New Member Introduction - my VHS-C to digital project!

[Dissones4u]

Hello all,

I just wanted to make a quick introduction since I'll likely be hanging out here for at least a few weeks and maybe more. I'm a 40 year old male from Nashville Tennessee and I'm in the process of deciding what gear to buy in order to transfer roughly 30 VHS-C home movies to digital. I also work for a non-profit facility that lends very old VHS tapes dealing with substance abuse and recovery. Most, if not all, of these tapes are ancient and they are not, nor have they ever been, available in digital format such as DVD. The quality of these tapes while "professional" is relatively low so I'd like to transfer and possibly "clean up" if that proves to be reasonable.

No gear bought at this time, still developing the purchase plan after having lurked here for the past two weeks or so.

Pleasure to be here and I look forward to discussing all things digital with you guys

[kpmedia]

We were in Nashville for years, from 2006-2013, but had to leave the area for family reasons.
Which non-profit is it? Maybe I've heard of it before.

It's always good to know more about our members.

[sanlyn]

Welcome.

Well, if you haven't done any VHS transfers, you have ahead of you what we call down home about 10 miles of bad road. Don't get me wrong: many thrive on this kind of work. They gobble it up like M&M's and yell for more. Others take the lazy way out and get results that illustrate the difference between doing it in several of many wrong ways and doing it in some of a few more correct ways. If you're just starting, there's a guide to capturing, restoring, encoding, authoring, and the characteristics of video on a computer. The forum's guides are here; http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video.htm. Some of the info is dated nowadays when it comes to hardware. But most of the software is the same, and the principles of decent quality processing haven't changed.

There are slews of threads and debates on various methods. Just to list those threads would fill this page. Try the basic guides first, or you won't even know what to look for.

I never used VHS-C, but there are adapters for playing it in good VCR's and there are VHS-C cameras about. Can't help you in detail here, but I know that member lordsmurf uses those adapters and might be able to help with that. When I say "a good VCR" or player, or even a good playback camera, don't take it lightly. A cheap VCR can make a decent tape look like pooh-pooh no matter how much you do to it. Tape is usually captured to a computer using a capture device of some kind designed for that purpose. The best capture cards are no longer made, but I see where the ATI-600 is newer and often recommended if you can find a way to play the tapes. The source video is captured to lossless AVI using a lossless compressor like huffyuv or Lagarith, then processed and edited in a number of ways, then encoded to DVD or other final output format, then authored to disc. If that sounds totally foreign, check the guides first, where light bulbs will start popping on all over the place. Does this take time? Yes. Patience? Essential. Knowing what you're doing? Well, yes. But it's all attainable. I've seen people do this quite well who can't otherwise tie a windsor knot. Don't get tempted to go out and buy an $800 chunk of "pro" software for your PC thinking it will make things better. It won't. Some of the stuff the pros use is free (!) open-source apps. Anyway, it would take 6 months to learn that pro software. You can get a $100 WalMart package that does everything, meaning that it doesn't do anything very well and usually just makes it easier for you to wreck everything pronto. And $800 is overkill, especially since $400 to $500 of it is for features you'll never use.

One other way -- and it's not the best if those videos are really important -- is to record tape to a DVD recorder. That's a lazy way, and it only takes 2 hours with a 2 hour tape. Unfortunately digital recording and encoding devices don't see tape noise and defects the same way your old CRT saw them, if it saw them at all. Defects become ugly and annoying artifacts in the hands of ruthless, cold-hearted digital encoders. Most of the better DVD recorders (which haven't been made for eight or nine years) had built-in correction circuits that took care of some of the worst and most visible of those defects, among which are line timing and other errors that are inherent with tape playback and can't be corrected later. Some say the recorded tape looks like the original. I disagree, and the more you watch that recording the more you'll disagree yourself. A decent tape will look, well, OK if you can live with it. A bad tape will look worse. Every time. One thing it will never do is look "better". One hardware or circuit device you'll see mentioned is a tbc (time base corrector). There are two types. No need to go into detail here, just remember there are two types. The line-correcting type is the one you need the most for tapes. There are various ways to get and use those things.

If you have a lot of tapes (I think you do) it will take a lot of time. Once you learn to work with the first tape or two, it gets easier and faster. What many people do, however, if they have neither time nor patience nor hardware nor software, is find a pro shop to make transfers. Some shops will even give you a lossless or nearly lossless digital version to work with to your heart's content. They have such services here at digitalfaq. Not free, of course. But consider the time and cost of finding the right tools, most of which are used and/or rebuilt from a few years back and nowhere near cheap -- then the cost for decent pro work becomes more reasonable in comparison.

Anyway, I hope you get something out of this post besides a nervous breakdown. At least you know you have more than one way to go. Don't be afraid to get more specific and post questions in the forum.

[volksjager]

the some of the best decks will eat VHS-C tapes even with the good powered adapter
the best way to do VHS-C tapes is to respool them into full-size VHS shells.
i wrote a little blurb somewhere on the forum - try a search an it may pop up.
it is not that hard and completely eliminates all the VHS-C related BS

[Dissones4u]

Yes, I've read this elsewhere on this site along with several other gold nuggets. I've been leaning toward a Panasonic ag-1980 as I'd read that it is the best for vhs-c. I am also contemplating one of the D units and respooling. The biggest reason I'm hesitant about the Panasonic ag-1980 is that the video out is not composite and I'd read "somewhere" that I should not mix composite and s-video in the same workflow however I can't seem to find that thread again. Anyway I hope to spend some more time this weekend getting things planned out so that I can begin to move forward with purchases.

[volksjager]

never use composite for tapes - always use S-video

[sanlyn]

You should use s-video out when it's available. If you avoid a player because it has s-video, you'll avoid all of the best players out there. Maybe you're confusing s-video with "S-VHS"? They're unrelated. S-VHS is a tape storage format, just as VHS and VHS-C are different storage formats. s-video is a type of signal transmission, and its associated cables and circuitry. Basically, s-video transmits luma and chroma separately, whereas composite does not (resulting in interference between the two components). S-VHS, VHS, and VHS-C (and even DVD) can be output with composite, s-video, or component output where available.

[metaleonid]

What if the 2nd generation VHS was copied from the source VHS back in the day using Composite? Now source VHS is gone. You only have 2nd generation VHS to digitize from. Do you still use S-Video out or better to use Composite with motion adaptive 3d comb filter?

[sanlyn]

The 2nd-gen tape already has line timing errors, dot crawl, and other damage. You might be able to clean up some of that with post-processing and a lossless capture. Why make the same mistakes again when capturing a so-so tape? Get as clean a signal as you can. Use s-video. You'll need an onboard tbc or at least a decent line-tbc passthrough device to avoid further ruin during capture.

[Dissones4u]

OK, I read this (below) elsewhere and so I've had it in my head that I need to use composite in order to get the proper workflow with hardware filtering etc.

this is an excerpt from a guide found at hxxp://anarchivism.org/w/How_to_Rip_VHS

"There are disadvantages to using s-video, though. Later in this guide I will be talking about hardware video processing. Many of these components are composite video only, making users either find an s-video counterpart or abandon use of the processing hardware (though some effects can be mimicked using software modification). If you have interest in the composite only components, an S-VHS deck still serves as a good investment because of its quality and reliability."

After reading this I'd confirmed that much of the hardware I am watching on ebay (procamp/detailer etc) is in fact composite only. With that in mind I've also read that you should not convert back and forth from s-video to composite. I assume this means that there is s-video hardware out there and I need to look for that rather than the composite hardware.

[sanlyn]

Which "hardware components" does that article mention specifically? If you mean those nightmare $100-or-less "video enhancers" that were shown, you can save yourself a lifetime of grief by avoiding video sites aimed at the average BestBuy customer. I have two proc amps, neither of which came for less than $500. You might find good used stuff for less than that, but not by much (and often for more than their original price, since many that were best suited for VHS are no longer made). The good stuff has s-video, at least.

Something else about proc amps: unless you have a severely crippled video, you likely won't need one. If capturing with VirtualDub and a few other capture devices, the capture dialogs can access your capture device or graphics card proc amp controls. Yes, believe it or not, most decent graphic cards have such things. Lots of people get a fancy proc amp and say, :Man, I'll fix up the color and contrast in this tape and make it look like BluRay!" They spend time setting up a gorgeous image in the preview window (usually with crushed blacks, blown-out highlights and other invalid video levels that are iffy to judge by eye alone), and they start their capture. Wonderful. But, uh-oh. Two scenes later in that tape, the levels and color balance on that VHS change completely, everything looks wacky, and they've only captured 45 seconds. The two controls you'll use most of the time will be brightness and contrast, maybe saturation if that's a problem. You won't use sharpness (unless you enjoy looking at sharpened VHS noise and breaking into tears trying to clean it up). You won't use denoisers, because you soon learn that the capture-time denoisers that are available are dreadfully primitive detail-eating monsters whose effects are permanently imbedded in your capture. And they are slow-acting, thus concern for dropped frames and audio sync problems. If you have a $1000 box or better, designed for analog capture use, you might get away with that sort of enhancement. In any case you'll need a histogram to check that you don't exceed valid input levels, which often happens with tape -- especially home-made stuff.

I just looked that site over and, tell you the truth, I've been-there/done-that with those general consumer sites a long time ago. I'll never go back. Here's your first clue about that site, from its top title on down: walk up to an advanced hobbyist or pro and announce that you're going to "rip a VHS tape to my computer". He'll laugh his head off. They're usually decent types who will apologize afterwards and politely explain that "rip" has nothing to do with analog source. It's like saying "I think I'll go find some bread and rip myself a sandwich". It's up to you, but I'd avoid that site.

[metaleonid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

The 2nd-gen tape already has line timing errors, dot crawl, and other damage.

Precisely. And rainbows too. So from what I've been told, the only way to clean the dot crawls and rainbows from composite damage is to use motion adaptive 3d comb filter which is hardware only and can only be applied during the real time video capture. Or are you saying that motion adaptive 3d comb filter is not recommended to be applied if S-Video -> Composite copying has already taken a place in analog domain?

The reason I'm asking is because I am digitizing some of my VHS that I recorded using RF back in the day. I'm indeed using S-Video. But wonder if it would be better to rather switch to composite plugging into motion adaptive 3d comb filter.

When I digitize from LaserDiscs though, I am doing 3 separate captures: 2 with motion adaptive coming from composite and one going to S-Video in hope that someday someone will write software motion adaptive 3d comb filter for AVISynth.

sanlyn, would you also be using S-Video out from LaserDisc?

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by metaleonid

What if the 2nd generation VHS was copied from the source VHS back in the day using Composite? Now source VHS is gone. You only have 2nd generation VHS to digitize from. Do you still use S-Video out or better to use Composite with motion adaptive 3d comb filter?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dissones4u

"There are disadvantages to using s-video, though. Later in this guide I will be talking about hardware video processing.

Oh goodie! It's one of those times where I get to sound old

In 20+ years of working with VHS in a serious capacity (hobby, then professionally), having converted thousand of tapes to digital format in that time (DVD, Blu-ray, streaming, lossless/uncompressed archives, etc), I can probably count the number of times, where composite was better than s-video, on my finger and toes.

But it's a lot more than 2nd generation VHS when it does happen. The tape has to be nth generation to create a situation where separating the chroma (Y) from the two luma channels (UV) -- i.e. separated video or "s-video" -- creates unstable video. Yes, it can happen. But it's a very tiny % of the time.

That whole wiki page is horsecrap, to be blunt. Simply referring to capturing as a "VHS rip" shows a complete lack of knowledge on the subject. Or as stated, the suggestion to use faux-TBCs aka "clarifiers" or whatnot. Or really crappy Archer or Sima consumer gear. Yuck! It's one of those sites where you'll get dumber by reading it, not smarter. And they'll waste lots of your money with bad buying advice. Realize that's NOT an authoritative site when it comes to video, but simply somebody's one-off video page. It's obvious (to me) that somebody with very minimal video knowledge wrote it. Beware!

Quote:

After reading this I'd confirmed that much of the hardware I am watching on ebay (procamp/detailer etc) is in fact composite only. With that in mind I've also read that you should not convert back and forth from s-video to composite. I assume this means that there is s-video hardware out there and I need to look for that rather than the composite hardware.

The cheaper 1980s Vidicraft gear is composite only. But honestly, I'd try to spend more than $50 for a Vidicraft, and get the s-video Elite Video BVP4 (or BVP4 Plus) proc amp. I guess you'll have to decide how much budget matters here. Just know that it affects quality significantly -- s-video is much better than composite. Right now, the Elite can be had as low as $200. It was $700+ new!

Tip: You can always reseller the gear when done.

Unless the VHS-C is really, really good quality -- which is uncommon -- a detailer probably won't help much. It's not a format where sharpness can be improved much, because of the cameras that shot it. VHS-C consumer cameras were all pretty lousy, even the S-VHS-C ones!

@sanlyn: I'll have to remember that bread analogy.

[metaleonid]

So then the how does the scenario: Source VHS->Composite-> 2nd gen VHS differs from a simple LaserDisc (assuming source VHS is gone for good).

2nd gen VHS basically has damaged luma and chroma already. If I use S-Video, I get luma and chroma damaged. If I use composite via 3d separation, can reseparate luma and chroma in more correct way (the way I would do from the laserdisc?)

I just want to understand.

[TylerDurden389]

I recently put all my vhs-c footage into donor vhs tapes. Happy to say these are the masters, though older home movies had been recorded onto them previously, and subsequently taped over. God I wish my parents had just bought more vhs-c tapes instead of recording the oldest footage onto vhs and then using the same vhs-c tapes. I hate that my older, more precious home movies are not 1st generation like the later stuff is. The difference between the 2 generations is like night and day.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by metaleonid

So then the how does the scenario: Source VHS->Composite-> 2nd gen VHS differs from a simple LaserDisc (assuming source VHS is gone for good).

2nd gen VHS basically has damaged luma and chroma already. If I use S-Video, I get luma and chroma damaged. If I use composite via 3d separation, can reseparate luma and chroma in more correct way (the way I would do from the laserdisc?)

I can't answer for laserdisc, which hopefully doesn't apply here because laserdisc capture is a world unto itself. As for s-video, you use it to get a cleaner signal, not a worse signal. Now to digress a moment, lordsmurf has a point in that sometimes a composite capture or recording can look as good or cleaner than s-video. It depends on the source signal, the player(s), and many other factors. So "composite=evil" / "s-video=good" is not absolute. I've even seen DVD players whose s-video outputs were pure garbage.

I'd assume that the 2nd gen tape wasn't made with prosumer VCR's or 3Dy/c comb filters nor a line tbc. Those make a difference. It could also be that the playing VCR had great output but the recording VCR didn't, or vice versa. The acid test is making a proper capture (or two, if you wish, with different outputs for comparison), and check the results. I have one 1996 Panasonic SVHS with Dynamorphous heads that was so well-maintained by its seller that it was spotless when it showed up and came with three yellow invoices for regular maintenance work by what seemed to be a rather pricey shop. It has mighty clean ouput from composite and s-video alike. The s-video seems a bit sharper (better contrast), but there's no dot crawl either way. That was a top of the line set in its day, built before plastic replaced everything in VCR's a couple of years later.

The other point you make about "separation": tape stores luma and chroma data as YUV (actually, it's YCbCr, which is another flavor of the general system called "YUV"). The YUV system stores luma and chroma separately. S-video keeps the two separate, composite joins them. How well each of those circuits manages the original signal can vary between machines. I've seen cheap so-called SVHS VCR's where composite and s-video looked exactly alike (i.e, both horrible, and both with dot crawl to boot).

Another excellent proc amp is the Sign Video PA-100 (not cheap, but not as pricey as it used to be). Has a built-in luminance/IRE meter which alone is worth the price. I understand that like the BVP-4, it's no longer made. But Sign Video still lists it on their website: http://www.signvideo.com/products/pr...o-proc-amp.htm .

[metaleonid]

Sanlyn, then pure theoretical question. Suppose you have a super-duper HIFI S-VHS VCR. You recorded a LaserDisc onto the S-VHS via either S-Video out or Composite out onto this high end deck. Analog to analog. No digital. In either case you haven't used motion adaptive 3d comb filter. Just simple 2d Y/C separation. So on this S-VHS despite high quality recording and despite the fact that luma and chroma are stored separately the recording does suffer from dot crawls and rainbows. So if you are to digitize this S-VHS, would you be using S-Video out or Composite out? Assume that both outputs produce excellent signals. In other words is it a good idea in this particular case to recomb luma and chroma and run through motion adaptive 3d comb filter?

This was a pure theoretical example. My case is a practical: some of my VHS were recorded from cable via RF back in a day. During recording chroma and luma were combed and then were split up to be stored on VHS. I am using S-Video out.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by metaleonid

So if you are to digitize this S-VHS, would you be using S-Video out or Composite out?

This is an easy one.

You use the s-video. The previous generation(s) is immaterial. You need to focus on the current generation/video. You need to stop further loss, so as not to further compound the issue. This goes for not just dot crawl, but chroma noise and other common VHS flaws. Very often, the S-VHS VCR will help correct prior generation damage as well, depending on the error (though dot crawl is NOT one of them).

After the video is transferred as best as possible, cleaned up as much as possible by the hardware, you have to use software methods. Dot crawl is indeed something that can (mostly) only be fixed via software. However, the best fix is to avoid the dot crawl entirely.

There are a select few Laserdisc players that can output cleaner-than-normal (not composite) s-video signals. But those are not flawless. The original Laserdisc was compositied, so some degree of dot crawl is inherent.

However, then same is not true of VHS or S-VHS, which is recorded as separate chroma/luma. When a cheap VCR composites the signal, that's where the damage happens. If an s-video chain is always maintained, there should be no dot crawl. Many homemade tapes, for example, have no dot crawl because of this fact. Only the copies of copies would.

This is one of the easier/basic aspects to capturing. It's one of the first things I learned so long ago.

[metaleonid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Dot crawl is indeed something that can (mostly) only be fixed via software.

I can't find your post from a few years back, but you were the one who said that dot crawls and rainbows can't be fixed via software filter and thus you can only do so via motion adaptive 3d comb filter during realtime video capture.

If software filter for removing dot crawls and rainbows exists, then I'd be rather doing S-Video captures from LDs and then run them through the software based filter.

Additionally, I was told by LD player's repair men that my LD player picks up composite from the LaserDisc, then separates Y from C and then outputs it to S-Video terminal. But for composite terminal it recombs Y and C after the separation takes place and outputs to the Composite terminal. So in this case what should be done? S-Video because it's separated anyway, or Composite (even though it is recombed)? One of the repair person told me to still use composite for video capture because the signal is cleaner.

[sanlyn]

Today's software filter are more advanced and sophisticated than they older ones. But no one sez you can clean dot crawl entirely and without side effects. On the other hand what are your alternatives, whether you have some dot crawl or not? Tape degenerates as it ages, even if it's not played. Under less than perfect storage conditions, it ages more quickly. Each time it's played, it's damaged. With each passing day, tape players in decent condition disappear, one after the other. Do you think a permanently archived lossless digital capture and perhaps a cleaned and authored disc version might be of some value? Or would you prefer waiting for magnetic tape layers to dry up, crack, and rot?

The hypothetical laserdisc recording to VHS (what? why? Was someone actually paid to do this, or simply seduced?) has problems beyond dot crawl and disturbed chroma. So what are you asking? If composite created considerable damage by being used in the past, would it add more grunge to the new capture if the same mistakes were repeated? It is just possible that using the same methods again will have no effect. It is more like 99 out of a hundred that it will make things worse -- unless you can find a good vcr with decent dnr/tbc and/or a good tbc pass-through device with a good y/c comb filter (they do exist), in which case you might get away with little or no change. But in fact you'd still need those last y/c-dnr/tbc items even if you use s-video for the new capture. Solution: try both and see.

Tell you what. Get a so-so tape, or even a tape made from this hypothetical LD. Then get a standard vcr -- a brand new one, if you want, and use or borrow someone's dvd recorder. Capture about an hour of the source tape to DVD disc and take a look at it. We'll show you how to get that digital DVD onto a computer (simple), how to cut a small 10-second or 20-second chunk out of it without making any changes in it (simple), and how to post that short sample in this forum (simple). Then members can take a look. Doing it once will answer many more questions than reading about it.

In any case I've heard that it's recommended for LD to be captured via composite. But don't assume that LD data storage and playback and VHS data storage and playback are alike.