Hi8, SVHS, miniDV conversion in Windows 10 OS?
 

New member to website. I posted this on member site but have not had any responses, so will open this question to all:

I have done some searching for information on the forum, but it has been somewhat hard to sift through, so I am asking for help assessing appropriate equipment and software. I have a number of Hi-8, Mini DV and S-VHS tapes---all created by me...nothing commercial or Macrovision involved--- I want to digitize and edit.

I am doing the work on a desktop with Intel i-8700 CPU @3.2 GHz processor, ASUS Prime 370-A motherboard, 32 GB DDR4 RAM, 2 TB Samsung SSD card + 4 TB of HDD storage running Win 10. The video card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with HDMI, DisplayPort out in addition to the DVI-D used. There is no firewire (yet) but a few USB 3.1. I have a Sony EV-S3000 Hi8 deck that has been refurbished, a Sony DCR-VX700 (with S-video out) still functioning, and a JVC HR-S9911 or JVC SR-V10U SVHS deck. In addition, I have a never-used ADVC 110 and an old Dazzle+ Hollywood DV Bridge from days past. As far as software, I have the latest Adobe Elements Premiere, which I use for my non-analog videos, and Nero. I have RCA and S-video cords. I have downloaded VirtualDub, and added a firewire card to my computer. With a switch of the device driver over to the 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy), my Win10 finally recognizes the firewire, and my ADVC 110 shows up as an AV/C tape recorder/player. I created a few avi files from old SVHS tapes, but still trying to figure it out. My mini-DV tapes (which I have fed directly into the computer via firewire are showing lots of artifacts, pixelating and noise, so I am going to try cleaning the heads. I guess my main questions are some assistance with settings for VirtualDub, or are there better codecs to download, and if so, how to upload these to VirtualDub in Win 10 environment. Any other help would be greatly appreciated.

Forget Nero, Adobe premiere and ADVC110.

For DV/D8 use the camcorder and transfer with WinDV or ScenelyzerLive using a firewire cable.

For analog tapes use a Hi8 camcorder (Turn on TBC/DNR if equiped) and S-Video cable, and a S-VHS deck (turn on TBC/DNR if equiped) with S-Video cable, Capture using vdub to lossless AVI and encode to h.264 with a good bitrate.

Thanks for the information!
Isn't the ADVC 110 needed to act as converter? I have used it to feed the analog S-video and analog L/R audio input, and then output from it via firewire to firewire input on computer.
Is Lagarith a good codec for encoding the avi?

ADVC110 is not needed for analog because you will be capturing in DV format which is in its own a lossy format, converting it to another lossy format is a double loss. Instead use a USB or PCI analog capture device or card that can capture to lossless AVI.

Lagarith or HuffUYV for lossless AVI not DV AVI.

Can you recommend analog capture device? I can find Elgato, Hauppauge 610, and Diamond VC-500.

- Elgato earned the nickname "Elcrapo".
- 610 is meh
- VC500 is too variable, lots of random issues, few owners have no issues. AGC is the most irritating, making it useless.

OS matters. What OS? I realize the title of the thread is "Windows 10", but what all can you use? Not just what's convenient.
Noting Mac/Linux essentially has nothing.
WinXP/7 best.
WinVista/8 can be fine.
Win10 problematic at updates, especially when using Nvidia hardware. Lots of cards no longer work in Win10.

Your daily PC should not be your video capture system. It's too busy, too many interruptions, which will cause dropped frames. Even being online, and all the "phone home" that goes on constantly, will screw up your capturing.

Don't forget the marketplace forum: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/marketplace/
Some of us have gear there. :wink2:

Thanks for the information! Unfortunately, I have what I have...2 desktops and one laptop, all Windows 10. It needs to be a "work with what I have and try to make the best of it" type of project except for the less expensive peripherals like the analog capture device which I have yet to purchase. I can devote/dedicate one desktop to AV only; won't be online with it, or any interruptions. The laptop is really the only computer in daily use. Not really prepared to purchase a 4th computer just for this project.

I do have an old Dazzle Hollywood Bridge with analog inputs and a firewire output, but I am guessing that does not give a lossless output to avi to work with.

If it doesn't have USB out then it is a DV converter box.

To some degree, you're trying to fill up a gas tank, but all you have on hand is bottles of booze. You'll have a few paths, with workarounds. But lots of misses, stuff that won't work.

There are some cards that work in Win10, for now at least, until Microsoft decides to nukes those in an update. Or Nvidia decides it doesn't care if it causes issues with other hardware. What you have to realize it I can't just list out cards, then you run to eBay/Amazon and smack a buy button. There are only certain revisions/submodels of certain cards that work well, and none have been sold new in about a decade now. This isn't info you find in the listings/webpages, but only after (too often) cracking open the hardware to confirm the version of the devices. That's why I started to provide hardware in the marketplace, it was getting too hard for the average person to easily find what is needed for a quality job. As you've been finding out. Converting analog video is a legacy task from 10-20 years ago, not something that is still done (aside from young'uns, late-comers, procrastinators, etc). So now, in the 2020s, it takes a bit more finesse to get it working -- not just with quality, but often at all.

It's not a simple matter of codecs and software, but the hardware inside the capture card, and the drivers on the OS that talk to the capture card.

That old Hollywood bridge will do nothing for you. And that ADVC-100 will equally be useless, or at best low quality if you can actually manage to get a Firewire card cooperating in Win10. Those ADVC boxes are 1990s video quality, compressed, lost color, blocky.

Given good tape condition, high-end S-VHS with lineTBC and Windows 10, Hauppauge USB-Live 2 (610) will give good results!

A channel on S-VHS / VHS capture and AviSynth restoration https://bit.ly/3mHWbkN

I use the Hauppauge USB-Live 2 in Windows 10 to capture lossless AVI, works great.
I have a Ryzen 9 3900x with 32 gig of ram, 6 TB RAID0 and GTX1080. I capture analog through the Hauppauge with AmaRecTV. At the same time, I'm using VirtualDub to edit/adjust previously captured files, then encoding them as progressive MP4s with StaxRip64 (a nifty UI for AVIsynth and Vapoursynth), all without dropping a *single frame*, even with 30-60 min captures. That's what 12 cores with multithreading will do for ya. :)

Thanks for the information! Yours is the 2nd recommendation for AmaRecTV. So far I have been playing around with capture from my mini-DV with VirtualDub. Still undecided about analog capture card/device.