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01-01-2023, 06:08 AM
BatteryNone BatteryNone is offline
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Hello,

I know threads like this have been discussed multiple times on numerous forums, but every time a different community takes the lead in responding, so it's more like an advertisement for one product.

My main source of information was mainly from articles from linuxtv.org or this thread from EEVblog: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/therma...ce-comparison/

Here's a list of all the capture devices I have considered:
  • EasyCap like capture card (bought one 2 years ago, complete trash)
  • Digital8 camcorder with analog input (I don't know if they are available in PAL regions)
  • Canopus ADVC-XXX
  • AV to HDMI + HDMI capture card (my favourite)
  • ATI TV Wonder 600

From examples I've seen, I'm not very fond of firewire-based devices (Digital8 camcorder, Canopus devices) mainly because of typical DV artifacts (mainly rainbowing and interlacing). The option that seemed like the best to me was AV to HDMI + HDMI capture card, but that proved hard when searching for a good quality AV to HDMI converter. Those cheap are no good - they force upscaling and they crop the image. I've looked into retro gaming upscalers, because I heard they're good at their job, but I've read they're only good at converting video console's image and they don't have TBC.

Note that I'm located in Central Europe, former Eastern Bloc, so I have no access to american devices and eBay and all of my VHS and Video8 are in PAL (576i)

I would like to know your opinion on options on the list, what would you choose and why, what have you tried, etc.
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  #2  
01-01-2023, 07:02 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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If you don't plan on digitizing commercial tapes with copy protection (most PAL tapes don't have it but e.g some disney ones do.) the best budget option IMO is using a mid range or better USB capture dongle of some sort that provides lossless passing the video a dvd recorder for stabilization.

Either a panasonic (since it's PAL nearly all panasonics dvd-recorders are usable) or a newer pioneer/sony model. The panas can blow out whites a bit without manually lowering the video level while the pioneer/sonys are a bit more prone to inserting frames on very bad input.

My Video gear overview/test/repair/stuff yt channel http://youtu.be/cEyfegqQ9TU
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  #3  
01-01-2023, 07:47 AM
BatteryNone BatteryNone is offline
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Well, I'm planning on digitizing my family's camcorder footage. I'm looking for quality, that's at least good as on my TV (Samsung Series 7 from about 2009). I'm trying to get the best quality (as anybody else) to preserve those tapes before they degrade or we don't have any functioning VCR to play them.
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  #4  
01-01-2023, 09:03 AM
themaster1 themaster1 is online now
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Sony rdr hxd 890 dvd recorder (hdmi out 480/576 i)+ cheap 30 $ hdmi pcie capture card work just fine for me, maybe even better than my older analog pci capture card ( terratec 250 pci)https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PSqOVqk9L68
Some cropping observed (very slight) no upscaling though
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  #5  
01-01-2023, 02:20 PM
latreche34 latreche34 is offline
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That's if he just wants a quick way to view his tapes in a digital format and save the tapes for later to get done the right way, I wouldn't take a kid in his parents basement advice as a capturing advice (No offence if it is you), HDMI and OBS should never be recommended for analog tape sources, How much that kid knows about rec.601? Probably none.

https://www.youtube.com/@Capturing-Memories/videos
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  #6  
01-01-2023, 03:24 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BatteryNone View Post
Hello,
I know threads like this have been discussed multiple times on numerous forums,
Yep.

Quote:
but every time a different community takes the lead in responding, so it's more like an advertisement for one product.
I don't follow.

Quote:
My main source of information was mainly from articles from linuxtv.org or this thread from EEVblog:
- LinuxTV is focused on PVR, not the needs of analog tape conversion. Some useful info, most not.
- That person at that generic electronics community has zero standards. Easycap is infamous, and "Easycrap" is a deserved nickname. Same for the "grabbers". And DV is a lossy 1990s tech, never intended for analog conversion work.

So that's been your source so far.

Quote:
Here's a list of all the capture devices I have considered:
EasyCap like capture card (bought one 2 years ago, complete trash)
Digital8 camcorder with analog input (I don't know if they are available in PAL regions)
Canopus ADVC-XXX
AV to HDMI + HDMI capture card (my favourite)
ATI TV Wonder 600
- No to Easycrap, as already mentioned above.
- Digital8 is DV, and not inteded for any sort of conversion use. Most cannot whatsoever. Use it as a camera to transfer Digital8 tapes, the end.
- ADVC is another DV box. For PAL, DV isn't terrible, about like DVD MPEG. Not great, but not as awful as NTSC.
- That HDMI adapter method is vastly destructive in multiple ways to video quality. It's a video meat grinder.
- ATI 600 USB is fine, but XP/7 required, will not work in Win10. Win10 is a terrible capture OS anyway, do not use. Be aware that the card must be complete, both OEM wires.

Quote:
From examples I've seen, I'm not very fond of firewire-based devices (Digital8 camcorder, Canopus devices) mainly because of typical DV artifacts (mainly rainbowing and interlacing).
Correct. Not great. Ancient format, blocks and chroma/color loss, other quality-degrading issues.

Quote:
The option that seemed like the best to me was AV to HDMI + HDMI capture card, but that proved hard when searching for a good quality AV to HDMI converter. Those cheap are no good - they force upscaling and they crop the image. I've looked into retro gaming upscalers, because I heard they're good at their job, but I've read they're only good at converting video console's image and they don't have TBC.
Correct, HDMI is a mess for analog formats, as HDMI was never made for it. Wrong tool.

Quote:
Note that I'm located in Central Europe, former Eastern Bloc, so I have no access to american devices and eBay and all of my VHS and Video8 are in PAL (576i)
I would like to know your opinion on options on the list, what would you choose and why, what have you tried, etc.
Which country? I've successfully shipped gear to Europe many times.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
If you don't plan on digitizing commercial tapes with copy protection (most PAL tapes don't have it but e.g some disney ones do.) the best budget option IMO is using a mid range or better USB capture dongle of some sort that provides lossless passing the video a dvd recorder for stabilization.
Either a panasonic (since it's PAL nearly all panasonics dvd-recorders are usable) or a newer pioneer/sony model. The panas can blow out whites a bit without manually lowering the video level while the pioneer/sonys are a bit more prone to inserting frames on very bad input.
This would be considered a minimally-passable setup, with issues, errors, workarounds needed. But better than nothing, which you already know.

You also need to be careful about saying "a DVD recorder" or even "most Panasonics", so as not to mislead readers. Neither line TBC nor passthrough was a general feature of DVD recorders, and was curtailed to a small number of models. Yes, most of those were Panasonics. But there were lots of Panasonic models, and most didn't have this ability, or at least a usable quality version of it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BatteryNone View Post
Well, I'm planning on digitizing my family's camcorder footage. I'm looking for quality, that's at least good as on my TV (Samsung Series 7 from about 2009). I'm trying to get the best quality (as anybody else) to preserve those tapes before they degrade or we don't have any functioning VCR to play them.
VHS then? I didn't see that mentioned above. Step 1 is then to acquire the quality JVC/Panasonic PAL S-VHS VCR. Use VCRshop, and tell him digitalFAQ sent you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by themaster1 View Post
Sony rdr hxd 890 dvd recorder (hdmi out 480/576 i)+ cheap 30 $ hdmi pcie capture card work just fine for me, maybe even better than my older analog pci capture card ( terratec 250 pci)
Some cropping observed (very slight) no upscaling though
I wouldn't suggest that at all.

Quote:
Originally Posted by latreche34 View Post
That's if he just wants a quick way to view his tapes in a digital format and save the tapes for later to get done the right way, I wouldn't take a kid in his parents basement advice as a capturing advice (No offence if it is you), HDMI and OBS should never be recommended for analog tape sources, How much that kid knows about rec.601? Probably none.
FYI, assuming this is the same "themaster1" from Videohelp, and I think it is, then he's been a members of VH for longer (2006) than that kid has been alive. And from Europe, France, not native English speaker, not some squeaky kid that speaks so fast that he mumbles.

I don't take advice from kids. Call it ageism, or whatever you want, but it's always insanely easy to get a "deer in headlights" moment. They don't know what they don't know.

OBS kiddies/fanboys don't realize that OBS is screen recording, not capturing, from within one of the display layers. That has consequences, and is not capturing.

latreche34, I know you're also into stocks. When there are conversations about stocks worth buying, for long-term portfolio, some kiddie investor always pops in with "buy GameStop/GME" or "buy Tesla/TSLA", which is of course insane. When you state how insane it is, and point to the crazy P/E ratio, the response is "what's a P/E ratio?" Deer in headlights. Doesn't know what he doesn't know. And he'll learn it the hard way, when his "investment" deflates to nothing (and we're already seeing it now). Smart money traded it (you, me), suckers bought it to hold.

All of it is the same thought process, one that doesn't do any due diligence, no research, no vetting, no verification, nothing. That seat-of-your-pants "YOLO" mentality that doesn't care if the outcome is a nightmare. Lost videos, lost money, lost whatever. "Oh well, hahaha!" WTF?

So be careful you who listen to. They don't have your best interest in mind, and sadly not even their own.

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- For sale in the marketplace: TBCs, workflows, capture cards, VCRs
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  #7  
01-01-2023, 05:58 PM
BatteryNone BatteryNone is offline
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lordsmurf, thank you for you reply that clarified a lot of unknowns for me. I've looked into more options that aren't hopefully that bad as my last ones. I've looked into comparison between Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle and ATI Wonder 9000: https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...quality-2.html Judging from the included pictures, sharpness seems to be good for both of them, but Intensity Shuttle seems to have less color noise. Would you recommend one over another? Or would you opt for a different device completely?
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  #8  
01-01-2023, 06:25 PM
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Blackmagic does a poor job of capturing SD analog videeo. It's an HD card that "also does" SD, and badly. It dropped frames, even with TBC present. At one point, BM support was even telling folks NOT to use it for consumer formats like VHS. It was intended for higher end SD formats, like BetacamSP, not the drecks of video.

If you're willing to build an XP system, and deal with the limitations of AGP boards, go for it. I built and used many AGP AIW over the past 20 years, solid setups. (I've mostly migrated myself to the rare PCI AIW, using 2017 boards. I can hardware dual boot to Win10, and have fast USB3 data transfer.)

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  #9  
01-02-2023, 08:02 AM
hodgey hodgey is offline
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The blackmagic intensity usb3 I've tried had some interference on the s-video input and I've seen others note the same thing with them, the component and hdmi inputs do work fine though even for SD content. Not sure if that's an issue on other blackmagic cards.

Quote:
Originally Posted by themaster1 View Post
Sony rdr hxd 890 dvd recorder (hdmi out 480/576 i)+ cheap 30 $ hdmi pcie capture card work just fine for me, maybe even better than my older analog pci capture card ( terratec 250 pci)https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PSqOVqk9L68
Some cropping observed (very slight) no upscaling though
Does that model not require a splitter or similar to evade HDCP like the earlier ones?

Cheap HDMI capture cards can be a bit hit and miss for this purpose as well as many don't support 480i/576i (as SD interlaced is technically not part of the standard) and/or only output compressed video, so using HDMI on dvd-recorders in this way can be a bit clunky to get working.

I've used the older Sony RDR-HX750 with both hdmi and component out and the image quality is excellent (though they're not as tolerant of bad video signals as the panasonic dmr-es10/es15 and the like so more prone to inserting frames in those cases). Also had a bad interaction with the Panasonic NV-HS1000 specifically (maybe also with the FS200 but I don't have one of those) when there is no recording on the tape and the TBC on the VCR is enabled as it thinks it's a different video standard and pops up a message. Doesn't happen with the TBC on the JVC VCRs. There is one video on my second youtube channel using the HX750 and one using the older related pioneer dvr-440 on my second youtube channel if you want a demo of them. (with a fair bit of noise reduction etc in post as I wasn't using a VCR with fancy 3D DNR.)
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  #10  
01-02-2023, 08:58 AM
themaster1 themaster1 is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
Does that model not require a splitter or similar to evade HDCP like the earlier ones?

Cheap HDMI capture cards can be a bit hit and miss for this purpose as well as many don't support 480i/576i (as SD interlaced is technically not part of the standard) and/or only output compressed video, so using HDMI on dvd-recorders in this way can be a bit clunky to get working.
I haven't tried with a splitter yet (i've been meaning to). I can play most retail dvd's (old and recent ones) it seems , i haven't tried extensively mind you

The only thing i did on this deck is to make it multizone (special remote bought on ebay) so i can all my library at will

Beyond reanimator dvd zone 2 (the one reedited recently BD+dvd set) capture sample (hdmi, no splitter)
https://mega.nz/file/HJ5x1A6J#Spd6EX...HwvjOfaUe-KuLc

Last edited by themaster1; 01-02-2023 at 09:29 AM.
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