Tapes to capture/transfer, hardware/software to use, need guidance

[colony]

Hello All,

Although still a vinyl "analog" type, it is past time to convert some of my sizeable tape collection, including:
- VHS (regular recordings, not S-Video) recorded from NTSC and PAL TV, mostly with Hitachi multi-system VCRs
- One VHS (NTSC) family tape recorded with camcorder
- Hi8 and Digital 8 family recordings (all NTSC)
- Mini DV family tapes (all NTSC)

First, I only know enough about these subjects to be dangerous (to myself!), but allow me to plow on.

My working playback hardware/software:
- JVC HR-S7900U for NTSC
- JVC HR-S7611EU for PAL
- Sony DCR-TRV110 Digital 8 camera, which also plays Hi8
- Canon ZR930 Mini DV camera
- Philips DVDR 80 DVD recorder with digital and S-Video in ports

PC - HP Core i7 w/Windows 7 and the usual ports incl. Firewire,
with Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1850 card installed

Software: Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite, Ver. 12

The HVR-1850 with S-Video input and MPEG 2 capture is, I know, a compromise.

I would like the capability to at least experiment with higher quality capture and conversion to double layer DVD. From what I read, this means capture to AVI format for other than digital transfers.

It appears that there are no currently produced AVI capture cards/devices on the market, but would welcome viable recommendations.

Ref. TBC: My S-VCRs have it onboard. I know a separate TBC device is part of the serious conversion toolkit and do want to make a qualitative difference in my final discs. However, given the difficulty and cost in obtaining a decent machine (e.g. TBC-1000 Green?), how much of a difference will it visibly produce as part of the process?

Ref. Software: Virtual Dub appears to be essential for AVI processing, if one has an AVI capture device?

Your thoughts/help would be appreciated.

[lordsmurf]

You're actually not off to a bad start.
- VCRs are good models.
- cameras look good
- good system, OS
- good consumer NLE (Vegas Studio)

That DVD recorder is pretty useless for this task. It predates LSI chipsets (best for tapes), has the nasty Philips encoder (look lousy even at XP/1-hour), and I believe it also has some nasty IRE/gamma/brightness issues like most others from 2001-2002 era. It'll make your tapes look worse if you use it. I'd not even use it for recording TV that you want to keep. It's part player, part temp record, and part paperweight.

The capture card is blah, part of the PVR generation of devices that mostly overlooked analog. The earlier Hauppauge PVR-250/350 (not 150!!!) was better. The problem with Hauppauge is they reuse the model for different hardware, so I'd almost need to see samples, in order to say whether the card is good, decent, or something that should be yanked out entirely.

You can get good USB cards for lossless capture -- and I have a couple for sale, too.
Yes, VirtualDub is the tool for AVI capturing.

I'm not anti-MPEG capture whatsoever, but it need to do done with a good recorder or capture card. Otherwise just capture lossless and encode out to the better-than-DVD 15mbps MPEG2 specs. The ATI AIW Radeon AGP/PCI/PCIe/USB is awesome, but you require XP. And then LSI recorders (and just FYI, I think I may part with one of mine, just haven't put it in marketplace yet).

Yes, TBC is costly and HTF for the good models, but worth it. But there are some psuedo TBC(ish) methods to get the same results. It's not as costly, still some costs, but there are some slight quality issues and other problems you can run into, especially with retail tapes and non-retail with really bad timing issues. Anyhow, external TBC is not for the picture, almost no visual improvements. It's to purify/fix the signal so it can be captured without issues. Without some signal correction in the chain, and realizing that the JVC VCR TBCs are just for the image quality and not signal, capture can be anywhere from problematic to impossible. So that's what it's for.

As I said, good start, just a final few pieces to sort out.

[colony]

Thanks, will be looking for another capture device and maybe do workarounds for TBC. Appreciate the help!

[Feedbucket]

You should be able to output as a Directshow device, so Virtualdub is an option.

Just wanted to share this: I've got the HVR-1600, which is pretty much the PCI version of the 1850, and something I just found out in the past week is that there's an option called something like "Optimize for VHS" you can toggle which will help keep the frames synced with the audio. Haven't tested extensively as I don't want to keep on re-capturing the one tape I have, but I found that when checked it almost completely eliminated dropped frames -- using AmaRecTV the number of drops went down to 4 from about 40 over the course of 76 minutes. Capturing in Virtualdub and having it rely solely on the hardware for timing resulted in 0 drops and no noticeable weirdness with frame/audio corrections.

You may or may not need this with your VHS source -- mine was some old mid-range consumer model -- but I found it to be very effective for me, and it's another level of signal correction if you're looking for it. Only problem is that this seems to be accessible only in Windows XP. May be toggleable in later OS' via registry but I haven't tried.

[colony]

The 1850 came with WinTV 7 software, although I'm using it with WinTV6, which works and allows me to switch from NTSC to PAL. The "optimize" option you mention is not in WinTV6 and I don't recall it in 7. Not sure where else to look for it but thanks for bringing it to my attention; as well as the Virtualdub info.

[Eric-Jan]

- Sony DCR-TRV110 Digital 8 camera, which also plays Hi8
- Canon ZR930 Mini DV camera
These 2 you have, if they have DV/iLink out, and also composite in or s-video-in and you have a Firewire interface on your
pc or laptop, could be used as a capture device, others might not agree, about quality, but you can capture this way without dropped or black frames.

btw. you did not mention de tv system of the camcorders... PAL or NTSC ? important ofcourse for the tapes (NTSC).

[colony]

Thanks, Eric-Jan. Yes, I have transferred from both cameras via Firewire and edited on Movie Studio but have not yet rendered/authored to DVD. If I recall, both cameras are switchable from NTSC to PAL but have always used in NTSC.

[Eric-Jan]

Davinci Resolve (video editor) has a very advanced audio section/tab (Fairlight) you can improve the sound during post
Davinci Resolve is free. only very professional functions, like (video) noise reduction, or network options, are in the Davinci Resolve Studio version, even then the one time fee is not too high, but not needed.

[Feedbucket]

Quote:

Originally Posted by colony

The 1850 came with WinTV 7 software, although I'm using it with WinTV6, which works and allows me to switch from NTSC to PAL. The "optimize" option you mention is not in WinTV6 and I don't recall it in 7. Not sure where else to look for it but thanks for bringing it to my attention; as well as the Virtualdub info.

Yeah, I don't think it's exposed in WinTV... it's like a driver level sort of thing that I've only ever accessed as a device-specific option dialog in other capture programs. (In VirtualDub capture mode, Video > Capture Filter.) The option is called "Optimize for VCR". I've never bothered to examine WinTV's MPEG2 output to see if this is enabled internally -- it may well be, thus rendering the option to toggle it unnecessary -- but I think it's something worth knowing about if you're looking at using the card in some way that falls outside of Hauppauge's supported use cases.

[lordsmurf]

I've seen variations of that "optimzed for VCR" type options on many cards, but it generally does nothing discernible whatsoever. Interesting that you saw any improvements with that specific card.

[Feedbucket]

Yeah, thinking about it now it's entirely possible that the switch to XP alone was enough to stabilize things -- I didn't try capturing without it, just checked it off as soon as I started, thinking it couldn't hurt. "XP = good" may be the real takeaway here.