Please review my video capture setup!
 

Hi - I am new to this forum and the world of vhs to digital capture.

I have a Canopus Advc300 and a SVHS Mitsubishi HSM1000 but my tapes are not SVHS, only vhs and some betamax ones too but I have yet to buy a betamax player for these.

I want the best possible capture and in some cases to improve the original video quality (such as any grainy video). I am not sure whether I need a TBC having done a test capture. I also don't want to use the grass valley software that came with the ADVC. Is there any better software out there which is compatible with the ADVC300?

Also is there any software that would capture or read any teletext information that I may have recorded on vhs?

I really want the capture to be as professional and high quality as possible so would really appreciate your advice.

Hello, and welcome to digitalfaq. :salute:

IF you really want the capture to be of the best quality you can get, you won't get it by capturing to lossy codecs with the Canopus or any other DV card. Analog to digital transfer devices and encoders expect a clean, noise-free signal. VHS is anything but free of noise and has plenty of other problems to boot. Those problems look worse when captured to lossy codecs. Almost every member here would advise that for original digital transfer and cleanup with VHS, you should capture to lossless media (lossless YUY2 AVI). The Canopus cards don't capture to lossless media, at least not without some complicated workarounds that are hardly worth the hassle. Lossless media from VHS makes large files, larger than DV, but the file can be reduced in size using lossless compressors such as huffyuv, Lagarith, or UT Video during capture and intermediate work stages. Lossless can then be encoded to any desired final output format. Lossless capture does have the same VHS noise and defects as your source, but it does not have the added problem of noisy lossy compression artifacts, some of which are all but impossible to clean.

DV, MPEG, h264, etc., are lossy codecs. These encodings, and particularly DV, were not designed for restoration, cleanup, color work, etc. DV is shoot-and-watch media not designed for further modification. The best you can do without damage to DV is simple cuts and joins. DV is for PC-only playback. DV is not supported by external playback devices except for a scant few specific external media players. It isn't supported by the internet. So any way you look at it, DV has to go through another round of more lossy encoding to be transferred to universally compatible media. Each stage of lossy encoding involves further loss. None of it can be recovered later. If you capture to other delivery formats such as MPEG or h264, you are limited to working cuts and joins with smart-renderimg apps designed for it. For more detailed work or cleanup, all lossy codecs have to be decompressed to lossless media for working files to prevent further encoding loss. Lossless media is designed for restoration and for what many refer to as "editing". Lossless working files can be losslessly recompressed again and again without compression damage.

I'm not familiar with your Mitsubishi in detail, but I've seen it mentioned often. VHS can be played in SVHS players. The preferred output from SVHS players is s-video cable. You can use composite output if you wish, but s-video will be cleaner.

If you haven't been through the forum's capture guide, you should take a look. Some of the hardware mentioned is dated these days, but the working principles haven't changed. http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video.htm

Thank you very much for your detailed response sanlyn.

I was led to believe that canopus was one of the best video capture devices and used by professionals, is this not the case? Does it only capture lossy formats?

I haven't yet been through the capture guide so thanks for pointing that out. From what you have mentioned, I guess my vcr is fine with the S-Videi option but I will have to purchase alternative hardware to capture lossless formats, is that right?

Many transfer shops use Canopus to transfer tape end even film to various DV formats. As far as I know, the transfer service here doesn't use that method for analog tape sources (correct me, anyone, if I'm wrong on that. I don't work here). There are many who think analog to DV is the greatest thing since whatever. I tried it. I'll never do it again. I've seen it tested and demonstrated, always with conflicting comments, and usually approved by users who don't intend to do any restoration work but take the results as-is. Those who do repairs have to go through hoops to get the results they want. You'll have to decide on that score.

This doesn't mean that all capture devices optimized for analog source capture are "the best". Some are classics, some are really good, some are so-so, many are terrible. The best of them are either out of production but still available now and then, while a very few are priced sky-high and require specific expertise and other hardware. Also keep in mind that original DV source itself is not captured or re-recorded, it's copied 1:1 without re-encoding. I'm suspicious anyway of a Canopus card that claims it has an internal tbc, when it's been proven that if that tbc exists it does nothing. I learned years back that the least trustful source is the maker's advertizing. I apply that to any maker of any video product, IMO. I'm also of the school that holds that multiple lossy encodes are neither better nor cleaner than one.

As I say, different strokes for different folks. I've used or seen many methods and came to my own conclusions through experience with over 300 VHS tapes of my own and hundreds of posts in several user forums from Adobe to Canopus to this one and back again. We can recommend, but no one here would force a decision onto anyone. Everyone takes the path that best suits their purpose.

Whatever you do, remember that you're welcome to post short samples in digitalfaq if you need specific help.

Thank you Sanlyn - maybe there is a misunderstanding here. When you say DV, are you referring to DV tapes as used by digital camcorders ? I do not have such tapes here. In this scenario I only wish to transfer VHS to a digital file and nothing more.

What would you recommend in this case ? I only want to keep it simple and do a straightforward transfer of the highest quality to a digital file :unsure:

Yes, I referred to original DV video source. Many users mistakenly re-encode DV to a computer or DVD/PVR device.

The forum has posted recommended cards for VHS capture several times. Some are limited to XP (which we recommend for the better VHS capture devices anyway), some will work with Win7, most won't work with Win8 or Win10. It depends on your system. Your PC system is unknown, and I've ceased recommending some cards because I've never used them myself or seen definitive examples of what some of them can or can't accomplish. But many here will chime in with suggestions. In any case you don't need a super-computer to capture VHS. A few even use laptops (I can think of easier ways to go through life, LOL!).

In my own case for capture I use a couple of home-built XP PC's and a retrieved Dell Pentium-4 XP, all equipped with ATI All In Wonder AGP cards (7500 and 9600XP Radeons, which are long-time favorites). My capture software is VirtualDub. With my Win7 machine I've used a Diamond VC500 USB and VirtualDub with satisfactory results, and the VC500 is about as unsophisticated as it gets. After going through 9 VCRs over the years, a couple of which were duds, I now use 3 different VCRs. At least one will track a problem tape better than the other two -- you never know until it's tried.

Quality begins with decent captures. The magic lies in post-processing and encoding for the final output which can be whatever you want. This business of digitizing from analog is not as straightforward as many blogs and marketers make it out to be. Analog and digital are vastly different worlds. But everyone here learns to do it, proving that it can be done despite the laws of physics.

Many advanced users who use different capture gear aren't here all the time, but when they show up they have helpful info. I just got back here myself after a long week.

Canopus ADVC-300
 

I have used the ADVC-300 for years and have been happy with my results.

I transfer SVHS, VHS and Beta tapes (usually broadcasts of sports events) from VCR (Panasonic AG-1980, JVC HR-S5100U or Sony SL-HF450) to ADVC300 to PC or to my DVD recorder. On my PC, I capture using Scenalyzer Live, edit with Adobe Premiere (I have a WinXP dual boot for this very reason) and encode using ProCoder 3.

I use the ADVC to color correct mostly and have found that it does enhance the quality of what I am capturing.

Am I missing something? Can I get better results?

Interesting thoughts.

@JoRodd, do you find the ADVC300 to give you a good quality capture? Can you elaborate on how you use Scenalyzer Live to capture and whether it captures in lossless or lossy format?

@Sanlyn, would you therefore recommend that I ditch the ADVC and get an ATI like this one on ebay: 182156367361 ? I must admit that I am getting slightly confused with what the optimum configuration is.......

You have a couple of good players and some nice software, BTW. But if you're happy with the results, what would you want to improve?

No one can answer the question with any certainty without a sample. But your video would be of a different character than Willow5 described about his own work. If you care to post a sample, however, please do so by starting a new thread.

It's a simple setup. I make sure it is set to NTFS for unlimited capture and set the file type. "Canopus Compatible DV-files" is the file-type setting I usually use. There is also another file-type that works for me - "Type2 DV-avi for Premiere or Vegas". The Canopus setting is good for real time preview and editing.

To my eye, I have never noticed any loss when capturing using Scenalyzer. Also, it keeps the audio in sync and I am able to trim/split the captures as needed.

Thanks for the information. Do you recommend using a TBC with the ADVC or is it adequate without? What is the file format of the capture?

Canopus DV and Type2 DV-avi are lossy formats.

Thanks Sanlyn...please could you comment on my earlier post on the type of card I need to purchase from eBay?

I previously mentioned the former All in Wonders as either AGP or PCI cards for analog source, but they're not very plentiful on eBay or anywhere else. Users and transfer/restoration shops that still have them are pretty stubborn about keeping them. Drivers are limited to XP. There are newer USB and PCIe devices from Diamond, ATI/AMD, and Hauppauge -- I mentioned one from Diamond Multimedia earlier.

Be careful about auction sites. Many list the famed AGP models but lack the necessary connection dongles and drivers. Most of those cards were made for either NTSC or PAL, but those models are specific to one or the other of those sources, not to both. Finding them intact is a trek in itself. You'll also find occasionally one of the high-priced models from other makers, but each has its peculiarities and requirements. Once configured properly, AIW's are straightforward in use. Other users would have to advise about the big guys like Aja Kona and Matrox MX -- both are above my salary grade unless you can find a good price, all the proper connections and whatnot, and learn to use them. There's a list of AIW alternatives here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ti-wonder.html. Some aren't listed, such as the VC500, but it's basically a modified clone of the ATI USB's and at least has updated drivers for XP, Win7, 8, and 10. It's certainly cheap enough for a trial run, selling at 1/3 its original price of a few years back. There are other posts in that thread concerning driver downloads available here, and other comments. I'd suggest that the PCIe cards in that list are better choices. Some are still sold new at Amazon. I have a personal misgiving about the ATI 600 USB and won't recommend it -- it just doesn't behave like a "real" ATI device in my opinion but, then, ATI itself no longer exists and is now part of AMD. The 600 USB also has OS driver limitations, and brand new ones are hard to come by. Some will disagree about my misgiving with that device, but it's low cost enough for a trial if you wish. I don't think you'll find it "new" at sites like Amazon. You'll also find Canopus in that list, but there are cautionary notes about its use with analog sources.

At auction sites and online you'll find both the genuine EZCap 116 and countless cheapo clones of it. It's a popular card for some strange reason, but its captures always look rather weird and grimy IMO. The cheap clones are even worse and notoriously unreliable. The "real" EZCap is sold at its maker's site and is not the cheapest choice.

The legacy All In Wonder line is still highly preferred, and some pay outlandish premiums to get a good used one and build or find XP PCs for it. VHS and analog capture disappeared from the mainstream and are not a priority for capture card makers. Many end up with DV devices as a result of this scarcity, and for some in many areas it's the only choice. Analog to DV is a tough row to hoe. It's not impossible. But for repair, restoration, color grading, etc., it sure is a lot of extra work that isn't needed by devices that were/are specifically designed for analog source.

Some of the countless members here with other capture cards are bound to chime in sooner or later.

Thank you once again Sanlyn for the detailed response. Do you happen to know anything about Osprey cards ? Its just that I have access to one of these cards too but know nothing about them...perhaps this could work for me somehow ?

There are some old (and some new) posts about Osprey in this forum. The latest conclusion from lordsmurf, the main admin authority around here on capture devices, doesn't recommend it. Another user concluded that it's pricey but doesn't do as well as some budget ATI-type USB or PCIe cards.

How many tapes do you have, BTW? If not hundreds of them, digitalfaq's capture service is likely cheaper than building a preferred system. Output is lossless YUY2, which you can work with to your heart's content. Just a thought. And, no I don't work here so there's no profit in it for me. But I have used them in the past for my own stuff when I needed a quickie.

Just a thought.

Thank you again. I have too many tapes to mention here collected over 3 decades so really need to do these transfers myself....how do you suggest I proceed?

Depends on the operating system you're using now.

I have XP, Windows 7 and Windows 10

XP for capture offers the widest choices. You can do post processing somewhat faster in Win7. Much of the software we recommend for restoration or cleanup is free and a lot of favorite freebies won't work in Win10.

Again, I'd go for one of the PCI or PCIe devices mentioned in the alternative list. Wherever you get it, insist on getting its software and a liberal return policy if you don't like the results. Unless you can find a ready-made XP machine with an AGP motherboard and appropriate CPU, you're in for the hassle of a lifetime trying to build one just for mounting an All In Wonder....assuming you could even find an intact AIW from the 7500 on up through the 9xxx series.

In any case, don't try capturing 4 hours of tape to get an idea of how it's going. All you need are a few minutes here and there from a single tape, which should tell you as much as hours would tell you. Use 32-bit software and lossless compressors. And for that matter you'll be using some 32-bit fixers and filters, mainly because so many favorite filters have no 64-bit counterparts and likely never will.

So Virtualdub is lossless? If I start using this, will the difference be noticeable?

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. VirtualDub and a few other utlities (e.g., VirtualVCR, etc.) are often used to accept input from many (but not all) capture devices for uncompressed or losslessly compressed capture, among other uses. Virtualdub itself itself is not an encoder or compressor and requires additional capture drivers for video capture.

I thought you were using Canopus and Scenalyzer. Canopus provides no means for recognition by VirtualDub's capture utility.

Hi Sanlyn, I checked that hardware page and these are the recommended ATI AIW cards:

ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB2 capture stick ~$50-100
ATI TV Wonder HD 600 PCI capture card aka Diamond ATI TV Wonder HD 600 PCI capture card ~$50-100
ATI TV Wonder HD 650 PCI capture card aka Diamond ATI TV Wonder HD 650 PCI capture card ~$50-100 (not USB!)

I don't see any mention of the 9600 or the 7000 you previously mentioned or am I missing something?

Either way, since I am not sure where I can purchase these other than ebay, I would be grateful if you could take a look at the uk version of eBay and select a few cards that might be suitable for me? I wouldn't ask but there are too many options at this stage and I don't really know what to look for in terms or chipsets...

Thank you once again for your help, I have learnt so much already :)

I think I'm just discovering that you're working with PAL video? Or is it NTSC? It's important: many cards referenced here are NTSC only, some are not, some are both.

You'll need patience and endurance to find an AGP All In Wonder. Those legacy AGP and PCI cards were made between 2000 and 2006, no new ones since 10 years ago. AGP models require AGP motherboards. Unless your XP machine is a desktop PC that is 10 years old or older, you don't have a motherboard with an AGP onboard mounting slot. More detail about your XP machine is needed to confirm. I purchased my 7500 AIW AGP when new, selling then at about $250 USD retail in 2001, and the 9600XT AIW AGP new at about $300-$350 USD retail in 2004. I have seen both of those cards selling used for as much as $800 USD, when fully equipped with all accessories and in good working order. My models are NTSC only. ATI made separate editions for NTSC and for PAL.

Meanwhile I received a PM from you asking for details about a particular item on USB-UK. Please post such questions publicly in the forum. I quote you here so that others can share in the question as well as the answers:

Gladly, but "other members" can't see your PM. Also, the actual link to that item in Ebay.uk would make it easier to use and more likely to be browsed by other readers who know more about hundreds of different capture devices than I do, LOL!. The product is shown here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-All-In...-/301943467077.

My take is that this 9000 AIW PRO AGP is useless without its connecting cables. You don't need the 9000's external remote and even if you had it you'd never use it. You would need the drivers, which you can find posted in this forum. However, this card is an AGP mount and NTSC only. I noted that the seller states that the item is "fully operational and functions as intended". Really? Without its cables and accessories? I don't think so. The original also came with a DVI to VGA adapter, preferred by many for faster analog response or VGA-only monitors.

Some notes on the full All In Wonder line from 2000 to 2006, some usage and availability comments: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post13441. If any of these can handle PAL and NTSC both, other members will have to provide confirmation. Mine are NTSC only. The AIW AGP models are full-fledged capture devices as well as graphics display adapters in one unit, not just "capture cards".

I don't recommend any of the USB models in the Alternatives list because of the way they clip super blacks. One product similar to the ATI USB line is the Diamond VC500, which has been around a long time and is popular in Europe for being able to handle both NTSC and PAL. It now sells for 1/3 its original price of a few years back, notably because the software is effectively given away gratis, although all the software you need for it is the basic OS driver and its capture driver, not its full editing package (its editor is a dud anyway). Technically, it's very similar to the ATI and Hauppage USB and clones, but without clipping. Buy it new, with all the goodies that come with it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Diamond-Mul...ond+Multimedia. It's inexpensive and simple enough for learning the tricks of lossless capture, and it outdoes many hyped-up units selling for more. I've just recently archived 3 troublesome old home made tapes with it and had very clean results. If you don't like the device, send it back -- Amazon-uk is a reputable dealer. EBay is problematic.

Give more detail about your computers so that other users can suggest more possibilities.

Hi Sanlyn,

Thank you for your message. Yes I am in the UK and using PAL videos. I also have two Base units with AGP ports but I am not sure whether they are 4x or 8x, does it make a huge difference?

Thank you also for posting my PM here. I really want to get an AGP card rather than a USB version as my pc is compatible....

Is there any easy of identitling which ATI AGP cards are NTSC or PAL if the eBay sellers do not know?

AGP 8x slots should be compatible with 4x, 2x.

If a seller doesn't know what they're selling, you're on shaky ground. eBay does allow members to query sellers. The cables for each model are essential. Cables are not alike for all models. Don't forget that later "X" series are PCIe cards and are newer. There is a USA outfit that sells a few third-party ATI cables, but they don't fit all versions. Depending on that source could be disappointing. PAL versions were not as numerous as NTSC. Don't be surprised if an AIW takes time to locate. Even NTSC versions aren't so readily found.

Meanwhile the recommended budget USB's and PCI's aren't "bad" products. Their lower price reflects certain realities -- notably that none are full-featured graphics display adapters, none are designed to let you play videos from a customized media center on your PC to a TV (which didn't work that well anyway), the furnished software is usually a copy of mass-produced generics used by many makers, none have extra outputs for recording to a VCR or other recorder, and all of them are capture-only devices. Finally, when even decent new VCRs are no longer made, the prime time for transitioning from analog to digital has faded and doesn't command the popularity or higher price tags of the legacy capture cards.

Welcome. :)

Replying as I read, starting from the first post...

Canopus DV not very good for NTSC. And the 300 is the worst of the ADVC units. It really butchers video with its filters that cannot be turned off (for both PAL and NTSC). That's an overly expensive terrible device.

Mitsu S-VHS is fine, not much different from JVC or Sony S-VHS decks.

Analog tape restoration needs better hardware, and the older ATI All In Wonder (ATI AIW) is highly suggested here.

Yes, you always need TBC. Internal cleans the image, external cleans the signal. Further image cleaning is where Avisynth and/or VirtualDub filtering comes in.

Grass Valley software -- Edius? That's an NLE, and NLEs are terrible for capturing and restoring.

No teletext/CC capturing that I'm aware of.

If you want professional, you've come to the right place. :congrats:

I suggest Huffyuv. It has the widest support across OS, and event he 32/64-bt issues on Windows are now solved. I've discussed them in detail on other posts -- the stickies on using/installing Huffyuv.

To expand on it...

DV is lossy. It was invented during the era of Pentium III, USB1, and non-UDMA IDE hard drives. It was good 20 years ago, but was already useless 15 years ago when we had Pentium 4 and larger IDE UDMA drives

MPEG is a wide compression, and is used for editing intermediary, capturing, archives -- not just DVD, and not necessarily that lossy. For restoration, it is often the wrong choice. For other uses, maybe not.

H.264 is a lossy distribution format. Not to be confused with AVC, which is used for HD cameras.

[QUOTE-willow5]I was led to believe that canopus was one of the best video capture devices and used by professionals, is this not the case?[/QUOTE]
You were misled. No competent professional uses that thing.

Note that most "transfer shops" don't know much about video, aside from where to insert a tape (in a cheap VCR), hit play, hit record, and poop out DVDs with cheap $50 software.

You're not wrong. We'd never use that.

I used to work for studios. That sort of workflow would have been 100% unacceptable.

Most of our work over the years has been B2B (filmmakers, small studios, handling difficult work from other videographers, mild forensics for PIs, etc), not individuals. We take projects from individuals mostly for their benefit; many quality shops do not accept non-B2B projects. We want them to have access to quality. And we've met some REALLY interesting people over the years: retired actors, wrestlers, Iraqi POWs, etc. Just amazing stories from some of them!

That's the different between professional, and some monkey with a stick poking a VCR and Canopus box claiming to be "professional". DV in the workflow would have made many of those projects look lousy, or even impossible to perform.

Example: I'm still not convinced that Blackmagic hardware is tuned to SD. From what I've seen, it's best at HD, with SD as an afterthought.

Some give me concern as well -- including ones I've used, and know to be fine! Modern manufacturing has a lot of changes midstream, and good components can suddenly be bad ones. For example, the post-2011 AVT-8710 chipset flaws. So I now include often dates on when I bought it, and where I bought it, if I can.

No. Only the analog (now-useless) tuner was PAL or NTSC.

All ATI AIW cards can accept PAL, NTSC, SECAM, and several other exotics on the analog s-video/composite input. So don't worry about cards being labels as PAL or NTSC. Just be sure all the wires are present.

Don't worry about the drives/software, either. We've archived tons of it to this site.

Nope, all resolved. The cards installs without issue on XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10. :wink2:

Wow, I've not heard that name in 5-10 years now.

Going from memory: It worked, but it pre-dated the ATI AIW series slightly. It was an NLE card of the 2000s, along with Canopus (non-DV) and Matrox cards. Those were all good for editing, and were all expensive for what they did. The inclusion of the NLE is mostly what drove the prices.

Osprey released cards after the 2000 era, but were mostly overlooked. I see some PCIe analog cards, and I'm curious how they are. I recent years, it appears that Osprey never marketed itself to conversion, and was mostly for surveillance/etc. They've focused more on streaming than ingest.

Nope. You'd have to change the hardware, too. Not just the capture software. In this case, it'd be re-capture software, as you'd being going tape > DV > VirtualDub. The DV processing is at the hardware level. You can't bypass it.

Thanks, lordsmurf, for clarifying that PAL/NTSC issue. I wasn't aware that only the tuner was involved, so that clears up my long-held misundeerstanding of that one factor (where I got the idea goes too far back for anyone to remember). So the way is clear for composite or s-video capture. The problem, then, is missing cables. These AIW's had 2 cables, one for input, one for output, with matching connecting slots on the back of the card.

The input cable had a small plastic dongle at one end for s-video, composite, and L/R audio input. The other end of the cable fit into one of the rear input slots on the card. The second cable for output ("dubbing") had wires for s-video, composite, and RCA audio outputs, plus a second short black audio output that terminated in a 1/8" SONY stereo plug -- the 1/8" plug was to be connected to your onboard audio card's input. AIW cards had so much circuitry (and were rather large to begin with, for their day), there was no room for audio processing, so ATI left that up to the sound card.

These cables had some differences between models. For example, the AIW 7500 cables wouldn't fit the 9000's.

A scant few online sellers in the USA have several third-party products that support many AIW cards for a/v input and output. I haven't had a chance to look at all of them. http://search.store.yahoo.net/videow...ssemblies.html . I've seen posts where these adapters worked with several AIW cards.

DVI-to-VGA analog adapters for monitors also came with most AIW's. They can be found anywhere.

It really varies per card.

All of them required the breakout box, and that's easy to find. It's the purple/domino box.

(But note that the ATI AIW 128 Pro is different from all later ones. That's the very first card with the Theatre chipset, and didn't officially support ATI MMC, though I documented a hack for it 10+ years ago here when the forum was new.)

Some of the later ones need special bundles. There wasn't enough room on the card for all the connections, so they were all put on a bundled cable, and there's one wide port on the card. Without that bundle, the card is useless for anything.

Thanks for the link. It's always good to have more options than just eBay. :)

@Willow5, I currently see several All In Wonder AGP cards selling in eBay.uk. Most of them are ship from the US, but they're not selling for high prices. I noticed an AGP 7500, whose connection cables are easy to find. There are also newer X-series AGP's listed. I've purchased many a/v cables from premium sellers in the uk that shipped to the US for not much shipping cost. So there are many possibilities.

Samples:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-All-In...8AAOSwbYZXWYJo
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-AIW-Al...AAAOSwQaJXSmbC

Hi Sanlyn and now Lordsmurf too :)

Thank you for replying - so it seems that canopus is a definite no no...never mind.

So can I get this right: all I really need is any AIW card with the right connectors? I don't have to concern myself about software as it is archived on this site for any of the AIW cards?

If this is the case, can we get down to practilities please such as minimum/recommended XP hardware processor speeds, RAM and hard drive space. I am most concerned about hard drive space as my drive quickly filled up last time with the canopus and that was a lossy format. If I am now capturing lossless formats then presumably ai will need at least double the amount of capacity I previously had? Can someone kindly clarify the rough space a 3 hour VHS tape would take up in lossless format for example?

Also what happens to the gaps in between recordings such as white noise? Does this automatically get blocked out by the capture software or do I manually need to edit these out?

Finally please could someone kindly post a short clip of the type of quality I could expect to see once I am up and running as I am now really intrigued and can't wait to see the final result :) Also is there any way at all of capturing teletext/C C information ? Why is this not possible if the data is there from the VHS output?

Thank you for your support

Bare minimum specs to capture lossless or DVD-spec MPEG:
- Pentium 4 1.8ghz
- IDE (DMA, UDMA), capture to 2nd/non-OS drive
- 1gb RAM
- usually Intel, not AMD, due to motherboard issues (VIA usually hates ATI AIW)
- Turtle Beach Santa Cruz audio

But better specs are better. I'd say a P4 2.5ghz, 2gb RAM, SATA, Intel, if you can, as a good minimum.

Moving to dual-core allows stable BD-spec MPEG capture, as well as stable AMD boards.

Know they have dual-core and quad-core AGP boards, or PCIe ATI AIW cards.

You have options. :)

Installation and stability is the main issue. The more quality the parts, the less likely you will have issues.

ATI AIW records CC from the tuner, but not s-video/composite, and it's stripped by TBCs anyway. And you need a TBC to record a quality signal from a tape. So there's really zero way to do it. You'd have to record it separately (no TBC version signal that looks ugly and drops frames), convert that to subtitle format, and then embed it later to the quality capture (the TBC capture made separately from the CC capture). It's a long process to salvage CC. CC isn't subtitle.

Lossless Huffyuv = about 35gb/hour
DV = exactly 13gb/hour

The TBC stabilizes snow, so it is recorded. That's a good thing. You don't want capture equipment making decisions on what is good or not, especially from VHS, and especially from not-great sources.

For PAL, DV is not a bad choice, similar to high-bitrate MPEG.

... it's just that the ADVC-300 is crap, due to adding overproccessing. The ADVC-100/110 is better.

In my own expeirence I started lossless VHS capture and analog TV recording with ATI cards in the late 1990's with Windows 98, but was into it more heavily by 2001 with:
- Windows 2K, then XP
- AIW 7500 64MB AGP, later added a 9600XT AIW
- 1.8 GHz Pentium-4 single-core, 500mb RAM
- SoundBlaster PCI audio
- 120GB IDE drives

I started with Gateway and Dell PC's, then built my own with non-VIA motherboards, dual-core AMD 2.0 to 2.4 GHz CPU's, 2GB RAM. I did restoration work with them, too, but now use them for capture only.

Whether lossless AVI or lossy DV, caps are made to internal hard drives other than the main OS drive. If capturing to the same drive that houses your operating system, expect problems from sluggish operation with all but very fast multicore setups. After capture, no one that I know stores lossless or DV capture projects on their main PC. Captures are usually moved to external media, either USB drives or a.c.-powered HDD enclosures. PC's are for program loading and real-time processing -- actively used PC's don't make good permanent storage devices, which would be a waste of onboard hard drive assets. Videos for cleanup, processing, and editing are drawn off from external storage into the main PC drives as needed, then post-processed, assembled/edited, and encoded for final output on the main computer. People rarely keep intermediate working files, but they keep settings, filter specs used, and other notes.

Lordsmurf is about right with lossless PAL file sizes, losslessly compressed with huffyuv, Lagarith, or UT Video Codec. In my NTSC captures at 720x480 I get about 28-30GB per hour -- larger than DV, but lossless and with higher average bitrates than DV.

Because NTSC VHS color data is stored differently than PAL, NTSC capture to lossy DV loses 50% of NTSC's original color data. It's often said that when capturing PAL VHS to DV, PAL and DV color systems are similar and other differences "don't matter" with PAL. That might be true in raw bit-for-bit numbers, but video work is more than numbers.

In my experience, analog to DV (and DV to DV, for that matter) all look like DV. It doesn't look like MPEG encoding, h.264, XVid, VHS, or anything else. Tape players have much to do with quality, of course: the typical VCR generates video with so much garbage that its equivalent in gourmet circles would be called "mystery meat". But given a good tape player and at least decent playback, a DV device produces generic DV from any source IMO. To me, DV compression makes everything look alike: a taped movie transfer, a taped TV recording, a taped home movie -- it's less a loss of data bits than it is of discarding subtlety and many fine shadings of definition, along with adding phoney enhancements. The results display a peculiar type of evisceration that looks unconvincing and plastic, something approaching the look of anime. In reality it's not as severe as I describe here, but to many it's nevertheless a plainly visible difference (or, if you will, a uniform sameness from everything).

My Personal opinion baggage aside, the main idea behind lossless capture is the ability to digitally capture an input image as accurately as possible without compression loss, and to create new, improved, corrected, edited versions with zero compression loss and zero compression damage. Users often assume that if one loses 20% of some original data which the compressor thinks is "unnecessary", the 20% will magically return when the video is decompressed. Wouldn't that be wonderful? It would be like owning and driving a car for 5 years and at the end of that time getting back all of your expended fuel, original moving parts and tires, with absolutely no sign of wear or tear after 100,000 miles. However, lossy means what it says: loss. Modify lossy captures and encode again, and each encode cummulatively loses another percentage of the 80% you started with. Add frequent compression effects such as mosquito noise, bristly edges, and macroblocks, and soon you have a mess.

So much for my stubborn take on consumer DV. There are many who swear by it, but there are many who swear at it. So take it as my 2 cents (0.014 Sterling). BTW, consumer DV is not equal to pro DV formats, which are different animals.

I'm not fond of the 9000 and 9000 Pro AGP's, which seem oversensitive to RF affects, depending on the physical setup. Favorites seem to be the 7500 and 9600 AGPs.

Software: Use 32-bit apps and filters for cleanup. The main reason is that most popular Avisynth/Virtualdub filters are 32-bit.
-VirtualDub 1.9.11 for capture (versions 10x seeem to have reported bugs), or you can use something like VirtualVCR for capture. People seem to gravitate to Virtualdub which they use for other reasons anyway.
-Lossless compressors 32-bit huffyuv v.2.1.1 (http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...pre-huffyuvrar) for capture, faster and more trouble free.
-Future lossless work: I use lossless Lagarith or UT Video for intermediate working files.

Notes about the "NLE mindset": A problem with NLE's is that they can and often are used at a basic level by users who know as much about video as you and I know about life on other planets. The NLE mindset holds that everything one needs to know and do with your precious video is all there in that preview window and toolbars. Click a couple of icons, and "professional" video magically emerges. I wish it were so.

Even the best NLE including those with "pro" in their names can be used optimally only when users know what they're doing as well as knowing what the NLE is doing. Even at that, many pro NLE's are rank amateurs at certain tasks such as colorspace conversion, handling interlace and telecine, and resizing. They have no real talent for denoising or many other fixups. But, then, they're editors, not restoration apps.

On the other hand, you can't do timeline or authoring with Avisynth or VirtualDub. Video tools including NLE's have their purpose and limitations. All can work with lossless media.

It wouldn't be a valid demonstration. First, there's no lossless-vs-DV of the same source to compare. Such comparisons have been done. The consensus usually holds that If your purpose is restoration and repair, or encoding to multiple final formats, lossless wins. Second, it wouldn't be valid without using the same tapes and player you have. All VHS are not alike, and different players render different results from the same tape. A lossless capture looks in many ways like a DV capture, with all of the usual tape noise, VHS defects, spots, chroma noise and other uglies, but without added DV artifacts or the "something is missing" impression of DV and over filtering. Whether you have DV capture or lossless, VHS requires cleanup, not just "editing". Considering the kind of cleanup VHS needs, lossless is far easier to work with.

Finally, lossless VHS capture doesn't look like a desired finished product any more than VHS-to-DV does. But lossles media does avoid a lot of the extra work in getting what you want. The best one could post are examples of lossless captures from truly horrific, noisy home recordings that look terrible whether lossless or DV, and then compare the repaired result. Most users would find DVD issues of those same movies and discard the ugly tape, as I did. But some events like one-time historical broadcasts or home camera recordings will never be shown again or in digital print. Such demos have been posted here in the restore and workflow sections of the forum. But they still wouldn't be a definitive demo for your own tapes.

FYI, ditto for the people. It's not just the software. :wink2:

Lots of editors (the people, not the software) are absolute morons when it comes to colorspace, interlace, etc. They, too, know how to edit, and nothing more. And to me, they're really NOT qualified to be in the field. Yet they are. At any given moment, I can turn my cable box to a channel that somebody has screwed up.

Inversely, most ingest(capture)/restorationists/colorists have no or limited editing skills. It's taken me 20 years to get the editing (NLE) skills that you would probably get in just 1-2 if this was your main video focus. At least in my case, I'm not screwing anything up like so many editors do. However, do note that I have several restoration-specific NLE skills, which an editor wouldn't have.

Thanks again....

Can you give me your opinion on an ATI Rage Theater 8500 please ?

Also, I need some advice on a good TBC - I was looking at Datavideo's TBC-1000, is this any good and worth the money ?

@Sanlyn, I understand what you are saying about the sample video i.e. that it won't be a valid demonstration, but is there anything you can provide to compare the lossless format with an edited version of the same lossless file just to give me some idea of what could be expected with the right hardware ?

Also, I am getting slightly confused by the term DV in your responses - please can you clarify what you mean by DV ? Is this a DVD format, Digital Video format or something else ?

Thank you once again

I never had one, but's a recommended AIW card. Lordsmurf or others may have direct experience, but I've seen no complaints from any quarter.

Yes, if not too exorbitant and in good condition. They're not cheap, never were. The AVT-8710 sold for less, but still not cheap. Both are full fledged frame-level tbc's. If you have copy protected tapes, they're essential. I had some really horrible home-made tapes of 9/11 recorded live from New York channels over antenna and then over analog cable -- the noise level was so bad via poor transmission that I was getting macrovision-style white flashes across the top of the screen, so I had to connect my AVT-8710 for a stable image.

Line and frame tbc's have different functions. A line-level tbc such as found in VCR's helps to clean the image; frame-level tbc's clean the signal. Many feel that frame tbc's aren't absolutely essential for most tapes, but if you have bad signal problems or a nightmare tape, you'll definitely need one. I almost always use my frame tbc unless it creates a conflict with line tbc/dnr with a very few tapes.

Search the forum and you'll find many posts regarding the TBC-1000 and AVT-8710. Lordsmurf insists that a frame tbc should always be used. If history is a guide, he's correct. Sooner or later you'll need one.

Usually the term "DV format" (IEC 61834, 1996) refers to the lossy Sony and Panasonic codecs used in DV tape, in-camera memory devices, and MiniDv cassettes. There are several permutations and implementations, such as from Canopus, but basically references to "DV" mean the same thing. Professional/industrial videographers and producers use several forms of "digital video" with more demanding hardware and software requirements.

DVD is digital MPEG codec with strict formatting and container requirements. DVD/VCD can't use any other codec. BluRay/AVCHD can be MPEG, h.264, or VC-1. The "DV" codec cannot be used for BluRay/AVCHD, which also have strict encoding and file structure requirements.

If I read correctly from your earlier posts, you have tapes recorded off BBC. Is that cable or antenna? You appear to have a fairly decent VCR, not the lousy cheapies I had in the 90's. I see plenty of BBC over here today and saw plenty when I twice visited the UK. In my opinion the BBC, most of the time, does cleaner work than many chintzy USA cable providers. Of course there are exceptions both ways.

I'm getting that idea that what you're really asking is: How well does a lossless capture improve the original signal? Answer: it doesn't. It's not supposed to. Lossless capture renders what it gets as an intended true digital copy, hopefully inflicting as little damage or loss as possible. Better VCRs with dnr/line tbc and coupled with external frame tbc's are used to send a stable, precisely timed signal to the capture device. The only substantial modifications enroute are some level of digital builtin-in dnr and proper control of luma and chroma levels. Digital dnr in many players (and in some capture devices, which are worse) is relatively primitive by today's standards and can often create unwanted artifacts -- in which case many turn off dnr if the machine allows, preferring analog noise to artificial effects. Noise can be cleaned later, in better ways. Artifacts are much more difficult. If dnr effects can't be turned off, many use a different player without dnr. My AG-1980 dnr can be slightly modified but not disabled. For that reason I'm often forced to use another player for many bad tapes.

I also took note of your phrase, "what could be expected with the right hardware". Understand, hardware is only the starting point. The rest is software, patience, experimentation, and stubbornness. If I'd used lossy codecs with those same videos I would have given up long ago -- in fact I tried that path and learned better early on. With a pristine source, going from lossless to a final encode is a milk run. Even if you capture pristine video to lossy DV, you need at least one more lossy encode for final output. But crappy source...well, that takes good hardware, plus proper lossless capture and extensive post-processing with lossless media.

All of my unfinished capture projects are from the worst of the lot that remain from years of recording. The clean tapes and retail issues have all been completed to DVD or standard def BluRay, or replaced with digital issues. The majority of those captures were discarded. The last VHS recording I made was in 2002 when my last cheap VCR died (good riddance). I've used DVD recorders and HD-PVR's since.

I keep all remaining captures in storage on external drives. Again, I reiterate that these horrible VHS sources are not representative of decent recordings with a clean OTA or cable signal and a good recorder. Frankly, they're disasters. The better VCRs and capture cards I use today do as well as can be expected with ugly crappy noisy VHS. So anything I'd post as demos might have no relevance whatever to your own sources.

Hundreds of capture projects are posted in this forum. Some of the fixups shown work well, some not so well. Some sources are impossibly wrecked. Those threads are public and open to everyone for instruction and discussion. Browsing those threads is one way that most readers learn proper (and improper) capture and processing. Meanwhile I can dig around to see what I could post, but it will take a while to get something together.

8500 = 7500 AGP + terrible DV port
So the 8500 is fine for capturing. Just don't try to use the Firewire/IEEE1394/DV.

DV is a codec with a stupid name, with the mistaken backronym "digital video". So DV is often used wrongly to refer to all digital video. Canopus (and their ADVC boxes) are especially guilty for that marketing; Grass Valley never did this. So DV isn't DVD, or anything else. The namers did this deceptive BS on purpose.

BSkyB was always overcompressed when I saw it in the early 2000s, like DirecTV was.

Yes, TBC-1000 is one of the better TBCs. Most DataVideo models are (100, 3000, etc).

Hmm. Found a couple of finished samples, but haven't found the originals yet. Still looking......

Thank you once again

@Sanlyn, most of my recordings are from analogue satellite and terrestrial TV starting off in mono and going to NICAM in the 90s. The question I have is: is it always better to play back tape on the machine that actually made the recordings or a machine of a better quality?

Also my question about lossless recordings was not about how well does a lossless capture improve the original signal but instead how does a lossless signal look once it is cleaned up ? For example, what can be cleaned and what is off limits? I am guessing that whatever is output from the VHS player is captured worts and all with lossless ?

@lordsmurf thank you for providing information on the 8500 card. If you had a choice between a 9600 and a 8500 which one would you go for?

Thanks for all the help !

No. :no2:

I don't know how this myth got started (it's very recent), but it's wrong. Only when the tape's alignment/tracking is screwed will the recording VCR maybe help ... maybe. A better player will almost always result in better playback quality. This is why JVC/Panasonic (to lesser degree Mitsubishi and Sony) S-VHS decks are suggested.

Uh ... cleaner? :laugh:

Loaded question.

No. Whatever the hardware workflow outputs (VCR + other hardware, some of it optional) is what the capture sees. The capture codec/format has nothing to do with the output hardware signal being ingested/captured.

9600

It's why the forum is here. :D