I have some old VHS tapes (one from 1992, a few from 1998-99), the contents of which I want to put on DVD. I've converted VHS tapes to DVD for other people before, but since these tapes are for me personally, I want to make sure I'm getting the best possible quality.
For my previous projects, I used a JVC SR-VS30 connected to a StarTech SVID2USB23 (S-Video to USB capture device), and I recorded the output in OBS Studio. The StarTech capture device appears to have a native output resolution of 640x480, and I don't know if I can change it. I then burn the DVDs using a free program called DVDStyler. What are the best settings I can use on my VCR or in OBS to get the best quality video onto DVD? Or is there other free/very low cost software that I can use that would be better? I'm on a tight budget. -- merged -- After doing some further research, I found out that I can use the SR-VS30's DV out to connect it directly to my computer and capture in Premiere Pro, which seems to work pretty well so far. |
Are you planning on doing any restoration or correction?
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I'm still going to raise the volume level (the captured video peaks around -18 to -24; I usually go to -6) and try to get rid of a background buzzing noise in one section. I'm going to try to export the modified video as an MPEG-2 file so it can go directly onto a DVD without re-encoding (do I have that right?). I'd appreciate any advice on anything else I can do to improve quality. |
This thread isn't making any sense, and you may be making some huge mistakes here.
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Lossless capturing, not MPEG, not DV, etc. Take those master 4:2:2 captures, convert to other format copies for watching (keeping master), be it DVD or streaming/Youtube, etc. Quote:
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You've given me a lot to think about. I guess I've been imprecise in my usage of terms; when I said "interlacing artifacts" I was referring to what I understand is called "combing". I think this and the 640x480 output might be limitations of OBS.
I gave VirtualDub a try, and it appears to be just what I've been looking for. I did a test capture from DV to AVI and it looks great. In light of your comment about the loss of colour data, I wanted to try capturing the same footage through S-Video to compare and to see if the end result looks better than it did in OBS, but I can't get it to work. When I switch the input from DV to the StarTech capture device, I see the left 1/5 of the picture repeated 5 times, with half of the horizontal lines missing. (i would include a screenshot, but I can't seem to get that to work either.) This problem might be better suited to the "Capture, Record, Transfer" section. Should I post it there? |
Try changing from Overlay to Preview for the display if you didn't.
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This got me started for my first capture: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...-settings.html
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All right, I've finished capturing the first tape. Thanks for the help, everyone. I had about 30 dropped frames in 1 hour and 45 minutes of video; is this about what I should expect?
The only problem is that I'm seeing a lot of black (and sometimes) white flecks dancing across large areas of solid colour. Is this chroma noise, or something different? I understand that some VCRs have visual noise reduction features; is the JVC SR-VS30 one of them? Or is there a way to fix this after capturing to AVI? I have attached a couple screenshots of the worst examples. |
I would say that whether the dropped frames without frame TBC are expected depends on where they happen. In the middle of scenes with no apparent cause? They would be expected at the start of a new recording when the VCR is outputting a garbled signal, or during moments of vertical jitter.
Black specks: is this a TV recording or a pre-recorded retail release? |
The red channel is blown in both images, so the colors probably aren't accurate to what's on the tape.
Both screenshots are still 640x480. The white/black flecks seem to appear only in regions of red or orange, not in yellow or pink. If you see them even from the Firewire connection, maybe there's something in the VCR that's gone haywire, or auto tracking is turned off. If it's on, maybe try manual tracking and see if you can clear it up that way. |
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Before I started the first capture, I tried using a dry-type head cleaning tape that I had lying around. So either it didn't work or that wasn't the problem. What is the general sentiment toward those around here? |
Lord Smurf mentioned why Active Video Tracking should be turned off three years ago here:
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Do you have retail tapes with highly saturated colors to check whether you get black specks there? These ones could be part of the original TV recording.
You can seek to "Dropped Frames" in VirtualDub using SHIFT + ] to go forward or SHIFT + [ to go backward. But this will actually show you what VirtualDub's Capture mode calls Inserted Frames, i.e. frames which are duplicated. Frames which were skipped (called Dropped Frames in Capture mode) will just be missing from the capture and there's no automated way to find them. |
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