Hello all,
This is a long question, so please bear with me. I am in PAL world.
My set-up:
JVC HR-S7600AM S-VHS VCR (with built-in TBC and 3D-NR)
Canopus ADVC 110
ATI TV Wonder 600 USB (Ordered, but yet to receive)
Seagate 2 TB harddrive (USB 2.0, Externally powered)
My goal:
To archive family VHS videos in the most fool-proof & future-proof manner with my current hardware.
My current approach:
Captured some of the VHS tapes with Canopus ADVC-110, created DVD-Video discs, and also stored the DV files on MiniDV tapes.
My (changed) approach after going through this site for a couple of years:
1. Capture the VHS using the ATI 600 USB,
VirtualDub,
Huffyuv in uncompressed format
Question: Is Huffuv okay, or I need to go for the FREE Matrox's version of uncompressed SD Codec? Also, capture at what resolution for being future-proof, considering I might put multipe VHS into one Blue-ray disc when I buy Blue-ray in the future?
2. Filter the video using
VirtualDub, burn the DVD-Video discs (multiple copies to be stored in multiple physical locations)
3. For archival purpose (in addition to the above), store the uncompressed video on hard drive.
4. For archival purpose (in addition to the above), convert the uncompressed video using Matrox's FREE MPEG-2 I-Frame-only at 25 Mbps and store on a different hard drive.
Question: Is 25 Mbps the correct & sufficient bitrate? In that case, wouldn't it be the same as DV quality? (going by DV birate of 25 Mbps) File size would be similar to DV? (13 Gb per hour)
Question: Can we also use the Matrox MPEG-2 codec to encode video to DVD?? I guess not, but just checking...
Question: In future, can we convert this to Blueray without much quality loss (if the uncompressed video is lost)?
5. For archival purpose, convert the uncompressed video into DV-AVI (using the FREE Matrox DV/DVCAM Codec) and store them on MiniDV tapes.
Question: Isn't Canopus ADVC-110 good enough for this bit (capturing VHS to DV directly) rather than converting the uncompressed video using Matrox DV Codec? Is Matrox DV Codec superior to Canopus Hardware DV Codec? (I know I asked this question earlier and got the answer that Canopus is inferior to Matrox DV.) Also I need to consider the 0-255 versus 15-235??? (I don't understand this bit entirely, but I know it means something).
Thanks very much for the wisdom generated by this site. I will surely update my progress on this thread as I go along. This is going to be a long project for me, especially with restoration work that needs to be done.