Capturing Workflow - from VHS to lossless for later editing

[hecky]

Hi there,
I am planning to do store some old vhs tapes to digital. These are mostly old thrash films which were never released on later media.
At the moment im storing these cassettes in my living room but for convenience i plan to put it on a storrage devices.
Because i have a huge amount of tapes i have to start early because of the normal playpack-limitation.

I have several VCRs including:
- Blaupunkt RTV 966* and RTV950
- Philips VR1500
- Panasonic AG 6200 and AG 7350
- JVC BR811 (sadly not working at the moment - need some time to fix it)

The capture card i am using are:
- black magic internsity shuttle *
- 3x Black magic intensity PCIe

I also have an canopus edius nx x86 xp-workstation - which is not used at the moment.

As an external tbc i only have an old 19"-unit - mstc G2.

My goal is to store my tapes in a lossless audio/video format on external drives.
I have several CRT Sony BVM/PVM-Monitors an an aditional CRT-projector from Sony i want to watch the videos on later
I want to watch it with a Kodi-MP (Raspberry) + ExtronScan-Converter (i have several) on my analog devices.

My "nobrainer"-workflow at this time is, according to a gleitz-tutorial
01. Blaupunkt RTV966 > Panasonic DMR-EH575 > HDMI-Splitter > Black magic intensity shuttle > BlackMagic Media Express (AVI 8-bit YUV in PAL 625i50 PAL)
02. Convert to HuffYUV with VirtualDub2 x64. Cutting to just the video. Cutting the lower 10pixel-rows and replacing them with a 10-pixel-black-bar.
03. Store it on external HD for later editing.

At the moment the rar files are arround 130..180gb converted to HuffYUV still 40 .. 68gb.
Audio is uncompressed because i cant get the encoder to work - the converted file only has noise as audio track - no matter which codec i select.

My questions are:
11. How do i decide which player suites the task the most? Or should i try to use the canopus workstation?
12. Is there a way to lower the filesize? I want to edit the files later - i think the capturing will take quite some time.
13. Do you recommend to put in some AV-Switchers? I have severeal "professional grade" switchers from Extron and Kramer.
14. Is there an indicator if the tape is captured correcly?


Greetings
hecky

[Eric-Jan]

You won't find any fan's of the Intensity Shuttle at DigitalFaq, although there's nothing wrong with the Intensity Shuttle,
It just wants a clean video signal, A TBC can help but cost some money if available at all, and not just any TBC will do.
The Panasonic DMR ES35V or DMR-EH575 will do fine for vhs or as passthrough, passthrough is the best option, component video output is preferred. (works for me fine) you can use RCA audio output that way.
The advantage of the Intensity Shuttle is, that you can capture in ProRes422... i use LT or Proxy both will do for VHS quality.
btw HDMI as connection will not always work, due to it's "nature" converters or spliters will sometimes not even work, or give quality loss, some combinations will work, but you have to search for user experiences.
Best bet is component video and not just as output on a VCR/DVD(player) combination, but as a recorder combination,
so you have to dive in a PDF of such a device. (maybe even a Home Cinema set with the right options/connections will do)
You can set the Panasonic DMR-EH575 to progressive, so you can use it as passthrough (component video out onto the Intensity) and connect the vcr on input of the DMR-EH575 that's it.

For viewing on CRT's you don't need to set progressive, but it takes time to de-interlace with software or de-interlace in a good way anyway....

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/v...p?f=18&t=78838

[Bogilein]

Use the canopus nx and buy a Panasonic dmr-es10 dvd recorder (about 30 Euros).

I habe both workflows and I prefer the canopus. If the jitter correction isn't good enough use the dmr-es10 and if you have problems with macrovision use the g2 tbc.

1h uncompressed audio (wav) is only 700mb.
1h uncompressed video is about 70gb, compressed with lossless codecs (huffyuv, ut video codec, lagarith) about 35gb, if you use the canopus you could use the canopus hq (which isn't lossless) and 1h about 25gb.
But I would store them with a lossless codec for later editing.

[Eric-Jan]

btw.. progressive on component video will also remove Macrovision i noticed, which will not be the case with HDMI i guess.

[hodgey]

HDCP strippers do bypass macrovision (HDCP is the digital equivialent after all), though the DVR itself can react badly to macrovision in some cases messing up black levels.

Blackmagic cards do work with virtualdub, so you can capture directly to lossless compressed rather than having to go via uncompressed. (Why blackmagics software doesn't allow usage of windows codecs I don't know, their software and drivers puzzle me in general.) I did start having some issues with virtualdub not always working with it after a windows update last year though, so I swapped to amarecTV instead, which does the job fine and also captures to any installed codec.

You may already know, but do be vary of the panasonic dvd-recorder clipping whites. It's possible to lower the video output level of the panasonics with some trimpots inside (though they're not designed to be used as brightness control). Another simple way is if using a scart -> svideo adapter, you can hook the composite connector on the same scart adapter up to the input of another vcr which will lower the level a bit.

[Bogilein]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgey

You may already know, but do be vary of the panasonic dvd-recorder clipping whites. It's possible to lower the video output level of the panasonics with some trimpots inside (though they're not designed to be used as brightness control). Another simple way is if using a scart -> svideo adapter, you can hook the composite connector on the same scart adapter up to the input of another vcr which will lower the level a bit.

Or you build something like Loetkolben did:

https://gleitz.info/forum/index.php?thread/47744-tipp-digitalisieren-%C3%BCbersteuerter-signale-von-analogen-uralt-kameras-vidicon/

and put it between the vcr and dvd recorder. Usually you have to reduce the luminance for about 3db.

The advantage of the edius nx card, the jitter correction is often good enough and the card has a real proc amp where you can reduce the luminance which is out of range.

[hecky]

Hello,

i already have an Pansonic DMR-ES30 here.
At the moment i go via scart from the VCR to the Panasonic DMR and with via HDMI to the splitter and the Insensity.
So in your oppinion i should use the nx workstation for capturing?

Greetings from germany

[hodgey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bogilein

https://gleitz.info/forum/index.php?...meras-vidicon/
.

Yeah I made a make-shift one myself using a potentiometer from an old cassette deck, the extra cable trick isn't always sufficient. It's a bit fiddly but it works, unfortunately my EH57 seems to have some issue with it causing high-frequency noise on the input still

I don't know why the Panasonic engineers designed them so that it will blow out whites. "VHS refresh" was an advertised feature of some of them like the EH50 so one would think they would have considered that home tapes can have all sorts of crazy levels as well.

I wish there was some way of adjusting the agc or levels on the Panasonics themselves, but I haven't found anything, even in the service manuals. The Sony/Pioneer DVRs have level adjustments in the menu, and with a service remote you can also disable sync AGC (which I need to get around to testing on a macrovision tape.), but they're not as good at correcting video as the panasonics are.

[hecky]

Is there a specific reason or a thread, why the BM intensity has such a bad reputation?
Sure it was quite painfull to get it running properly.
At the moment it works quit reliable.

It is a dedicated Laptop setup for the capturing. I am not able to do anything other than capturing. If i do anything f.e. copying to an external harddrive MediaExpress stops capturing with an info of "dropped frames" - so i leave the laptop alone.

So if the nothing happens during this progress i suppose everything is fine.

.. or is it still possible to have dropped frames in the video? When, how do i indicate or locate them?

Also ... at the moment i am not able to determin "errors of capturing" like jitter or anything else
Do i have to detect them by eye or are there any plugins out there for inspection?

Greetings
hecky

[lordsmurf]

Blackmagic cards were designed for HD, and SD was an afterthought. It was not designed for consumer sources like VHS, and has trouble with those signals even with an external framesync TBC in the workflow.

It's the wrong tool for the task.

[hecky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Blackmagic cards were designed for HD, and SD was an afterthought. It was not designed for consumer sources like VHS, and has trouble with those signals even with an external framesync TBC in the workflow.

It's the wrong tool for the task.

Thanks for your answer.
I appriciate your opinion

I followed another guide on a german website where the Panasonic DMR-EHxxx is for AD-conversion. The intensity shuttle only serves as an capture-device for an estimated "already norm-compliant"-digital signal.

So most of the users here try to capture annalog, so the capture-card itself has to do de AD-work?

Greetings
hecky

[msgohan]

Yes. Lordsmurf doesn't use the externalized A-D → HDMI (or SDI) capture method although a few of us do.