vhs-decode setup? A Basic Guide
 

Hello all,

I got VHS Decode working last night, I'm going to do a step-by-step of what I've done (it's not the easiest if you're not familiar with using Github, Linux etc) but I'm going to do a step-by-step of the things that I've done and hopefully it'll be replicable for a good number of people.

Just as a grounding, I'm no expert in this, I "know" my video machines, am a technical guy (but not in this field; by qualification), Amateur Radio licence holder (so I have a good foundational understanding of RF), moderately-competent programmer and blessed with a bit of free time and a business with a room I can set this stuff up in. I'm not an expert on anything to do with this in any regard, just a keen amateur.

VHS-Decode is something I've been fascinated with, I won't retell the whole story, and I am only a step ahead of you with this, I'm very much a novice with this, but as I go along I thought a guide on how to set it up might be useful for those who've not got their hands dirty with 'hardcore' Python, Github or hardware tinkering.

What is VHS Decode?

Firstly, props to the guys who've been behind this (and by extension the LD-Decode team) - you're absolute geniuses, I genuinely am in awe at what's been accomplished here, each and every single person who's contributed to this. It's the guys & gals like this who mean helmets like me who sit on the internet can play with this stuff too. Remember to show your appreciation too if you take this further and do what you can to feedback to the community.

:worthy:

VHS Decode is an application that means that you can stream the video tape straight from the tape-head (not out the back of the machine) bypassing all of the electrical gubbins in the video player. I guess it would mean practically any old 'junk' video machine will do (although not recommended) and sending the RF (radio frequency) information encoded on the tape straight in to a PC. You then let the PC do the heavy-lifting, no worries about TBCs, amplifiers and the rest, just let the PC reassemble it all and turn it in to a video file. This turns the "pseudo-lossless" AIW captures etc from conventional means into lossless in the normal understanding of the term.

That's the very basic concept, in a nutshell, condensed, squeezed and vacuum-packed. By heavens, it's deeper than that, but I'm trying to make it digestible for tinkerers, not RF or programming experts.

I'm writing this so that somebody with fundamental knowledge of normal day-to-day computing can get this up and running on their machine. This is being installed on a Linux system in my instance, I'm not providing support for anything else, but I'm sure it's entirely doable.

I am not skilled enough to be able to offer individual support, and I am generally only one step ahead of you with this. I have a fair experience of Linux command lines but I "know what I know" and I'm still far from an expert, but this should be enough for somebody to at least get a signal off their machine and onto their screen.

This is the tricky bit I guess, once it's set up and working the fun starts.

The Basic Stuff You'll Need

• A PC, nothing special, but with a PCI slot
• A 8GB or larger USB drive, and another PC/Macintosh/Linux machine
• A PCI capture card

Firstly, grab a PC, I'm using one of our ancient DAWs that was sitting in storage, this is "Hefty Bob" [Image 1] who was around a decade ago a sought after purpose built Cubase PC, he's getting on a bit now (Intel Core Duo, 8GB RAM, although he now has a cheap SSD) but he was the first machine off the pile. "Hefty Bob" made some radio packages and bits which are still occasionally heard across the UK, so that's his claim to fame - he actually was run in tandem with his own processor rack, hence the full title of the package here was "Hefty Bob and His Weighty Mates", the "Weighty Mates" were auctioned off years ago now, he also has an equally prehistoric radio touchscreen attached too, hence the 4:3'ness of it all.

Anyway enough of the life history of the computer, I'm using but just to provide a bit of colour and show that for tinkering at least, you can use any old PC that you have laying around. One word though, you'll need something with a PCI slot (so, that's basically anything from the 2000s) but you'll need a full-height PC, not a modern desktop office machine (I've shown "Wes" [Image 2] one of our capture machines as these do not accept the 'old style' full-height cards. An SSD wouldn't go amiss, they're cheap and cheerful now, I put a Kingston 120GB in HB for experimentation with that cost about £15 so not expensive.

The Capture Card

Oh, you'll now need a card, thankfully these are dirt cheap now, I picked up one for £2 on eBay, and a couple more for no more than £10 each. These are old TV Tuner/capture cards, not explicit capture cards like the type more commonly referred to on here: practically valueless. They're plentiful, and I'd pick them up whilst they're still cheap.

The actual card I'm using is pictured [Image 3] - this is a £5-odd Hauppauge WinTV PAL-I 34705 REV J198 PCI which I got to work with almost no fuss, but don't get hung-up on finding the exact card, you've got potentially hundreds to chose from.

There's a rule though, you need to find one with a Conexant chipset, a 2388x series (it can end 1/2/3 with no difference for what we're doing, my one is a '1') [Image 4] to be exact, thankfully this is almost ubiquitous with these cheap cards. It's the large black chip in the bottom right, at the moment anything else just won't work. Don't get too alarmed if you see this referred to as a second-rate capture card, because remember we're not capturing video, we're just using it as a way of turning the wave-form from the tape in to 1's & 0's for the computer to process later.

Right, get that nailed in to the PC, and let's get started with setting it all up. Don't worry about an OS at the moment, I used Linux Mint and I'll walk through that in the next post, don't worry, it's dead easy to do. If you can't wait you'll find a ton of Linux Mint installation guides online, and if you're more comfortable with Ubuntu use that, or if you're an admitted member of the Linux master race... Well, you do you. You will need a GUI version of whatever you use though, as... well, looking at video in a terminal sucks.

We'll get this doing something more useful in the next section.

More soon,
RR

Thanks for the guide, should make my life a lot easier! Thought you had to get a doomesday duplicator card to do RF captures but now that I know you can just use any CX2388x card I'll definitely give VHS-decode a go! vhs (and ld) decode certainly are magical pieces of software.

Thanks a lot!

I am following VHS Decode as the only real candidate to improve my existing capture flow since long time, but sometime is a bit difficult to understand all the evolution, specially on https://discord.com/channels/6655572...34485975351307

A summary was needed!

I'm way too boomerish for Discord (I'm an 80s baby), I know of it but it's nothing something I've ever used. I should take a look though really.

I'm slowly unpicking it all and trying to condense it into a 'need to know' guide, hopefully, the more people on board the more quickly it'll take off, I'm going to do the next post on Linux Installation and compiling and installing the applications, then there'll be a bit of detour into critical video theory before we start the capture and analysis stuff. I've had another play this afternoon with interesting results.

My knowledge on VHS decode is limited to what I read, but if you need any help to compile the guide just let me know :wink2:

I have no expertise in VHS decode. I'm open to the possibility VCR decode will improve conventional playback but feel its advantages haven't been described even theoretically. In what specific areas of the processing chain is conventional processing known to degrade the recorded signal? Unless that is known it seems like we can only know if improvements are possible when VHS decode is fully implemented. Why not instead identify areas in the analog chain known to degrade the signal (targeting the weak link(s) in the chain) and digitise only them? Does it have to be a totally digital process? Why not a hybrid system? Again I'm no expert.

VHS-Decode video quality is mediocre it is miles behind, I can capture EP tapes better than what vhs-decode does for SP tapes. SingMai FPGA is ahead of the game but so far we've seen only a composite device and with SDI output only and lack of USB 3 or USB 4 they literally re-invented the wheel, SDI boxes existed a decade ago with the same 3D comb, 3dNR, TBC technologies.

SD video is Rec.601, There is no reason for change, The only change I've seen in Analog Devices chips for instance is the addition of HDMI, HD, 4K ... SD video has been standardized in the 80's and will never change.

I hate many Youtube videos (or Reddit posts, etc), where newbies try to act like experts, doling out really bad advice, because they don't know what they don't know. Sort of like letting a freshman med student be your doctor. Yikes! So it's really refreshing to see a post like this, where you've prefaced this "not an expert" fact, and are just chronicling what you've done. It helps yourself, maybe others, and even the devs of the project.

Wait, wait. What? There are lots of bad capture cards, and only certain cards are desired for vhs-decode. So I'd not piss away money, not even $2, on random capture cards.

I like Mint and Xubuntu. The problem with Mint is that it strays farther away from vanilla and standards, so you can run into compatibility issues, whereas it works without fuss on the Xubuntu box. So I'm not sure I'd suggest Mint for something specialized like this. Mint is more of a "Windows desktop replacement" type OS, than a shell-with-GUI type OS.

Remember, right now, for entertainment purposes only. If you love to tinker with video hardware/software, have at it. But what you're won't get is useful video results. Not now, maybe not ever. It's very buggy alpha-grade.

Awesome. :)

To me, the theory behind vhs-decode (video imagery) really isn't that different from dSLRs in the past decade. So what do you know about digital SLRs?

In the old days, 90/00s, cameras had to have pass filters to correct intolerable noises and artifacts. The OLPF (optical low pass filter) would smear both detail and color, though you'd only see it when you "pixel peep" (view at 100%), or print large.

Eventually, cameras that lacked OLPFs were made. (You could remove OLPF on older cameras, but artifcats were intolerable.) Even then, those early sans-OLPF cameras were still slightly artifacty, viewed/printed large. It's much better now.

VCRs are the same, essentially VHS OLPFs. vhs-decode is an attempt to capture without those filters, and get to the more unmolested rawer signal. It's not 1:1 identical, there's no mere OLPF to remove. But it's the same concept. everybody has huge HDTVs, and can easily see imperfections and flaws of VHS sources (even with the best conversion methods, some issues are inherent to the format simply due to VCRs), so any % of improvement is desired.

The net result, in theory, is naturally sharper video, less chroma artifacts, no dot crawl, no unneeded artificial filtering, etc. Only needed filtering, like DOC and TBC (sans NR). But getting there is a challenge, and this project is nowhere near that goal. Yes, some samples look nice, but it's curated, specific to the sample. Not general use.

For now, yes.
Later? Don't know.

I think video newbies are way too optimistic. It reminds me of the overly insane giddiness for EVs, many of which have massive errors, and don't at all work as initially promised. For example, Tesla is more of a cult with a "dear leader" than car maker, and I don't want to see vhs-decode turn that way. I don't want vhs-decode to eat tapes and have the hardware catch on fire, all while promising magical abilities to turn VHS into HD. We need to keep the project grounded in reality, if it's ever to succeed.

I see this as DOA. And by insisting on a faster-than-realtime tape play (aka abusive to tape!), they screwed up.

The beauty is that raw data captured and saved right now can be reprocessed later as the decode software gets better.

Question: I was to believe that you need a Domesday duplicator unit to do these captures, is that not the case? I have one, participated in a group buy, but never heard of anyone using a normal capture card.

Maybe. Yet to be determined.

This is another statement that I've heard since the 90s: "the data will get better later with better software". Never happens.

The nature of the capturing, even RF, requires interpretation. The best interpreter will have to makes some decisions in hardware, before software. If you fill up the HDD now with captures, hoping software can cure all that ails it, don't be shocked later if re-capture is required. Been there, seen that.

This is just the nature of computing.

I hate to see the "everything will someday be possible to fix in software!" attitude for this. hodgey/oln is obviously very cognizant of limitations with this, and he's a developer. His openness recently, in another thread, for FPGA to resolve some issues, is exactly what we need to see. Not magical thinking that software can do everything, as it simply is not so. A software-only solution is probably DOA, or non-DOA and disappointing. (This is not too dissimilar from bitcoin mining, where software and even normal hardware is not workable. Special hardware required. Software cannot do/fix everything.)

Another potential problem is low-end BT/Coxexant chips being used for this. That probably won't work long-term, as those chips have their own limits and problems.

I don't believe this is to be true, If you follow the lengthy vhs-decode thread over at VH you'll see inconsistencies in quality between the RF acquisition methods, depending on the hardware, filters used, RF pickup location, model of VCR and RF preamp type. So to say that RF is just sitting there and can be picked up in a 1:1 manner is no where near to be true, and this is the unique reason I didn't embark in this project. Otherwise I would have backed up all my important tapes and put the hard drive in a time capsule until the decoding improves.

*Polite cough*

That's a bit of a disingenuous reading, I've noticed you skipped comment for the next paragraph.

I'm using the suggestions on the VHS-Decode repository. Dare we stray from experts' suggestions?
I'm not a GUI Linux person myself, I used Ubuntu Server for many of my projects before switching to serverless, I've got no dog in this fight, I just used the OS suggested in the repository notes.

Mint is pretty lightweight too, going back to my comments about 'finding an old PC'. I'm not sure what you mean by "shell-with-GUI" as terminology is important. Mint is lightweight, well supported, demonstrably works and is a nicely laid out interface for those who aren't familiar with Linux.

I could have picked any given core distribution, but that's not really helpful for anybody reading this.

As I said though if you are a Linux expert, do whatever works for you, I'm just using the OS suggested in the GitHub repository, it's also very easy to work with, lightweight(ish) and demonstrably works. I make no apology.

Are you in the development group by the way?

I noticed that VHS decode has some (small) similitude with the diatribe edit=off versus edit=on.

Fans of edit=on says that is better to capture without all VCR NR old hardware filters because a better result can be obtained with software post processing.

I personally use for 90% of my tapes edit=off beause the capture video is "better", and because in post- processing I was not able to make the video captured with edit=on as good as the first: some small fine detail is always removed with filtering; but it could be a limit in my usage of post-processing.
(For 10% of my tapes edit=on reduces a lot the well known problem of frames blended at scene change, so I use it)

However, I think VHS decode project is worth, because in theory you extract the signal at its real "source", while at the Y/C output lot of processing happened internally, and part of it cannot be removed even with edit=on, and because post-processing filters will improve (and many can use them better than me :))

I agree that today we are far away to what can be achieved with a good classic flow, but things may change.

I personally hope that will change because I do not see any better achievement in term of the "visual quality of the video" when I compare my videos with captures obtained with a much more sofisticated flow such as SDI capture, high-end capture cards, Panasonic HDMI output capture, etc.
Of course in term of "stability" of the captures the more sofisticated flows have advantages.

I rely then on VHS decode, thinking that while probably not a breakthrough, together with dedicated post-processing can improve the "visual quality of the video"

This is a great question, I'm just fiddling with it as I like working with RF and as an electronics guy this is 'right up my alley'.

To the greater point about why? - Honestly, instinctually I think in the future this could be a infinitely better way of performing captures (with our without adjunct hardware, that's to be seen) - the cold reality is we're faced with the following at present:

1) Decent capture cards - getting very elderly now, the prices seem to be very 'controlled' on them, plenty of misery trying to get them to play nicely with modern hardware and that's not a situation that will improve.

2) Decent DV - points above about capture cards, NTSC especially sufferers here, PAL is good on DV but NTSC is horrid.

3) Use SDI, not for the faint of heart, requires a massive investment to get working hardware for domestic videotape capture. We're slowly switching over to SDI, but it's not an especially cheap game to get in to.

4) HDMI, the results get more-and-more interesting, this I think is where it'll eventually head, it's cheap and established technology with what ostensibly appear to be ever improving results, it'll always have detractors but look around for some rather intesting experiments that have been done with it, it's heading for this answer in my humble opinion.

5) Direct RF capture, always going to be a 'nerdy' passtime whatever happens, introduces it's own problems but weighed out by a full clone of the information of the tape. Who knows where it's going, I don't!

5) USB dongles and similar junk - they're alright enough for somebody who just wants to quickly view something on the computer, but nonsense for anything beyond that.

Then we add in additional hardware, TBCs, good quality consumer-grade units cost a lot of money now and to set up a serious rack is supremely expensive.

Then the powerful, but often impenetrable software we use for processing - AviSynth etc are very good but they keep a lot of people out of the hobby these days, there are of course great alternatives but it always comes back to AVISynth. This might be self-deafting with RF Capture though, I'll fully concede that.

AVISynth is great, truly great, before anything is misintrepreted.

I know vhs-decode is nowhere near as good as a conventional capture setup, for now at least, but how does ld-decode compare with the traditional way of capturing, for laserdiscs?

In a standard workflow, referring to most JVC decks, EDIT mode is not ideal, as it leaves far too much false signal noise, and software cannot always correct for it. But for this specific projects, I'd err more on the unmolested side of the equation. Bare hardware needs to make some decisions, prior to software, and hopefully it will clean some of this up. I'd like to see hardware based more around VirtualDub's CCD filter, and less the classic VCR NR of JVC/Panasonic type. But again, software doesn't always work, so ideally some sort of blend of classic and VirtualDub NR methodology. The complaint against EDIT mode is both temporal and intraframe (softening with some decks, and deck models -- not all). I think we can drop intraframe, and low the temporal window. It doesn't have to be all-or-none.

The problem with HDMI is that it is almost always attached to other harmful processing, so I really think it's a non-starter. Add to that how many devices are just output as HDMI, and internally screw with the signal via composite downconversion. People simply cannot help themselves, trying to "improve" signals because they don't understand it (deinterlace, etc).

There's nothing inherently bad about USB cards. USB is just a signal carrier, much like AGP, PCI, PCIe, Thunderbolt, etc. You have both good and bad USB capture cards, as it has been with all others before it.

You forgot one of the most important problems: hardware fail. It's expensive and/or time-consuming, if even reparable at all. This is the one that keeps me up at night. It's the reason I have a stack of TBCs, VCRs, and capture cards, as backups.

I'm not swayed by the costs argument. People will spend $1k/year on fancy coffee, something they piss away (literally). But $1k for a video setup, to archive cherished videos forever? "OMG! The sky is falling! Wee-wah-wee-wah! EXPENSIVE! ROBBERY! AAAHHH!" It's quite frankly completely head-up-ass in terms of value. And when you're done with the project, you can sell the gear to recoup costs. You don't throw it in the trash, it's not lost money.

Use Hybrid. GUI for most common Avisynth needs. Even I tend to use it a lot these days, very handy, appeals to my lazy side. I just wish selur could get MPEG encoding added (4:2:2, BDMV/AV, DVD-Video).

From what I've seen, amazingly well. It's ready for primetime, I think. (I've never been into LD, but I appreciate how vastly different it is from VHS, and most tapes formats.)

Indeed - you're entirely right, but I think that'll be the weapon of choice going forward for the casual camcorder video -> YouTube private video, their points are equally as valid as those involved in deep restoration, archiving. I do think sometimes you make the assumption that everybody "should" do things a certain way (a la your remarks a few days ago about the things people post on YouTube). HDMI it's getting better, and whilst it will never be perfect, it might end up the only viable option for people who just want reasonable value, new equipment that'll install without let on modern hardware.

Don't misunderstand this - I'm not saying it's the best option, but one I imagine many will take.

I should have clarified, I was talking about the 'EasyCapture' and similar ilk, not decent USB solutions - I could take issue with the next bit about "Signal Carriers" but I'll give you the benefit of just a broad explanation, and that's more than fine for this conversation.

Mea culpa, this is a very important issue I did sidestep in my reply - you're right and it's good you've brought that up.

You don't have to be swayed by it, many individuals are. You do seem to have a very monolithic way of describing 'people', I've noticed this a few times. The value people attach to things varies more wildly than you might imagine (try a car forum or a HiFi forum for example). There's a lot of shades of grey in these matters, and I wouldn't have been as successful or stayed in business as long as have without appreciating these things. Diff'rent strokes. I think we'll just have to disagree on that.

I do - it's great.

Hope this clarifies some points.

Education goes a long way. You have to present a "bad, good, better, best" type option (though video is more like "bad, good, best"). Otherwise people just randomly pull numbers out of their ass. "Gee, I think that should be $100!" ("Hyuck!", says Goofy). Most people, when shown what bad/good/best really means, will entirely avoid bad. When they see how quality can look, and understand the problems that come with each downgrade (since this is tech, not just visual), they almost always want the quality options. How much quality is then determined by budget, once they know the numbers. This is true of everything, not just video. People spend crazy stupid money on food, cars, etc, because they're given choices. Do you want BrandX that taste like dog food, simply because it's cheap? With video capture, what's usually missing is seeing choice, (non-BS) comparisons, instead just reading/seeing random advice from random people (ie, Yotuube) and assuming (ass-u-me) it's the best method without any context or A/B. Or if not learning everything (no time, unwilling, etc), at least trusting others to help make the choice (Consumer Reports types, expert opinions and guidance, ie the "easy button" option to wise selection).

You may think I'm too unforgiving with some of these scenarios, but I think you're far too forgiving. And overly forgiving is how you get crap to view. I, for one, get tired of seeing bad quality on broadcast TV. Because more and more, broadcasters screw up interlace, fps conversion, etc. It often begins away from work, learning and doing wrong things to video. Raping video quality. The corporate world watches Youtube too, and searched Google, for better or worse/lazy. So let's help at least sustain a minimum decorum of quality. Not just whatever the Chinese want (low-rent devices, awful software, as sold to us dumb 'muricans/yanks and you your'o-pee-ins).

After all, this topic is about trying to achieve the greatest possible quality, maybe, hopefully, someday. Not just cheap, easy, lazy, crappy.

I think we're closer in agreement than you imagine - I don't watch broadcast TV and haven't for decades so I can't comment, we do have very demanding technical standards for broadcast in the UK - they're a dizzying read there's probably an argument it's in place to protect the BBC but that'll wander into a political post, the BBC is not especially popular in the UK any more. OFCOM (much like your FCA) oversee all television, there are some serious sanctions for program defects. Digital Radio (DAB) however has been a complete cluster-****, technical defects in television broadcasts get met with public sanctions, however broadcasting music at 64kpbs mono is cool and encouraged.

We don't really have a culture of your public access (I know that's not the point you're trying to arrive at) so it's kept television broadcast in the hands of the 'big players', it's not a game you can get in to with a modest investment, apart from some seriously low-rent local cable channels that run under a special licence.

I seriously digress, and I could be talking utter carp, this is only from tech' documents, what goes out could be dreadful - and almost undoubtedly is. At least you won't be put in prison for owning a television without an annual $220 tax like us Britbongs, then we get to see BBC programs broadcast globally for nix..... Great :D

Anyway I've wandered well of topic but thanks for taking the time to reply, I'll post up more of this guide tonight.

Any chance to see a non-BS comparison from the Lord himself?
You could save 90% of your writings here on digital.faq & videohelp.com and no one have to ask again for best hardware for video capture.

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.