while capturing.

By default VirtualDub does not enable audio playback and people spend a lot of time figuring out how to turn it on.

Its not turned off by mistake.

Audio playback is only for "Level setting" or checking if the audio mics or source is "Loud" enough to the capture device.

Once its set it should be turned off.

If you leave it on, your computer will spend half its time capturing and half its time playing back and "loose" audio sync with the picture.

Never mind the reasons, never mind some people say "works for me" or "no sync loss if I only capture 2 minutes of video"

Its easy enough to try for yourself.
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  #3  
04-11-2020, 04:29 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Don't expect good results with Elgato. It's junk and has been discussed many many many times in this forum and others. DVD/VHS combos are amo9ng the world's worst tape players, so don't get too excited about results from those components.

Why are you deinterlacing? Most decent media players and TVs can deinterlace better than you can. Almost all PC media players deinterlace by default, except VLC player (you have to activate deinterlacing by going into its preferences menu). Windows Media Player is a poor player and notorious for poor deinterlacing. Bad interlace noise is also common with DVD/VHS combo players and no tbc correction.

Thank you for the sample image. If this were a still photo forum for something like Adobe Photoshop we'd be able to give you a lot of advice. But this is a video forum. You can detect a few obvious points from still photos, but not much. Please look at "How to create a short sample in VirtualDub from a lossless AVI capture."

Your sample image was probably downsampled because it's too large for posting in this forum and in other similar forums. If you look at your forum screen along the top headings and banners, and move toward the right-hand border and just below the login section, you'll see a link for "How to Upload/View/Download Images & Attachments."

Last edited by sanlyn; 04-11-2020 at 04:44 AM.
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  #4  
04-11-2020, 06:40 AM
scotth scotth is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jwillis84 View Post
One tip with what you have.

Be sure to "turn off " (Enable audio playback) while capturing.

By default VirtualDub does not enable audio playback and people spend a lot of time figuring out how to turn it on.

Its not turned off by mistake.

Audio playback is only for "Level setting" or checking if the audio mics or source is "Loud" enough to the capture device.

Once its set it should be turned off.

If you leave it on, your computer will spend half its time capturing and half its time playing back and "loose" audio sync with the picture.

Never mind the reasons, never mind some people say "works for me" or "no sync loss if I only capture 2 minutes of video"

Its easy enough to try for yourself.
I don't believe I had audio preview on, I couldn't even get the video preview in VirtualDub to show up for some reason, though it worked fine, and synced in AmaRecTV.
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  #5  
04-11-2020, 07:05 AM
scotth scotth is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Don't expect good results with Elgato. It's junk and has been discussed many many many times in this forum and others. DVD/VHS combos are amo9ng the world's worst tape players, so don't get too excited about results from those components.
You mean the capture device or software or both? Clearly the software is junk, the hardware seems functional, but will I get a better capture in some way with another device?

For VCR/TBC, is there something you'd recommend I get, with the budget I listed?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Why are you deinterlacing? Most decent media players and TVs can deinterlace better than you can. Almost all PC media players deinterlace by default, except VLC player (you have to activate deinterlacing by going into its preferences menu). Windows Media Player is a poor player and notorious for poor deinterlacing. Bad interlace noise is also common with DVD/VHS combo players and no tbc correction.
I was deinterlacing because otherwise it was difficult to compare to the results of the Elgato capture software, as the interlaced image doesn't look great for viewing on my desktop either.

The results when I manually turn on deinterlacing in VLC don't seem to be as clear (at least for still frames) as the results I get from AviSynth. Perhaps that is because of my VCR and how bad the interlace noise is?

I can't get the huffyuv codec to work in WMP anyway for some reason, so I'm not using it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Thank you for the sample image. If this were a still photo forum for something like Adobe Photoshop we'd be able to give you a lot of advice. But this is a video forum. You can detect a few obvious points from still photos, but not much. Please look at "How to create a short sample in VirtualDub from a lossless AVI capture."

Your sample image was probably downsampled because it's too large for posting in this forum and in other similar forums. If you look at your forum screen along the top headings and banners, and move toward the right-hand border and just below the login section, you'll see a link for "How to Upload/View/Download Images & Attachments."
Thanks, I'll try to get some better samples up later today.
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  #6  
04-11-2020, 08:37 AM
msgohan msgohan is offline
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http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/news...nterlaced.html

Please add your location to your Profile. Doesn't have to be exact city if you're not comfortable sharing that info.

If you were in LA or another city with a lot of video production, you would probably have an easy time finding a good VCR locally. Not so much if you're in a town of 300 in Alaska...

Local is better than online sales since you can test equipment and you don't risk shipping damage/loss. And it's usually cheaper for a number of reasons, including the seller not needing to account for eBay/PayPal's steep cuts.

Estate sales can be a goldmine, if you have a way to search listings remotely.

Here in Vancouver and its suburbs, the library systems offer "digitization stations". Maybe something to check into in your area. The VHS VCRs they use here are just crappy Funai-produced models like your mom's, because that's all that was on the market when they set these up. But the downtown branch somehow acquired and maintains an expensive discontinued Video Walkman for 8mm formats (Sony GV-D800).
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  #7  
04-11-2020, 10:40 AM
scotth scotth is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by msgohan View Post
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/news...nterlaced.html

Please add your location to your Profile. Doesn't have to be exact city if you're not comfortable sharing that info.

If you were in LA or another city with a lot of video production, you would probably have an easy time finding a good VCR locally. Not so much if you're in a town of 300 in Alaska...

Local is better than online sales since you can test equipment and you don't risk shipping damage/loss. And it's usually cheaper for a number of reasons, including the seller not needing to account for eBay/PayPal's steep cuts.

Estate sales can be a goldmine, if you have a way to search listings remotely.

Here in Vancouver and its suburbs, the library systems offer "digitization stations". Maybe something to check into in your area. The VHS VCRs they use here are just crappy Funai-produced models like your mom's, because that's all that was on the market when they set these up. But the downtown branch somehow acquired and maintains an expensive discontinued Video Walkman for 8mm formats (Sony GV-D800).
Sorry, I updated it. I can't find much about digitation stations at my local libraries. We have something called a digital studio at one of them and they say they have a "VHS to DVD Converter" but nothing more specific than that. I'll have to wait until they open back up if I want to check it out.
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  #8  
04-11-2020, 10:41 AM
scotth scotth is offline
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Would the AIW USB 600 clone be a significant upgrade for capturing?
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