Thanks for starting the guide. Just a few corrections. Note that users on this forum can't edit our posts outside of a limited time window, so the OP will have to remain as-is unless the admin wants to change it.

That link is someone's fork of the vhs-decode fork of ld-decode. The repository maintained by oln/hodgey keeps the ld-decode name, and is absolutely buried in search engine results. (The fork you linked is currently 64 commits behind oln.)

vhs-decode: https://github.com/oyvindln/ld-decode

There are half-height CX2388x cards. My Pixelview XCapture PV-CX881P included both full and low-profile brackets, though ensuring you get both on the second-hand market could be difficult. I got lucky with my cheap eBay purchase from Russia, of all places.

More importantly, PCI support is not required! :) If one is willing to spend a bit more on the capture card (and wait for delivery from China) there are AliExpress sellers offering CX2388x cards with built-in PCI-to-PCIe bridge chips. So the only requirement is that a desktop computer is used. If someone insists on laptop, they'll have to invest in a Domesday Duplicator and build it or find someone selling a completed assembly.

Example listings with PCIe bridge chips; I'm not specifically endorsing these sellers:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003133382186.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001286595482.html

Another point I would add to the "stuff you'll need" is HDD/SSD space. It's a little over 28MB/s uncompressed for the initial ingest, and storage concerns become a bigger factor once you actually start decoding, because each step produces giant temporary files.

Slight clarification: it can be 0-3, i.e. CX23880, CX23881, CX23882, CX23883.

Warning: it cannot be 5-8. Those chips are from a different family, based around PCIe.

And while all 0-3 chips will work, it may be that one of these variants generally has better noise characteristics for this purpose. Same goes for specific cards constructed using these chips. At this stage, it isn't clear to me. We're still experimenting. What is certain is that there is variability.

Hi mate,

Thanks for this - I'm having to pick this up as I go.

The point about the fork is CRITICAL and oln had made the error aware to me - that was my laziness as I just opened the first link in DDG when putting the guide together, I should have checked that and please accept my apology - that's the critical thing. I'm writing this on-the-fly so keep any corrections coming as they need to be fed in.

Thanks again,
RR

Ld-decode is pure PWM composite video, almost like ripping a CD and extracting PCM data vs capturing from analog audio RCA. Yes PWM is still analog but it doesn't suffer from the inherit problems of tape based formats. So it is totally different from vhs-decode.

One thought I had was that Panasonic or JVC can reissue the mechanical parts of their VCRs as modules and there's a chassis that I can put those modules in and get different personalities for an RF capture. Just a thought obviously. In addition I'm also in awe of the authors of VirtualDub and HCEnc. The ability of all these geniuses just boggle my mind.

I get it but kinda contradictive. Can't recoup costs on failed equipment (unless it's really rare I suppose).

I know it's really easy to say but you're not the one taking the risk. Almost anything can happen to these expensive decades-old equipment shipped all across the country or the globe. And of the scarcity of the best condition equipment, or lack of history or provenance.

Perhaps LS should stand for "Lord Sith," as only a Sith deals with absolutes. (just joking Mr. Lord Smurf!) :P

It would be great if they did but I don't think the economies are there, video-heads especially need very precise tooling (arguably, excluding microelectronics, the video head is/was the domestic item made to the highest tolerance) and fine quality control, the heads even on very modest machines I believe was the single most expensive components on the BOM. I doubt there's any tooling left for heads, so making them again would be a gargantuan undertaking by one of the major players - or it goes to China who probably have a load of Funai bits floating around.

It's a great concept though, and who knows, but considering (JVC especially) are a shadow of the company that they once were and are practically out of the household electronics market I don't think it'd be something viable for them.

Retooling could easily cost millions, so there would have to be a very strong market.

But stranger things happen!

The market is not there otherwise Funai wouldn't have had stopped their production of VCR's back in 2016, Though those are not the JVC Rolls Roys, but that would diminish the market even further for such machines due to the higher price.

I suppose that with the current un-converted stock of analog tapes left if people take care of their VCR's and pass them along to others without being greedy we should be able to convert most of the home videos and some rare tapes that didn't exist on other better formats in the next two or three decades.

Now if a solution exists in the future that takes a normal cheap modern VCR and add a piece of modern hardware and software to it we can push it further extra decade or two, that should guarantee the conversion of every tape existed, assuming people are pro active and do it right in the first time rather than using cheap capture devices or running to crappy services like Legacy-box just to find out few years later that they have to do it all over again, That's what happened with all the captures made to DVD and DV for the last 2 decades or so.

Interesting point, with regards to DVD

We stopped advertising DVD as a transfer option in May, we will do it upon request but we were not keen to do them anymore. I guess we burn no more than ten a week.

DVD is almost as dead as VHS to many of our customers, hence we've gone to files/streaming almost exclusively.

Which is why I find it quite cute when I was lectured about how people are watching this stuff on jumbo TVs, I've got the sales data to say only about 20% 30% of our customers view our video on television now.

DVD & BluRay are seen as 'Boomertech' now, interestingly along with Facebook, there's a whole second market coming along with this, but this isn't a treatise on transfer businesses.

We plan to completely stop offering DVD as an option in 2022, but plans could change.

Where were we again?!

Even failed gear holds value, because it can be repaired, or used for parts to frankenstein with another deck.

In our plane of existence, we have both variables and constants. But some folks live in a loosey-goosey world, where everything is a variable. There exist immutable, immovable facts. We don't have to like it, and I know I certainly am not thrilled about various rules/facts, but we have to acknowledge it. I detest how video is politicized, in a modern way, where basic facts (or even just generally-accurate observations) are argued, so conversations cannot move beyond head-in-sand antics.

Most people do still watch on their TVs. For example, Netflix? There are studies for this, which show TV viewership of content is still in the 75% range. Why else do you think Youtube, a successful website, is so determined to get onto TV sets? Yes, DVDs are a failing format now, but that has nothing to do with TVs. Most people long ago switched to streaming options, using both streaming services (currently Netflix, Paramount+, Disney+, HBO Max, etc) and home based media servers. Not for phone or tablet, nor computer (which are also going the way of the DVD, for non-work/gaming use), but a giant TV set parked in front of a chair/couch.

Vinyl. :wink2:

...and I"m still in disbelief over this. :screwy:

This will happen, but...

Cue the Kumbaya music, and kindergarten lessons on sharing. But it's not realistic, for many reasons. Inflation, costs to repair/refurb into better condition, etc. Yes, there are some definite cases of greed, and selling misrepresented/abused crap. But there's also cases of restoring the units to further their lifespans. When you deal in essentially functional antiques, scarcity is part of the valuation. Hence why even parts/junk decks have value. A lot of screams about video gear "greed" are sour grapes from people that didn't buy the gear when it was new, or first used well over a decade ago. But it's the 2020s, not the 90s/00s.

Yep. Most of my mid/late 2010s work was spent redoing videos that others had screwed up in the 2000s. Sadly, sometimes without the original tapes, salvaging the crummy digital files as best as possible. But thankfully, many packrats in our society still had the original tapes for a round 2 attempt.

You're entirely right - however, for my service my AWS Transcoder bill tells a different tale - at least for me as a sample of precisely 1.

Mobile viewing is the majority, at least on elastic transcode anyway, obviously, I don't know what/how/where customers do with files. What I *can* say is, fewer and fewer every sales period ask for DVD copies, that said I've just been asked to create 15 copies of something. I do find if a customer wants DVD, they tend to want multiple copies.

That's all I can say on the matter really, anything else would be sensitive information in the business sense. But the most truthful answer I can give, it seems to be squarely sliding toward the small screen market.

I'm a tape-head, we're currently having a purple patch at moment, I recently parted with a Maxell Metal Vertex for over £125.

Thanks also for taking the time to post this. As time permits I'm aiming to get to at least a live preview of a tape; I'm planning on using a spare Sony VCR and tap into its test point, I dare not open my main capture Panasonic VCR just yet. For the moment most of the time on VHS is spent on cutting footage.

By the way the github page indicates that vhs-decode can run on WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) so Windows 10 users with WSL2 should be able to set up an Ubuntu VM (provided virtualization support is active in the BIOS) and run the decode process on existing captures conveniently within Windows 10.

Really exciting stuff! :congrats:

Sorry to bump an old thread, but was wondering if there was ever a part 2 posted someplace? A stripped down explanation of this apparently very complicated process is exactly what I'm looking for!

This thread is now vestigal, apologies.

Around this the time this was written there were some quite major advances in VHS-Decode, and there are ever approaching major changes (dare we say the 'W' word?) - I'm helping to write the docs' for the project and a lot of what I created has been grafted into that, as ultimately it's far more useful on a Wiki than on here, also this is ever-changing information and hopefully, a lot of it will soon be redundant.

LS has also made it clear it's a 'nothing burger' in his opinion, which he's entitled to hold but there's probably no logic in driving traffic here (this thread comes up high in VHS-Decode topics on Google) if he isn't especially interested in it.

Long story short, there's some great docs' coming and they will be on a maintained Wiki.

VHS-Decode is really starting to pick up some pace,

vhs-decode is a show-me story. Tech is a wasteland of vaporware, alphaware (never really usable), etc. I refuse to give people false hope, and play the waiting game to converting their videos (as they've already waited arguably too long now, we're commonly seeing degrade tapes now from the 80s).

Right now, it's a 100% grade-A nothingburger. With cheese. Do you want fries with that? :D

Later ... we'll see. :hmm:

The eventual intention is better video, so I'm all for it. But it's not there yet, and there's still potential it never will be. I'm a realistic, not a cheerleader. This POV is as valid as any other right now. If it ever does happen, great, we can redo some of our most important or rare videos.

Will this work for Betamax? There are few decks with S-Video so it would be good to have an alternative.

There is some preliminary support for PAL betamax (don't have any NTSC samples yet), it decodes but we lack details on some of the luminance filtering in the format, so the image doesn't look right as of now.

Hello. I’m new to all of this VHS digitizing, but know a lot about dvd and Blu-ray data recovery. I’ve never used anything other than macOS and windows. Do I have to use Linux or Ubuntu? I don’t know much about them and would like to avoid having to install any operating systems.

I have a windows pc with plenty of ram and some pci-e slots to spare. I have a great condition Sharp 4-head Hi-Fi player, and a cheap upscaler. My main goal is to be able to digitize the only two tapes from my parent’s wedding. I did a basic read of the tapes through the player output, but I’d like to get a better read. How can I read the raw data from the tape and decode it on windows?

Sorry if this is a dumb question. I’m new to this and don’t want to get heavily involved (or spend hundreds of dollars) since I only have to digitize two tapes.
Thanks.

The VHSdecode process is very involving and for now does not work on any Mac or Windows platforms, The RF raw data recovered needs further processing to get a useful video and audio out of it, and as of now it is not finalized. Just pay someone who you can trust to do those tapes, not worth the hassle.

The current VHS-Decode works on M1 or newer Macs pretty well actually (can render video from the saved RF stream at about 5 frames per second after capture). Main issue that most will run into is that it isn't quite a seamless experience. There's a lot of initial setup and install that can be a little cumbersome if you aren't familiar with using terminal to install things.

The main issue I see for most is that it takes up something like 300GB PER HOUR to store the raw video RF capture which is going to be a dealbreaker for most. That RF file also isn't immediately playable or editable - it then has to be converted into an actual video file, and then later you have to take audio captured via other means at the same time you captured the Video RF and get it align in another program to add the audio back into the video.

The results of VHS decode can look VERY nice, but it would be too time and resource intensive for me to personally archive most tapes that way, especially if they play nicely already and isn't something of historical importance.

As it stands, I've only done like a 20 second capture of just video on my M1 Mac, and I don't fully understand all of the features to get it to look as good as some of the samples posted online, but I'll eventually work with it more and try to eventually post a real world comparison of all "BEST/suggested" conversion methods and cards and VHS-Decode will need to be among them of course.

The most important feature of the VHSdecode is the TBC decoding stability quality, I have achieved that stability using FPGA devices, Visual quality is dependent on the quality of the original video itself on tape as well as the condition of the tape, You're not going to see a visible visual difference between a VHSdecode sample and a S-VHS VCR with S-Video out captured from the same tape in lossless AVI. Most of those side by side comparisons are done with composite only thrift store VCRs.

With VHSdecode you are entering the domain of diminishing returns, It is not worth it for me personally, and I don't ever think that I'm willing to go through that laborious process just to achieve what I have already achieved years ago.

More and more people are testing this project, and they're finding it's a situation of overpromising and underdelivering, and this is why.

It's not hard to do better than Easycaps and Goodwill VCRs. Other tests use known-flawed capture cards (VC500, etc), or known-noisy/altering DVD recorders. It's not 1:1 comparisons. In actuality they're "comparing" vhs-decode to other devices, not recommended conversion gear specs. Real comparisons are less conclusive.

Certain contribs (not the actual devs) were all pissy with me, mad that I'd dare point out flaws with the "comparisons". So I sat back and wrote nothing for months. Others are now writing it, or saying it on Youtube. Sorry fellas, it's not just me! :laugh:

There will be a potential % sharpness boost, but that's really it. You can cherry pick errors, benefits, etc, but it's all really fungible. You're still reliant on extant VCR heads, so the main benefit is in output processing. And that's where the issue still are with it.

So the main draw is % sharpness gain, which in turn lends itself to better upscale. But we're not talking about home users here, using Topaz "AI" junkware for "upscale", which just butchers video. I mean actual upscale, scripted methods, for studio/broadcast needs (aka, my old job). But again, the sharpness boost doesn't matter if the overall processing is decreased, or unreliable. There also must be ROI for business adoption, and it simply doesn't exist here.

--- The sharpness hypothesis has been proven false. vhs-decode is not sharper, and in fact adds halo/ringing artifacts. Yuck.

This is not a project for you then. You need to know how to script and code. It's not for newbies.

You have a typical home project here, and simply need a quality standard workflow to accomplish it. VCR > TBC > capture card. Not a new hobby that will see you dismantle VCRs, and write your own code tweaks.

- your Sharp VHS VCR is considered mid-grade or low-end
- that HDMI upscaler butchered quality
- you have no TBC

You don't need vhs-decode, you need a quality workflow. Or pay somebody who has one, to do your conversions.

When it comes to quality gear --the recommended VCR, TBC, capture cards -- it's a situation of "buy it, use it, resell it", as it holds value.

What you essentially want is a good car to go to work. Right now, you have a moped (that Sharp VCR and Chinese upscaler). But you don't need to build your car (vhs-decode). You can get great vehicles (VHS conversion gear) for budget price to premium price. The more budget you go, as with cars, the more issues you'll have.

Yep.

What amuses me is that people used to gripe (and still do) about "complicated" setups that are just VCR>TBC>card. Yet the same people are now interested in dismantling a VCR, and coding scripts? Okay then. We know what this is really about: perceived costs. But that "expensive" TBC is a load less costly than all the storage that will be needed. And lots of time is needed -- so no thanks, my time is valuable too.

But more importantly, it need be noted that this "stability" is not all that stable, not even compared to S-VHS VCRs (with line TBCs) from the late 90s and 00s.

And the reasons is two-fold:
(1) vhs-decode offloads to a computer, not appliance, and thus will never work as needed. I've been stating this for years.
(2) Modern FPGAs are like modern HD capture cards: SD is a poor afterthought, and it never works quite right. It just does not work as well as the old items specifically tailored to the sources of the era.

Yep.