Hi everyone,

Ive been getting stuck in to this amazing forum but i fear my head is about to explode.

Im a complete novice at capturing VHS but im in dyer need of capturing 243 classic skateboard videos.

Dont shoot me down to bad but i bought a £10 USB converter cable which comes with software haha.. Ive captured 5/6 videos to .mpg but there obviously pretty bad quality and i dont want to carry on without improving this.

Ive read about:

S-VHS VCRs
single amplifiers
vhs converter
virtualDub software

I guess my question is as a hobbyest what would be a good setup without breaking the bank?

Thanks for your help, ill be reading some more tonight..

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Ok I’ve decided to dig deep and go for a JVC HR TBC VCR. If anything I can use it for my tapes and sell it.

My tapes are a mix of PAL and NTSC, is there a machine I should be concentrating on?

The only VCRs that play both PAL and NTSC are low-end (yet expensive) consumer decks made by Panasonic (and rebadged by others like Samsung). With the exception of a rare, impossible-to-find JVC deck.

So you'd want to get both a quality NTSC deck, and a quality PAL deck.

Most of the JVC with-TBC S-VHS models are what you want.

Thanks, problem is most of the videos don’t have an indication of what they are haha

A good vcr or passthrough device (dvd recorder) are very important, but an other aspect is also the computer & OS you are working on, for an un-interrupted "capture stream" so you don't get any dropped frames, when you have dropped frames, you notice this, because you loose sound sync, so the capture is not lipp sync anymore.
Recordings should also have been recorded at normal recording speed, otherwise the sync would be very hard to follow by your capture device, expect a lot of flak about your capture device here, but if you have a beefy PC and OS, it might not be as bad as expected.
Also read more posts about capturing, to get a good idea about it, when you try to give good detailed information about your setup, software, & hardware you're using, then you can get the right answers quickly.
Most of the good capture devices advised here are legacy devices, and don't run on windows10, so a new "USB dongle" will be a hit or mis, so expect some duds in this catagory.
The more semi pro capture devices will work on windows10, but will be exspensive.

What about "Quasi-NTSC playback function" in S-VHS Panasonic VCRs?

The quasi-signal cannot be captured, merely watched on a TV.

Captures must be in a format. The quasi signal is not to any format specs.

This is hard to capture = NTSC50 = NTSC with 50 Hz frame rate,

Sometimes this is only over the RF (antenna) output, not over SCART or RCA, but this depends on the VCR make,
i know only from the panasonic ES35V it outputs pure PAL and pure NTSC so not PAL60 or NTSC50
You must use the RCA video connection(s)
converting is something you don't want to, play/capture PAL as PAL play/capture NTSC as NTSC, your capture you can play anywhere

Thanks for your advice.
here my computers specs:

OS 10
Core I7 - 6500U CPU @2.50Ghz
8Gb Ram
NVIDA GeForce 940MX

doesn't really mean alot to me haha

"Quasi-NTSC playback function" transcodes NTSC to PAL 60, NOT NTSC 50. PAL 60 can be captured by SAA713x and Conexant 2388x - so it’s as easy as pie.

I guess you also have an amount of SSD storage for your captures:)
I just edited my previous post with some more details..
Don't know your RAM is enough nowadays, because i'm on a MacBookPro (good old model) which works great with my Intensty Shuttle, a recorder combo or a dvd recoder as passthrough, is a good way to start capturing, you capture not with those :)

But PAL-60 isn't a format.
It's all blurry and aliased/zig-zaggy anyway. Ugly output, ugly captures.

The plot thickens :unsure:

With my £10 ebay capturing device 3 videos havent worked at all out of 15, i can live with afew duds really.

What capturing device would you suggest for my system?

I guess it was only meant as a go-between for a device and a CRT TV.... the CRT TV was more forgiven, things might even be worse for NTSC ? more or less lines conversion ?
always it's best to use the pure formats.

Attachment 12452

attached -LS

Try some different ones you can get hold off, you never will get a perfect result, but you can come close that way, i know my brother bought one which wasn't that bad, i must check with him which one he has, but you need a multi-system vcr that way, that will playback pure PAL or pure NTSC, the recordings are your own recordings ? so not pre-recorded out of the store tapes ? because pre-recorded tapes could have MacroVision, a protection system that most devices are supporting.

A cheap Chinese eBay/Amazon device never works well. You want something like the ATI 600 USB.

That's exactly it.

Please attach images to posts, don't hotlink.

Interesting image, but still not sure it's accurate. What devices have that chipset?

ATI AIW captures various PALs, but I don't remember it doing well with NTSC tapes in PAL decks. I can easily re-test this sometime soon.

The "Image" are the specs of a chip/IC that is used, a manufactor can decide not to use some features, to make the product cheap.
You need the specs and features of the (complete) capture device, ....and even then you don't know what to expect,
user experiences are always the best, but in combination with the exact same setup, so... the devil is in the details, like they say.
You also mentioned ... converters better not start with those to start with, you make it more complex that way, converters are mostly hit or mis, and reduce quality, sometimes a converter can bypass protection scemes as a by-product.
having a suitable vcr or passthrough device is a better option, and even cheaper too, so checking the thrift stores, and a search on the internet for more info.

Thanks i understand. Ill get a good VCR and a ATI 600 USB and see how i go. I think most of my vids are Pal so will concentrate on them to start with.

All my 243 tapes are pre recorded skateboard videos i sold in my shop, pretty much one of every video that came out between 97-01, a perk of having a skateboard shop enabled me to have one of each to play in the shop to promote sales. These videos have a small production really compared to mainstream films so i doubt much protection is built into them.

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Is ATI 600 USB the same as a ATI TV Wonder 600 USB??

Many capture devices can capture the signal, but you ideally want something with TBC functionality that can deal with it which those cards dont do. Conexant-based ones are especially bad for direct vcr output as they start struggling very easily. The philips/NXP-based ones may be okay if the tape doesn't contain lots of horizontal wiggling, those chips are very good at locking to the signal (henche related chips are used in cypress/datavideo TBCs), but they don't have functionality for correcting horizontal instability (line-TBC/velocity correction or whatever other name the manufacturer would use).

The AVT-8710 can handle NTSC 4.43, but not PAL60 (at least the bad black ones but I would assume the good ones do too.) Datavideo TBCs are not set up to deal with those. Newer PAL DVRs from Pioneer/Sony with NEC chips can accept PAL60, NTSC 4.43, and 3.58, and output either normal NTSC or PAL60 for capture without issue. They have some TBC functionality to correct wiggle and tearing, though not as robust as panasonic DVRs. PAL60/NTSC 4.43 shouldn't cause any aliasing or jagging, it's only the color that's upconverted to a higher frequency than normal, and in case of one of them the color encoding is changed a bit as well. Converting NTSC to normal PAL will of course look like crap since resolution and framerate are different, so that you want to avoid.

PAL Panasonic DVRs can also accept NTSC, but only standard NTSC, so passing the video through that for stabilization is an option if you are in PAL land and have a VCR with proper ntsc 3.58 output.

In PAL land there are number of multi-system VCRs beside the mentioned Samsung/Panasonic worldwide VCR ones, that are not as outrageously priced since they didn't feature full format conversion and SECAM (example, though this one is a clunky late-model panasonic). They were especially widespread in eastern europe, middle east and south-east asia, but I've seen a fair number of used ones for sale in western europe as well. There are a handful of proper multi-system SVHS ones from JVC but those are extremely rare.

Thanks i 70% follow you haha. Ive seen Panosonic NV-HS950 at a reasonable price and looks to be in perfect working order. Cheaper than JVC thats for sure..