Is a Domesday Duplicator recommended for VHS?
 

Initially, I was going to use an ATI AIW 9800 Pro to capture analog media until I learned about the Domesday Duplicator. It had been written to directly capture RF signals from Laserdisc players directly, but it can now also do VHS, CD, and audio cassettes.

You can then use software to decode the signal to output playable media. But more importantly, you can back up the original signal, and processing can improve over time, letting you get better results.

https://github.com/harrypm/DomesdayDuplicator

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

No.

Also do not confuse ld-decode with vhs-decode. Not the same at all.

Maybe, someday, maybe, this will work as proposed. :unsure:

But right now, it's just proof-of-concept, alpha grade (not even beta). It's been this way for years, and may be that way for many more years. Or maybe forever. Maybe always rough proof of concept. It's been discussed many times, but the only viable path forward for that project will be some dedicated hardware appliances to handle videotape issues. Software alone will never work.

If you want to capture your videos, then use current capture method. That AIW card will be hard to beat, even by vhs-decode.

In the VHS-decode project over at videohelp they claim they finalized the RF ingest part and they are working on the decoding phase but they seem to never stop tweaking the RF acquisition itself let alone the RF decoding, So no it is not a viable method of capturing anything as it stands right now.
You don't need to capture CD, it is already digital. Audio cassettes? Use audio capture devices.

Yep.

"It's done!"
"No wait, not yet ... okay now it's done! "
"No wait, not yet ..." <rinse, repeat>

That's what you call alpha grade, proof of concept. It works for a singular scenario, but fails in any general sense. Sometimes the fail is large, other times small.

If alpha/beta grades (software) analogies aren't your thing, then try medicine. Phase 1, Phase 2a, Phase 2b, Phase 3, etc. Not everything developed is guaranteed final fruition. Sometimes things look promising, even make it through the 1/2 trials. But then later phases show that it just will not work, and that's that.

You (the OP) must understand that this Domesday variant project -- as it relates to videotapes/VHS (DO NOT CONFUSE IT WITH LD!) -- may be a nothingburger. Or some degree of a something.

Odds are, it will mostly work in highly per-tape tweaking by dedicated archivists that insist on getting that tiny % of sharpness. Because that's really the main advantages here: sharpness. Most everything else is just being processed with the same sort of algorithms that we've had for 30 or so years.

But again, some tasks are simply not viable in software alone, it must be on dedicated silicon. So again, until the project adopts the archivist mindset, not the cheapskate mindset, this will never work. You can't use random thrift store (Goodwill, etc) VCRs, and whatever Win/Lin/Mac software you programmed in Java/C++/whatever on the weekend.

At this point, I think they've picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit. Now the real challenges are left, and it's just not making any real progress last I saw.

I'd also say not to be overly impressed by extracting data from a VHS tape. If you follow any of latreche34's others posts, you'll find a thread where he delves into some neat 80s/90s tech that used VHS tapes for data backup, audio only, etc. There's really nothing special about videotape, just tape with video data. That data has long been extractable. But extraction alone isn't the full process needed.

Don't confuse this with my "hating" the project. I'm just not a cheerleader, I'm a realist. It's not working. I want them to continue.

But I get tired of the peanut galleries, the fanboys of the project, most of whom barely know the difference between an S-VHS tape and a VHS tape. They're not involved in the development, or the usage, or even simply reading about it post by post and following the development track. They're just spreading BS and misinformation online. "It's the future!", blah blah blah. That ends up confusing innocent folks like yourself (the OP), who simply want high quality transfers. The advice remains unchanged: VCR > TBC > capture card. Not just any random VCR/TBC/card, but items known and respected for the output quality that gives the high quality needed. And from reputable sources (ie, not eBay random gear).