Playing VHS tape: TV vs. capture card?
 

Something about these VHS tapes, digital captures, and tube TVs, that I don't understand. Same player in all cases below, same S-video cable, but two VHS tapes.

Tape 1
Plays perfectly on a 1990's tube TV. Next, it captures to ProRes 422HQ superbly, no dropped frames.

Tape 2
Plays perfectly on a 1990's tube TV. Next, same capture technique as for Tape 1, but hundreds of dropped frames per minute.

Ques 1
What's the explanation for that? Same TV, same VCR, same cables. The TV gives a good result both times, yet one of the digital captures is buggered up.

Ques 2
What is the TV doing to the signal from Tape 2 so that it displays correctly? Or, what is the capture device doing that buggers up the capture? I'm not talking about rubbishy equipment here... good quality mid-2000s items that would have cost around $6k when new: VCR player (in superb condition), capture device with dedicated software, running under Snow Leopard on a 2011 iMac.

Ques 3
Looks like what I need is a 1990s TV with an S-video or composite input, and some sort of digital output socket, so that as well as showing me what's on the tape, it also outputs to HDMI or whatever, giving me a digital representation of what is appearing on screen. Then I save that digital stream.

Is such a TV available?

Analog TV sets were very forgiving of timing/sync/level issues in video signals. Most capture devices are not and expect a pristine signal in terms of sync. Thus the recommendations for line and frame TBCs.

What is the gear (make and model) you are using?

Some TVs from the 1990s did have pass through of analog TV signals (not HDMI), but they might not prove any better for your purposes.

Note that 2000s era cost is not a guarantee of performance for analog tape video capture performance. 20+ year old gear ages and may not perform today as it should have when new. Some brands age worse than others,

A more modern TV
I've just tried viewing the tapes on a more modern, 19" TV. It has a HDMI input so I suppose it's about 10-12 years old. All tapes played beautifully through the composite input.

It appears that modern TVs are also more forgiving of timing inaccuracies. So, any old TV will display VHS tapes at what I consider very good quality, but when I try and digitise those same tapes with a professional capture unit (an AJA Io LA), or any other device, suddenly the image quality depends on the tape, and is quite often crap.

Amazing… (I'm shaking my head and chuckling as I write this) that a $15 second-hand TV that I bought from the recycling centre, covered in dust and scratches and looking a mess, gives better results than a studio-quality capture unit that cost thousands when new, and a couple of hundred now. I might have to give these Hans Vonk tapes back to Jessie and say: "It was an interesting learning experience playing around with your tapes, but sorry, they can't be acceptably digitised for inclusion in an AV"

My New Benchmark
I have a new benchmark: if a capture is of lower quality than the image on my $15 TV, then I consider the capture a failure. And I don't think any of the captures come up to that standard yet, and my mate Matthew has done about 50, using better equipment than what I've got.

iMac as a TV
I wonder if I could turn my iMac into an S-video accepting TV, and just capture the screen?

The capture card isn't a viewing device. The TV doesn't have to lock onto a signal and process it.

I'm not sure the AJa has a good tbc (for vhs a.k.a very unstable signal)
More infos :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F93Vpv...aW1lIGJhc2U%3D

As for the TV display being better than a high end capture card, I'm not sure how that helps you capture things unless you are filming the TV's screen itself with a modern progressive digital camera? Or if it does output HDMI after you give it composite in, does capturing that really look better than the AJA?

Have you tried playing your digital captures made with the AJA Io LA through that same TV using something like VGA or HDMI connection after deinterlacing with QTGMC? Could be that the TV's low resolution and relatively small screen size gives the illusion of more detail as CRTs tend to do. Plasma TVs also can look pretty good at low resolution as well.

Thanks for the responses.

TVs versus Capture
Re whether a TV gives a better image than a capture: I'm not talking about colour, contrast or sharpness issues, I'm talking about a captured VHS tape that is virtually unwatchable – hundreds of dropped frames a minute, sound becoming more out of sync with each dropped frame, tearing and other visual nasties.

How many of the billions of TVs produced during the VCR era, would be able to display this particular tape near perfectly? Based on my three TVs being able to do so, I'm guessing most of them. Yet, give this tape to a device dedicated to digitising VHS tapes (I include here Elgato, Canopus ADVC, Grass Valley ADVCmini, Zolid-Tevion ATI 600 USB clone, Kaiser Baas DVD Maker, Hauppauge USB-Live2, Hauppauge HD PVR, I-O DATA GV-USB, I-O DATA GV-USB2 and GV-USB2/HQ, AJA IoLA and IoHD) – all of which have been put through their paces by Matthew), and it's no longer plug and play. Even the experts have to play around for hours or days or weeks with various software settings and combinations of players and TBC units.

That's what amazes me. What's inside a cheap rubbishy recycled TV that allows it to work well with VCR input, that thousands of dollars worth of equipment (VCR, TBC, Capture unit, computer and software) cannot replicate?

Any old TV
As part of my testing we viewed all the Hans Vonk tapes straight to TV, 8-10 hours worth. My partner is deeply involved with the Hans Vonk Music House, and she went through them first before Christmas, because she was interested in watching them. At that stage, I was more interested in how I was going to capture them. Now it's my turn to watch all the tapes, looking for introduced and serious imperfections. Haven't found any yet. But boy, do these capture devices introduce problems.

Any old VCR
I forgot to mention… the watching was done using three different, any-old VCRs (at home, a friend's, and a relatives). I don't like to use my JVC for just watching. No problems with any of them.

Giving Capture one more chance
I have a pseudo-TBC arriving next week (one of those Panasonics). I'll play around for a day or two giving things a second chance. Yes, I'll persist a little longer, but if I can't overcome this degradation problem caused by the capture process (there's nothing wrong between the tapes and a TV), keep an eye out for some half-decent capture equipment going cheap on eBay (a Panasonic, a JVC, and an AJA).

If there was a way to get a digital capture even with Timebase errors then the glitch artist people would be using it.

The CRT is made to play messy analog signals. The reason that you have to correct the timing on analog to make it digital is because digital has a perfect signal. Your CRT is just playing the analog signal. A capture card is going from analog to digital.

You’re not really thinking about lossless compression or anything like that. That will make a difference later in editing.

Why not just put your effort into reading what is going on? It’s a bunch of effort into testing but no reading.

The more you play those tapes the more they degrade.

You’re almost certainly about to make a mistake on eBay.

I would look into this guys gear and consider having him do them for you. https://www.austvarchive.com/film--v...itisation.html.

You really are at the best place to learn to digitize VHS but you aren’t really trying to learn anything from the experience of other people.

If there was a way to get a digital capture even with Timebase errors then the glitch artist people would be using it.

The CRT is made to play messy analog signals. The reason that you have to correct the timing on analog to make it digital is because digital has a perfect signal. Your CRT is just playing the analog signal. A capture card is going from analog to digital.

You’re not really thinking about lossless compression or anything like that. That will make a difference later in editing.

Why not just put your effort into reading what is going on? It’s a bunch of effort into testing but no reading.

The more you play those tapes the more they degrade.

You’re almost certainly about to make a mistake on eBay.

I would look into this guys gear and consider having him do them for you. https://www.austvarchive.com/film--v...itisation.html.

You really are at the best place to learn to digitize VHS but you aren’t really trying to learn anything from the experience of other people.

That appears to be the case, but why don't the developers of capture devices do the same? If a TV can do it, why not a single capture device?

I've done an awful lot of reading, posting and emailing.

That is the perceived wisdom, but I haven't seen any obvious degradation yet between the first capture and the last, now standing at over 50. But it must come eventually.

Thanks for the link. Before I started posting here last November, I did a fairly extensive search for commercial capturing in Australia. I didn't see that one, because he comes in after several hundred others, all highly sus. But that one looks promising so I sent the fellow an email with my phone number. If he calls; if he has suitable equipment and seems knowledgeable; if he is prepared to do the 51st capture on my test tape; and if that capture compares favourably with the best to date, I might give him the job. That's a lot of ifs, so I don't hold out much hope.

Finally, to repeat myself. Why isn't there a capture device that captures video as sweetly as does any TV? Play any of my 20 or so tapes, PAL and NTSC, from home movies taken in 1987, to professional tapes in 2002, and a nice image appears on the screen. It doesn't shake, it doesn't rattle, it doesn't roll, it doesn't tear or flag, or skip frames; and the audio stays in sync after 3 hours of play.

Then choose a different TV – same nice image. Choose a different player, from a $50 el-cheapo, to a high-quality JVC – same nice image.

But try to capture it to digital and the fun begins, irrespective of the quality of the capture device, the computer, or the software. That's the idea I probably will never comes to grips with. Maybe someone can enlighten me. If a TV can do it, why not a capture device?

What exactly is your gear anyways?

If your capture card is still that haugpage card that is meant for gaming, you are
using a regular VCR, no TBCs, and the Haugpage software that was meant for gaming then you can expect major issues that make it unwatchable. I’m just not sure what you’re using because of the testing.

If you go on eBay trying to get things for the best price then you can expect issues. When I hear the eBay thing I thought just hire it out because eBay if risky anyways but if you don’t know anything about the gear and you try to get stuff for bottom dollar then it’s going to be a headache.

This whole thing can end up costing you more because you try to get stuff really cheap then you have to buy again or just quit out of frustration.

Digital has benefits over analog.
1. Digital can be easily copied over into more copies with no loss because it is just computer data. This is what happens when you copy VHS to another VHS. https://youtu.be/nqy_hYDI0As?si=ErCTr93oEPhtbUP7

2. Tape based formats are successively to mold and heat damage. They ware out over time. It’s not just the tape that’s wearing out it’s the CRTs and VCRs that are used to play them. Capture gear is also wearing down also.

3. You can do a lot more with digital. Digital can be edited or restored with software. Digital can be easily shared or upload to YouTube. You can do whatever you want with it.

Your digitized VHS can look really good if done right. Especially if they’re not EP and the camera that shot them was good. Look at Latreche or lollo’s YouTube channels.

I always hate those exaggerated "examples" of generational loss. If 2nd gen looks that awful, the VCR is a complete POS. That's more like 3rd-4th. And this is without any TBCs.

You ask that as if it were a simple toggle the devs forgot to tick. Again, digital ingest is not display (analog or digital). To understand these vastly different tech, you'll need to fully study, research, and understand how each operates.

It's literally like asking why a dog can't meow like a cat, or vice versa. "Just open your mouth and do it!", right? :laugh:

Good point. I always appreciate the corrections. It keeps the site accurate. Okay so that video probably exaggerated the loss for views. It is an issue though.

Couple comments - Eventually I plan to do a VHS Generation loss video - but WITH TBCs and probably a couple of restored AG1980's. Probably won't get the million views that several others have, but that would be interesting to some anyway hahah. Theoretically the audio would not be any better though. Other question is whether they are actually using blank tapes for all of these copies - my guess is not.

As for the questions at hand here, would love to take a crack at one of your tapes with the variety of equipment I have - I'd be shocked if there were significant dropped frames during digitization, but alas, sounds like you're not in the USA and these tapes are most likely PAL content to which I do not have a VCR for anyway. I have yet to find a specific tape that doesn't look at least the same as what it does on a TV with the exception possibly being inferior to what is seen on a CRT. But even with a CRT - playing the digitally captured file back to a CRT looks just as good as the original as long as you don't have vertical jitter in the capture.

Now if you were trying to capture at the wrong frame rate, I could see a bunch of dropped frames and it being unwatchable, so you might want to double check what the frame rate of the resulting capture is compared to the source frame rate.

You are willing to spend at least 3,000 dollars on two VCRs just to use them to show generational loss on a YouTube video?

The alternative here is to buy random decks, attempt to self-DIY repair. But then that runs the risk on only being a test between VCRs, not of the tapes being played. Sometime there are too many variables, and this would be one of those times.

I forgot that you refurbish 1980s.

If I can't get acceptable quality out of my system, I might take you up on your "take a crack" offer. About half the tapes are NTSC. Hans Vonk worked in Europe until the mid 1990s, and then at St Louis until he died. One particular NTSC tape is of significance – an interview by Julius Hunter, a neighbour of the Vonks in St Louis, who was also a news anchor and author. I suspect I have the original tape that never went any further, because at the end of the interview the cameraman directs the camera at Julius, and Julius asks the same questions again, so that during editing the editor can alternate between Hans and Julius. There was only one cameraman, not two.

I'm sure that captures using good equipment do look as good as direct to TV, as far as colour, contrast and sharpness are concerned. It's the smoothness of playback that concerns me in this thread: dropped frames, jitter, and the occasional scramble of the signal. It was surprising to me that TV gives such a reliable playback from VHS, compared to capture. I love digital, but VHS is certainly not easy to digitise. It's an unloved part of our video heritage, that was avoided by professionals. And therein lies the problem. What developer wants to spend time and money on a new product that digitises, in the main, family and pets in the backyard or on holiday? What other image-capture medium has been so shunned by professionals?

A story with a happy and a sad ending
Happy Ending
About ten years ago in Melbourne, there was a young fellow, Callum, starting a scanning business. He was one of about a dozen scan companies in Australia that I contacted about scanning 8mm film. I think Callum, working from a room in his house, had a RetroScan, as did most of the others, developed and sold by a fellow in America from his garage. Cost about $5k back then. The test scans weren't very good, so I went further afield and ended up sending the films to VideoPro in Denmark. They had a Lasergraphics ScanStation ($250k?)

A few years late, Callum bought a 4K Filmfabriek HDS+, for maybe $20-30k, so I sent some work his way. Top quality scans came back.

Yesterday I looked at his website to check his email address, and to ask whether he could recommend anyone for capturing VHS. Wow! Was I surprised to see he now has a Lasergraphics ScanStation.

Sad Ending
Point of this story: film scanners are still being manufactured and continually improved because of the high quality of the original source material. Poor old VHS, as described in a student thesis, is undergoing a slow, relentless decline to obliteration, because only families loved it.

I wonder if the last working VCR player will become a news item like the last lab in Kansas the developed Kodachrome, or will it simply disappear without notice?

P.S. I just had a look at the Retroscan website. It's bit the dust. Probably a casualty of the newer and better players in the market.

No worries haha. The issue is that just as it's hard to "prove" that everything works perfectly on a standalone TBC as it should (there's no universal test that I'm aware of other than try it with a bunch of problem tapes and cross your fingers), it's also hard to prove that a VCR is optimally restored. I do play back color bar tapes that were created from a pattern generator, but it's hard to prove that the VCR that recorded that did it at the right levels either. And even if those color levels are a bit off, the AG1980 service manual doesn't describe how to adjust the color levels funnily enough. I've come to the conclusion that each tape is going to have different chroma/luma levels and to avoid clipping you'll often need a proc amp in the chain as well, so what the VCR is set to for those levels is less critical, though it'd be nice if you could adjust them more easily.

My AG1980 restorations could be better than TGrantPhoto's (even though they've done probably 100x more of them), but I have no idea how I'd actually prove that. I am pretty confident that I replace more caps than they do, but that doesn't always mean better either. I'm also not sure what they do to the decks beyond lubricate/clean parts and pull the capstan shaft completely out for cleaning and change the pinch roller if there's any evidence of cracking, and of course change the loading motor coupler.

Can *Guyburns* post a capture sample of the jittery playback ad describe the full capture chain? I'm thinking there could be a clue in terms of Frame rate or otherwise that might reveal why the digital capture is as bad as is being described. Ideally it'd be still interlaced as it is captured and about 5 seconds.