Do you keep your source material after capture?
 

Wondering what different people do. Vote now!

Sometimes. But no choice available for that answer.

I've edited the poll. Option added. :)

Which source?
- the tapes?
- the pre-authored files?
- the pre-MPEG intermediaries?
- the raw captures?

Not so easy, is it! :P

I almost always keep tapes. I made a few mistakes in my earlier digital years, from 2001-2003. Oops. Thankfully, it was all non-personal (not home movies) -- mostly cartoons, most all of which has since been released. So I got lucky there! In a few cases, it wasn't released, bit I later got better sources. Since at least 2004, I keep the tapes in case I can do better later. The only thing is that now, they're crammed in a closer, instead of on a shelf in the office (as the prizes they were).

I keep most pre-authored sources.

I rarely keep the lossless files. Sometimes I convert the raws into high bitrate MPEG2 instead. (Although these days, Blu-ray MPEG2 is my final product, not a DVD.)

I never keep captures.

For our business, we always send back tapes, and we'll send whatever the person wants -- as long as they give us drives! These days, we're often capturing to AVI, or creating Blu-ray versions. DVDs are rare now.

I suppose it depends on the source, its personal value to the owner, and whether you think it's possible to get better results later as technology and your skills improve, or if you can get your hands on a better tape player than you used in the original capture. If you had a good player and made as good a capture as you're ever likely to get, it would hardly seem worth the bother to keep the tapes.

That said, I started 14 years ago with over 400 hours of home-made VHS tapes and about a dozen retail issues. I confess that 85% of those original tapes were just plain godawful. The vast majority were discarded as hopeless even with "better" capture gear -- but I kept almost all of the huffyuv captures, the .avs scripts, and .vcf settings files. About a dozen tapes were from relatives: weddings, graduation tapes, that sort of thing. I started to discard them but, alas, their personal value to the owners gave me pause -- for what purpose I'm not certain, because a couple of them are so horrible (and one made by a 'pro' was so bad that my neice wept when she saw her 'pro' graduation tape) and the players and capture cards were among the best available, so I doubt I'll get better captures. After spending anywhere from weeks to months making them look decent on DVD, I keep them strictly as heirlooms. In a couple of cases I kept tapes and captures and somehow lost them, still looking for them after 10 years because they have historical value for me.

I know a couple of hobbyists who recorded dozens of tapes directly into DVD recorders with cheap VCR's, then destroyed the tapes. Looking at them years later, one guy is still kicking himself for not having kept a couple of them. I guess it depends on the individual.

A big goal in capturing my source tapes to computer was to get rid of the source tapes. Right now I have about 10 hours of raw VHS captures from tapes I have already discarded. I have no intention of keeping the raw captures forever either. The plan is to clean them up and save them as final h.264 mp4 videos at 2-3GB an hour (not 40).


I'm very happy to see some De-interlacing code in the "Coming Soon: Avisynth processing guides" topic. I know everyone seems to says to not de-interlace but I have decided to go ahead with it. Here are my reason to de-interlace.
- Final output primarily computer playback
- Tube TVs are virtually extinct
- Less likely to have playback issue
- Less processing during playback
- Much more video data in raw video before compression
- Any filters, and video compression probably work better with progressive

I guess I forgot to add a critical part to this poll - what are most people's sources? Home recordings? Commercial VHS? Home movies? I think that plays a lot into how we handle this stuff too.

I almost never keep the analog source. If the source are dubbed VHS, I throw them in the garbage or give it away. If the source are either LaserDiscs or commercial VHS, I sell them. The only exceptions so far are my personal Hi8 because I might want to recapture them some day and then get rid of them.

However, I always keep all the Huffyuv files I've made capturing on at least 2 separate external hard drivers.