Hello everyone!
A month ago I thought VHS to Digital was a quick process that required little to no hardware and very little hands on time. As everyone here knows, converting VHS to digital (the right way) is not as simple as it sounds. I must say that without the amount of information on this forum contributed by the staff/members (lordsmurf/admin im looking at you
) I would of been at home with a craiglisted VCR and a $15 capture card doing everything the wrong way. There is so much valuable information on this website and I have learned a lot from it in this short amount of time. Without hesitation I have decided to donate and become premium member as my way of giving back to the website.
I finally decided that it is time to undertake this huge task which is converting all of our family VHS's to digital. This is a very important task to me, as many of these VHS tapes contain very precious memories of family moments (some of my father who had passed 10+ years ago). So not only is this project extremely important to me, it has been long overdue.
My project is a bit unique though, in the sense that I have a mixture of PAL & NTSC videos that need to be converted. Many of the videos (recorded by my father with a 1992 Hitachi VM-E31A 8mm video camera) were made in Canada/Israel/USA. I am going to also look for the 8mm tapes used in the cam recorder, but I think that might be a longshot and near impossible to find. Im not sure of the process he used to transfer the camera footage to VHS or which tapes are NTSC/PAL. So this job may be a bit tricky, and I know that it will require a little more equipment than a standard 1 format job.
To do everything the right way I needed the right tools to succeed and I am very satisfied with my purchases. All together out of pocket I spent short of $400 for fully working like new products (still planning on buying a PAL VCR though).
I have attached some photos to show what I will be working with.
Current Hardware:
JVC HR-S7800U w/ remote
DataVideo TBC-4000
ATI TV Wonder 600 USB 2.0
& currently looking at purchasing a PAL VCR (9700 / 7600 on ebay this weekend if I manage to find one within budget)
Choice of software so far:
VirtualDub
My workflow setup
[JVC HR-S7800U] --> [DataVideo TBC-4000] --> [ATI TV Wonder 600 USB] --> [PC].
Purpose of the project
To preserve & save everything in the highest possible quality (lossless), as well as making a separate DVD for my family out of some of the captured VHSs. I have a 2TB HD here so size is not a matter when it comes to storing the videos. Im thinking that my best bet is to capture everything to AVI and than later separately encode specific videos to MPEG-2 from the AVI for the DVD usage. If there is a better way to do this please let me know!
I am working with a Windows 8 64-bit computer, so hopefully no problems pop up. I have successfully installed the ATI 600 drivers and CMC (the installer was blank and didn’t seem like anything was responding or happening but it did successfully install in the background) with help of the sticky thread.
Since the nature of my project is a tad different than a standard capture job, as well as this being my first time ever doing anything of this sort id appreciate some input!
1. Basic cable question: In order to capture both video & audio what is the recommended cables? S-video all around connecting the VCR/TBC/Capture Card & than RCA audio cables to transfer the audio?
2. I have many unmarked tapes & I am not sure if they are PAL/NTSC. Would it hurt my tapes if I placed a PAL in a NTSC VCR or vice versa?
3. Since the ATI 600 can only convert NTSC in MPEG-2 with CMC should I just capture all of my PAL videos with
VirtualDub in AVI and then later encode to MPEG-2? Or would I need to purchase a new capture card all together?
4. The TBC-4000 doesn’t have a mention of PAL on it. The box says NTSC system. Does this mean that it will not work when I try to connect it to a PAL VCR? I know the TBC-1000 does both formats and I was hoping the 4000 did the same. I might have to purchase the AVT-8710 if this is the case, or maybe a TBC-1000 if I find a decent deal. If this is the case, I will use the 4000 for my NTSC tapes and the other for PAL.
5. Should TBC on my VCR still be active if im connected to the TBC-4000?
6. Any recommended settings to set my HR-S78000u, TBC-4000 & other software with before going ahead and capturing?
I am really looking forward to getting this project going and I appreciate all of the knowledge & help this forum has provided me with. Any recommendation or tips are always welcome as I am still familiarizing myself with this whole process!
Thanks
-- merged --
As of now I have added a few more items to my collection for the PAL side of things.
- TBC-1000
- JVC HR-S7600EU (practically new in box which should arrive in 2 weeks)
