Budget setup for transferring VHS to digital

[Hotglove]

I bought a Blackmagic Intensity Estreme capture card in order to transfer our old VHS tapes, it is not recognised on my macbook pro 2019 Sequoia with Blackmagic Desktop Video (mac sees the harware OK)
So I checked out compatible Macos for the card and a 2013 Macbook Air that we had replaced with a new one recently, unfortunately it turned out that the thunderbolt port on the old machine is faulty.
The capture card only cost £30 and was highly rated when new, the old macbook Air has a weak battery and faulty thunderbolt port, but works fne with good screen, 256 SSD, etc, so has minimal resale value.
I have become interested in the transfer process, so am considering buying a used mac in order to complete the transfer, which I will then sell on.
I have seen several older macs in gwo for between £50-£120 and I am thinking of ending up with the VHS tapes converted to MP4, and a mac with Blackmagic Desktop Video, Media Express and OBS Studio installed and the capture card with appropriate cables.
So the question is, which mac models would be most suitable for such a project? Looking for stability in the combination of Macos and Macbook.
Having the tapes transferred professionally would cost about £300.
TIA

[aramkolt]

You'd probably be better off buying an older windows machine for the actual capture process, that'll open up a lot more options that you'll find all over the site (typically AIW card or a select few USB capture cards that are windows-only that often play nicer with XP, though some modern cards can work on Windows 10/11). There is no Mac version of Virtualdub/AmarecTV, so anything you see on this site that references those is using Windows machines.

Since things are being priced GBP, would have to assume that you are in PAL land. If you want decent results using a Mac exclusively, you could use a firewire/DV method which is what Video99.uk does - that'd be using something like a Canopus ADVC-55/100/110 or specific Sony Digita8 or DV cameras that will digitize analog inputs to firewire. There might be an advantage of using the camcorder if they are the models with line TBC that the Canopus products may not have.

A line TBC prevents horizontal "wobble" of individual lines and you can generally tell if one is not in use by looking at the extreme right and left edges of the frame or by looking at lines that should be straight vertically that appear to wobble within the video. Flagging is another presentation where the entirety of the top of the image frame will appear to bend off to the right or left.

DV/Firewire hardware is relatively inexpensive and is generally not as sensitive to timebase errors as a lot of other methods. Main issue with this method is that your Mac will need a firewire port, or an expensive Firewire to Thunderbolt2 (and possibly an easier to find Thunderbolt2 to thunderbolt3 (ends in USB-C A Male)). The other issue with DV is that (for PAL), it encodes chroma at 4:2:0 which means that every other line of color is ignored. For what it is worth, every (or nearly every) DVD you've ever watched also used 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. DV takes up roughly 13GB/Hr.

As for the VCR, the main feature you are looking for is S-Video output and that it has a TBC function. You could probably get away without the line TBC function if using a Sony Digital8 camcorder for passthrough or possibly a DVD recorder like the DMR-ES10/15. Having the line TBC in the VCR itself gives you more flexibility on what the rest of the chain looks like.

If you want to use any of the Blackmagic products, you'll need a good Frame TBC as they are very sensitive to timebase errors and may either drop a lot of frames or automatically terminate a capture if the video signal gets rough. My preferred method for that is a TBC that has SDI output and then use whatever Blackmagic or AJA product that can capture SDI. I believe most if not all Blackmagic products will still capture 480i/525i over SDI, but some other less expensive brands may not. An inexpensive and readily available Frame TBC that outputs SDI and can even upscale to progressive would be the AJA FS1, or the Snell and Wilcox CVR/TBS series if you can find them.

Once the signal is SDI, you could also avoid involving the computer by capturing with an SDI recorder in something like ProRes or uncompressed. Uncompressed takes up a TON of space, but ProRes422 is more like 20GB/Hr and ProResHQ is more like 30GB/Hr. The advantage of ProRes is that color is 10 bit instead of 8 bit, and it's already Mac-friendly. Standalone recorders like that typically record onto SATA SSDs which can then be plugged into your Mac to get the data off of later. Dedicated/non-computer capture devices can be more reliable because they just do one task and aren't subject to things like the operating system resources being temporarily used by other processes.

Another method would be just using a DVD recorder either as a passthrough line TBC (corrects horizontal wobble) and will stabilize the spacing between frames to some degree. You could record directly to DVDs as well, bitrate just won't be as high and you might get some pixelation during higher motion scenes.

Extreme budget option would be something like the Cloner Alliance box pro. It'll pre-de interlace and upscale to 1080P at a decent bitrate, but he downside to this device I've found is that it'll zoom/crop which will lose you something like 10-15% of the image on all sides and it has composite input only. That's typically the overscan area that wouldn't be visible on a CRT screen anyway, but it's data loss nonetheless. If you want to get around the zoom/crop, you could run it through an upscaling DVD player that outputs HDMI and the HDMI captures don't get cropped. There are some other Cloner Alliance and Porta products that are supposedly fairly well reviewed that do have S-Video input as well.

Deinterlace during capture is generally considered inferior because there are better "non-realtime" software deinterlacers available and you can try different methods of deinterlacing after. Deinterlace during capture is modifying the original permanently as opposed to capturing as-is, but depending on your use case could possibly make sense or save time depending on what quality you need and if you plan to store the original captures long term.

There are YouTube videos out there that can explain capture options better, but preferring a Mac-Only ecosystem can limit things quite a bit.

£300 for a professional transfer probably will be much less expensive and frustrating depending on the number of tapes that are involved and what equipment is being used. You'll likely spend much more than that on the VCR and capture device/TBC. A professional transfer service that won't tell you their full capture chain (which VCR, what passthrough devices, and what the capture format is) probably isn't worth using though.

[Hotglove]

Hi, thanks very much for such a helpful reply, I have skimmed through it and will take some time to go through it more thoroughly and do a bit of research into the bits that are unfamiliar (most of it &#128514
Thanks again.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hotglove

I bought a Blackmagic Intensity Estreme capture card in order to transfer our old VHS tapes, it is not recognised on my macbook pro 2019 Sequoia with Blackmagic Desktop Video (mac sees the harware OK)

As always:
- Blackmagic are fine cards for HD, terrible cards for SD (especially consumer formats like VHS)
- Mac are great at many thing -- SD analog videotape capturing is not one of them

Quote:

The capture card only cost £30 and was highly rated when new

It was never rated highly for SD analog videotapes. Never. Only HD, and only people with low expectations (ie, the "excuse" crowd, so wrongly utter "it's only VHS" as if VHS is supposed to look bad, when it reality the card is just bad at VHS).

Quote:

I have become interested in the transfer process, so am considering buying a used mac in order to complete the transfer, which I will then sell on.

If you insist on staying with Mac -- and you're obviously in PAL lands -- then just get the non-suggested Canopus ADVC-50/55/100/110 boxes. You'll lose some color quality, but not as bad as NTSC will. However, the utter mess that is BM cards will make you hate capturing. Be aware of ignorance/lies/nonsense about Canopus boxes having TBCs -- this is not true! You still require TBCs, regardless of card choice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

You'd probably be better off buying an older windows machine for the actual capture process, that'll open up a lot more options that you'll find all over the site (typically AIW card or a select few USB capture cards that are windows-only that often play nicer with XP, though some modern cards can work on Windows 10/11).

This is the best advice.
Almost anything from the 2010s makes for a fine capture machine, such as older dual-core or i3, minimum 2gb RAM, and 2tb Seagate HDDs. The real money in building older systems is from PSUs, modifications for low/no noise, cases, quality coolers, specialized pieces like ejector bays. Even then, $1000 max(ish) for these premium parts.

Quote:

or specific Sony Digita8 or DV cameras that will digitize analog inputs to firewire.

I wouldn't suggest this. Too many potential problems If DV, Canopus (or DataVideo) or nothing.

Quote:

There might be an advantage of using the camcorder if they are the models with line TBC that the Canopus products may not have.

The presence of TBCs in consumer camcorders is not common.

Quote:

A line TBC prevents horizontal "wobble" of individual lines and you can generally tell if one is not in use by looking at the extreme right and left edges of the frame or by looking at lines that should be straight vertically that appear to wobble within the video. Flagging is another presentation where the entirety of the top of the image frame will appear to bend off to the right or left.

Quality VCR with TBC required, or ES10/15 at worse (but nothing that these DVD recorders add noise, those are not transparent devices). PAL S-VHS VCRs are, for multiple reasons, cheaper than comparable NTSC models.

You can get a quality PAL deck from, JVC S-VHS with line TBC, for only 400€ from VCRShop. Honestly, no excuse to not get one at that steal of a price, especially if already planning to resell it when done. Quality gear holds value, junk is your forever.

Quote:

DV/Firewire hardware is relatively inexpensive and is generally not as sensitive to timebase errors as a lot of other methods.

This is not true, never has been. DV boxes are just capture devices like any other. Nothing special about them. Timing errors fail at all capture cards, which is what TBCs are required, in order to not drop frames, not have audio sync issues..

Quote:

Extreme budget option would be something like the Cloner Alliance box pro. It'll pre-de interlace and upscale to 1080P at a decent bitrate, but he downside to this device

Those boxes are just crap, I'd never suggest those. That's the kind of thing you suggest to somebody you hate, and want to see suffer at video.

Quote:

There are YouTube videos out there that can explain capture options better, but preferring a Mac-Only ecosystem can limit things quite a bit.

Not really. In general, Youtube videos are made for novices, by other novices. So the person making the video know about as much as the person watching it. Some of these Youtubers talk like they know what they're doing, but to those of us that actually know this stuff, it's extremely obvious that they do not. Only their fellow newbies are so easily fooled.

Quote:

£300 for a professional transfer probably will be much less expensive and frustrating depending on the number of tapes that are involved and what equipment is being used. You'll likely spend much more than that on the VCR and capture device/TBC. A professional transfer service that won't tell you their full capture chain (which VCR, what passthrough devices, and what the capture format is) probably isn't worth using though.

Just be sure it's actually professional-quality work, not just some goober using low-end gear that you can do yourself. If they lack TBCs, run away fast!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hotglove

I have skimmed through it and will take some time to go through it

This is definitely not a topic to skim, re-visit and go slow. Do no make hasty decisions, you videos can get ruined quite easily this way. Not just output, but the original tapes can be destroyed by incompetence or bad advice.

[aramkolt]

This YouTube video probably summarizes most capture methods best, but they aren't Mac-specific:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTGe0HVDK9I

[vwestlife]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

If you insist on staying with Mac -- and you're obviously in PAL lands -- then just get the non-suggested Canopus ADVC-50/55/100/110 boxes. You'll lose some color quality, but not as bad as NTSC will.

In light of the Sony DVMC's resale value skyrocketing, and it lacking PAL, I've tested a few of its competitors/alternatives, and unfortunately the fatal flaw of anything that converts analog video to DV without a TBC -- such as any Canopus model except the ADVC-300 -- is that when it encounters unstable video, instead of outputting wobbly/distorted video, it simply stops outputting video at all, leading to gaps and skips in the transferred footage. And if your DV capture software doesn't like breaks in the time code, it'll bomb out with an error.

Models I've tested which all have that flaw:
ADS Tech Pyro A/V Link API-550
Canopus / Grass Valley ADVC-55
Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge
and the Datavideo DAC-100 reportedly does exactly the same.

[aramkolt]

I haven't done much recent capturing with the ADVC-100/110/300, but I have one of each for testing. Some claim that they do fine even without line TBC. Back in their heyday, people would use ADVC-100/110's all the time to digitize things whether their VCR had a TBC or not and I don't recall complaints about them dropping video, nor have I personally seen it

For what it is worth, I had to recap my ADVC-100, 110, and 300 to get them to work at all, so I wouldn't expect non-refurbished ones to be necessarily reliable long term without a refurb. Could be some instability others have experienced could be due to failing caps.

While I have not actually done the test, I suspect the ADVC100/110 would work just fine without a frame TBC as long as the VCR has a line TBC. My experience is that every card will have a degree of instability they'll tolerate in terms of spacing between frames before frames get dropped, and line TBC alone does improve frame timing quite a bit by itself. I have one of those Tektronix analyzers (VM-700T) - technically called a "video measurement set" - and it'll display variations in frame or line timing in micro/nanoseconds. Turning line TBC on decreases instability between frames by over a factor of 10 from what I remember, though I haven't dragged the VM-700T out in a few years, so that's just going from memory.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

Some claim that they do fine even without line TBC. Back in their heyday, people would use ADVC-100/110's all the time to digitize things whether their VCR had a TBC or not and I don't recall complaints about them dropping video, nor have I personally seen it

Honestly, it's mostly uneducated noise. Step back in time 20+ years, and realize that Canopus was a real "marketing whore" of a company. They'd stop just shy of making outright bogus claims. However, sellers like B&H ran with it, and they did make the false claim of Canopus boxes having TBCs. That's where it started. My emails and phones calls to B&H were ignored.

Eventually, I got tired of it, and made this post:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...-replace-a-TBC!
That got their attention.

I'm actually saddened at how much VH membership has "dumbed down" in the past decade.
Newbie VH posters have tried to resurrect that BS several times in the past few years.
For example: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...-TBC-after-all
^ That guy proved himself to be an idiot later in that thread, and other threads, then he disappeared.

Quote:

While I have not actually done the test, I suspect the ADVC100/110 would work just fine without a frame TBC as long as the VCR has a line TBC.

Yes, that can happen. Or not.
Lacking frame TBC just takes risks on the temporal axis. Some tapes may cooperates, other definitely will not. A single person will see both happen, and claims of "I don't need a TBC" are almost always easily proven wrong when the captures are reviewed.

Quote:

My experience is that every card will have a degree of instability they'll tolerate in terms of spacing between frames before frames get dropped, and line TBC alone does improve frame timing quite a bit by itself.

Yes, there is overlap.
- Line TBCs are mostly for visual correction, but it does have some minor frame/temporal cleansing.
- Equally, frame TBC is most for the non-visual temporal timing, but it also has some residual improvements possible visually. But also degradations, which is why quality (transparency) of frame TBC matters. The "also has TBC" devices are generally not transparent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vwestlife

In light of the Sony DVMC's resale value skyrocketing, and it lacking PAL, I've tested a few of its competitors/alternatives, and unfortunately the fatal flaw of anything that converts analog video to DV without a TBC -- such as any Canopus model except the ADVC-300 -- is that when it encounters unstable video, instead of outputting wobbly/distorted video, it simply stops outputting video at all, leading to gaps and skips in the transferred footage. And if your DV capture software doesn't like breaks in the time code, it'll bomb out with an error.

Models I've tested which all have that flaw:
ADS Tech Pyro A/V Link API-550
Canopus / Grass Valley ADVC-55
Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge
and the Datavideo DAC-100 reportedly does exactly the same.

Yes, those capture boxes all require, at a minimum, ES10/15 type TBC(ish) passthrough, if not actual quality TBCs in S-VHS VCRs with frame TBCs.

[aramkolt]

Agree there's a lot of variability in experience which makes testing all devices in all scenarios impossible, mainly because of so many variables - starting tape and the playback VCR being big ones that make it almost impossible to give "always" reproducible results - that is unless the capture card is really sensitive and drops frames easily, such as the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle.

It's quite possible that the ADVC devices don't drop frames or have issues with say Sony Hi8 tapes whereas they might drop frames with an EP VHS tape. Having a more tolerant capture device is a good thing (all else being equal), by may not be necessary for all or even most captures.

So the question is, how would you design a test for say the ADVC-110 (or other devices) to quickly show their shortcomings? How long would the capture need to be to prove no issues with audio sync? Perhaps doing an EP recording of a test pattern while manually adding drag to the video drum either during recording or playback? If that doesn't create huge timebase errors, I don't know what will. I did once have a VCR come in that didn't have the head drum tightened down to the chassis and that produced a pretty consistent rolling picture, so maybe I'll try to induce that on purpose.

[vwestlife]

Hi8 and S-VHS-C camcorders usually have a built-in TBC, so they're fine to capture from. Those seem to be what the majority of people were using when they gave DV capture devices glowing reviews about their ability to capture analog video. They had spent $1000+ on an analog camcorder and wanted to get a few more years of use out of it, even as digital was taking over.

Doing fast-forward or fast-reverse picture search will immediately cause the non-TBC-equipped DV capture devices to lose sync and stop outputting video. They have a status indicator LED which changes from green to red when they can't lock onto the video signal.