Preparing to transfer 100s of family videos, need advice!
 

Lordsmurf,

Firstly, thanks for all your posts over the years on all things video. Invaluable and so helpful!

I am planning a project to capture hundreds of family video tapes and would appreciate your advice confirming a practical and efficient workflow before beginning. I've read heaps but am mindful that lots of articles/posts are pre 2005 when storage and CPU power was lesser and lots more expensive. So trying to work out what I should be considering now.

I know this is a BIG question I am asking so am happy for you to point me to most recent articles or resources that may be relevant. I've paid for premium subscription but acknowledge that's a pittance for good advice.

Objective:
To capture mostly PAL VHS, VHS-C, Hi8 and a few standard 8 videos. (Mostly mixed family home movies, i.e. birthdays, sports, Xmas etc.
1. Copy to MPEG2 for burning on DVDs
2. Convert using x264 to MPEG4s - possibly stream in future to iPad etc.
Most will be stored on my big NAS (15TB in Raidz2 ZFS system).

Equipment:
I have acquired and been experimenting with the following:
1. Canopus ADVC 300
2. JVC HR J777MS VTR (I got two - playback looks fine).
3. Lenovo Laptop with Intel Core 2 CPU, 2GB, 60GB HDD and firewire, GBit NIC
4. 2 i7 2600K with 8GB RAM 1TB RAID0 and HD7950
5. GBit network
6. NAS - 15TB in Raidz2 ZFS system
7. Primera Bravo Pro I burner

Software:
1. WinDV to capture AVIs on Lenovo laptop to
2. VirtualDub and AviSynth
3. Premiere Elements 11
4. Handbrake
5. Sorenson Squeeze 8.5
6. PTPublisher (DVD burning)

Assumption:
1. Capture in AVI.
2. Process in AVI.
3. Only convert to MPEG2 or 4 when happy with the final AVI.
4. The above assumptions will be faster/better quality.

Approach:
1. Balance quality with labour (my time).
2. If it requires too much of my effort will never happen and will eventually loose our presciou tapes).
3. Identify innovative balanced options.
4. If I can do a few tapes a day, a couple of days per week, spending a few hours a week labour it'll get done.

Budget:
1. Modest.

Questions:
1. I'm generally happy with the quality of my JVC VTR and the Canopus. Considering how poor most tapes are seems overkill to seek higher quality hardware. Would you agree?

2. What in your view is a practical workflow using above hardware/software.

3. What set of filters should I apply to all captured tapes. i.e. deinterlace, noise, deshake, etc

4. Do you know of any software to manage automated DVD burning using a Primera Bravo I (just inherited this from a friends office and looks pretty good - not had time to play with it).

5. Any other workflows out there I can look at for reference?

I've read lots of material on the net but given we now have really fast i7s and huge storage available new solutions are no doubt superior now.

Thanks in advance.

Bithog

This question was asked in a private message. Rather than hide our tech advice in private conversations, Site Staff will often answer PMs (from any site) here in the digitalFAQ.com forum, so that others may read and benefit from our expertise. Please continue the conversation here. Either login or join as a Free Member, and we can continue troubleshooting your video, photo or web related issue. Thanks for understanding our tech Q&A policies.