What parts to build PC to capture VHS/Hi8 tapes?
Hello there.
Looking for advice on the parts to buy for building a PC just to capture VHS/Hi8 tapes to lossless AVI Current Setup: Panasonic DMR-ES46V Canopus ADVC 100 Macbook Pro I spent quite a bit of time reading the forums and decided to try the Canopus ADVC route since I have a macbook. I wasn't very happy with the results. The DMR-ES46V has an HDMI out so I was able to see what both the captured video and the video direct from the VCR looked like on the same monitor. The difference between the two is quite clear. I'd read a lot references to this on the forum but seeing it in action makes a big difference. I'm looking at a budget of about $500. I have no experience building a PC from scratch but I do have experience with computers. -- merged -- I've decided to just buy the pieces and make things easier. I've ordered an an ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB and a relatively cheap PC. HP, 10th Generation i3, 8 GB RAM, Integrated Graphics Card, 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD. |
How do you like the captured VHS footage from the HDMI output? I'm picking up a used DMR-ES46V tomorrow. I'm excited to see the results as I'll be recording in near RAW from my Blackmagic field recorder.
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I didn't capture the VHS from the HDMI output. Here's my setup
Panasonic DMR-ES46V S-Video Out -> ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB S-Video In -> VirtualDub on Windows XP PC -> HuffYUV AVI The quality from that is fantastic. Really looks like a 1:1 copy. HuffYUV is lossless compression so you get much smaller files than RAW. I tried using Windows 10 but ran into some issues that went away when I switched to XP. The HDMI output from the DMR-ES46V looks great on a monitor but I'm not sure what you'll get if you try to capture that way. |
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Cool - thanks for the reply. Yeah, I'm gonna test run HDMI capture using ProRes HQ. I figure that the quality has to be pretty good since it's directly from the source to a modern-day digital field recorder (albeit lots of internal video processing from the VCR).
The attached jpg is my current workflow. Here's a sample of my footage with this method (ignore the intro stuff): Sample 1: https://youtu.be/pkG7Up11syQ Sample 2: https://youtu.be/5IOAzRlbJ-s When I setup the new ES46V tomorrow, I'll see if I can upload some HDMI capture samples from VHS! |
Looks like your workflow is designed to get the footage directly into Premiere so you can edit it. So that setup works for that case. The ES46V should fit right in. HDMI instead of S-Video is the main unknown here. I'm a bit surprised you were using a Betamax lol. But if it works it works.
The quality of the VHS footage in your Youtube videos is pretty good. The first video has some unexpected diagonal lines and that weird "turn this video into a painting" smoothing effect I'm not a fan of. I'm assuming that comes from the 4K Upscaler. The footage in the 2nd video looks really good. Although some of those jagged diagonal lines from the deinterlacer show up here and there. But that's only on close examination. |
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As it stands now, honestly, your footage is not enjoyable to watch. I'd just stop watching, and find something else on Youtube. I'm not going to insult my eyes and ears with bad quality. I'm not trying to be harsh here, just honest with you. And I hope you take it all in good stride, and learn to do better conversions. Read the forum, ask more questions, and we'll get you onto the path of quality video. Don't get defensive, pout.. Quote:
Edit with an NLE (non-linear editor). Don't capture with it. Import the captures in the NLE. Quote:
- There's lots of various noises, some of which are likely being caused by the setup, not something inherent on the source tape. - Interlace errors. - And I saw some places (that Japanese video especially) that were just unwatchably choppy with dropped frames. |
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Also, I'm not offended, although your comments are usually beyond curt at times, ha! Saying "I'm not going to insult my eyes and ears with bad quality" towards my work, then telling me to not get defensive is more humorous than insulting. I'm a grown man, I can take it. Just be sure not to be offended by me addressing what you said... Anyhow, I've actually come to you for help on several occasions over the last ten or so years on this forum, and you've been very helpful. I used a different username which I'm unfortunately not able to find the username I had used. Old age is getting to me. Quote:
I'm really curious about the ES46V internal HDMI upscaling though. Should be fun seeing how this late 2000's unit performs when capturing from a prosumer field recorder. What I love about my current workflow is that there's no computer or operating system involved in the capture process. Makes things really simple. I believe the diagonal lines are from the tape recording, as this artifact is not apparent in most of my VHS conversions, although I've seen it before on rare occasion. Here's a sample from the exact same capture workflow. I don't use any filters or the like in Premiere, so any weirdness in image quality is most likely directly from the tape recording. 1999 VHS tape capture - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCMF_T1t4pc&t=3s In that sample, the diagonal lines are not there, yet nothing changed in the VHS workflow. |
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My brevity is often due to time, and my difficulties typing. But lots of Youtubers are (1) easily "triggered" these days, and (2) require adoration. If you deviate from compliments, they get their panties in a wad. They don't take criticism well at all, and get defensive, dismissive, passive aggressive. So I often just cut to the chase: you're doing bad, let's help you fix it, and let's skip the usual defensive/excuse preface. Quote:
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For "interlaced" videos where fields are coming from the same istant in time (and then do not require to be deinterlaced) I do not process the fields and upload the 1440x1080 HuffYUV avi file directly. Youtube leaves them at 25 frames per second, and do not mess with the fields. Unfortunately the compression it applies (also on deinterlaced sources) is quite heavy, visible on the backgrounds. A sample here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5RLo6Ktqdg (however, also the original video master was not that good) |
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I've been tweaking my youtube workflow for over two years now and I settled on the following procedure: - Capture raw 4:2:2 HuffYUV 720x480 - save these as the master files. - De-interlace with QTGMC, crop to the bare active video area on all 4 corners and resize to 1440x1080 all in one script. - Save the project file along with the corresponding master file - Upload to youtube - Delete the huge processed file https://www.youtube.com/user/latoak34/videos |
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After the deinterlace to 480p, the "upscaling" is just a basic resize to 720p. The 1080i output is even more useless, since it requires a second deinterlace. The VCR side of these units is fed into the digitizer via composite. The result is the same as if you hooked up a cheap VCR to the external inputs. Unlike the other responses, I'm not against HDMI capture for VHS in general, but (with North American models) you have to be very careful to produce a result that isn't worse than a traditional lossless capture. Because there is no 480i option, I losslessly capture 480p from the HDMI output of my DVD recorders, and select the original fields in Avisynth. The result is the unmolested 480i. From there, further software processing can be applied as desired. |
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Edit: I mean lossless de-interlacing, not lossless compression |
For Youtube, I convert to 4:2:2 high bitrate H.264, before upload, and never upload a lossless. I'm honestly not sure I see the point of a lossless upload.
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For long videos (> 10 minutes), I also compress to x264 before uploading to youtube, with a crf=17.
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I upload full uncompressed, but I'm not convinced it makes any difference.
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Bob without (0.0,1.0) Yadiff without mode=1 MVBob MCBob TempGaussMC (father of QTGMC) ... Not important, everybody today is using QTGMC (except me using nnedi3, or QTGMC lossless, for material I want to filter spatial-temporally and interlace back at the end) |
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Yadif without mode=1 isn't a bobber, so that doesn't count. :) I forgot about Avisynth's own Bob at default settings! Touché. |
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