S-VHS transfer workflow vs. Elgato?
 

Just finished transferring some SVHS with the Elgato Video Capture from a Panasonic AG1970 with good results. However, I noticed the data rate was low at 2247kbps- which seems pretty low. Surprised at how many large transfer services use this method.

I have about 300 mostly SVHS tapes to transfer from my wedding business and need a higher quality solution for under $2000. Many of the workflows on this board recommend discontinued TBC's that are either super expensive and/or difficult to find or cards such as the ATI All in Wonder- that require outdated OS's.

Does anyone have a reasonably priced SVHS conversion workflow using off-the-shelf (or readily available, reasonably priced used e-bay) equipment for SVHS transfer to digital on a fast Microsoft Windows 10 or 11 desktop?

I might not be experienced as some other members here when it comes to digitizing tapes (heck I just started converting tapes from my family and close friends almost a year ago from basically reading Lordsmurf's guides on how to do the work properly and going from there), but sadly the answer is flat and honest, no.

The Elgato is quite frankly, a piece of garbage trash that some transfer services, though thankfully not all, use because it's easy and cheap. But it ain't good. Yes the recommended workflow is rather expensive but it's expensive for a reason as it is very high quality for what it is.

Yes you are dealing with VHS tapes and the like which are 100% not as high quality compared to modern video, but that just makes us want to get these old analog tape formats looking the best they possibly can be, especially if it's precious family home videos where no 'higher quality copy' exists.

This whole process is legacy, using equipment is that over 15+ years old, and any modern devices, such as the Elgato, Clearclick, etc are cheap, crappy pieces of garbage. This process ain't getting better with time and modern tech, it's getting worse.

Thank god Lordsmurf and a few other members here on the forum's Marketplace are the shimmer of hope in these dark times, offering their refurbished VCRs, TBCs and other high quality equipment for the job. Yes it sucks this stuff is expensive, but it's because this stuff is great at what it does, and this stuff hasn't been getting made anymore in years. But it's best to buy it, use it and resell it to try and make back the money.

Heck, with 300+ tapes it'd be cheaper to buy a workflow from Lordsmurf than to pay some other digitizing service (with some like Gotmemories and LegacyBox being utter crap that ruins your videos rather than properly preserve them) some 30 to 40 dollars per tape. That's cost around $9,000 to $10,000 as oppose to his workflows being just at $2500 for a budget one, and $4400 for the premium one. But even the budget workflow would be leagues better than using an Elgato.

Looks like you use a Panasonic AG 1970 which I've heard is really good, so it looks like you got a nice VCR to work with, now what's left is a frame TBC and proper capture card.

So to wrap this all back around, sadly the answer is no, not 'great quality' anyway. If you need a better capture card that'll work on Windows 10, I've heard the IO Data GV-USB2 is basically your best option on trying to make this work with a modern OS, but your best bet would be to get a proper workflow and some old (2010s or so) PC or laptop that can run Windows XP or Windows 7.

In another post you had mentioned using an AJA Ki Pro HD/SD Video Recorder. Would this do a better job than the Elgato?

You must be referring to this thread? I didn't say anything about suggesting such a device.

It might to do better than the Elgato, but I believe that it still wouldn't be the recommended device for the job.

Re the Elgato. I don't have one but make these comments:

1. Your 2247 bitrate, I assume, is when creating MP4s using the Elgato capture software. The capture bitrate can be boosted, as per this post:

https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...html#post96918

2. Given that it appears to be just a bog-standard digitiser, you should be able to use Virtual Dub or AmarecTV to capture into a lossless format such as UT video, Lagarith or HUFFYUV. This will give you the ideal file format for editing (eg colour, noise reduction). For there, you then encode it into the delivery format such as MP4 or onto DVD in DV format. Starting out with MP4 (as you get from the device's own brand software) is not ideal because MP4 is so highly processed/compressed already.

IMO, there is absolutely no need to go dinosaur. There are plenty of good capture solutions, eg at a good consumer level, the GV-USB2 with Win 11. I use one almost exclusively and it is bulletproof on Win 10 and 11. There are more expensive options; user Latreche uses an SDI workflow.

Because it works for his business. The client gets a tape that looks good. That guy is not Legacy Box.

As you will find, to do things the Lordsmurf way involves probably 3 times the time that it takes to punch out an MP4 using the Elgato capture software, as well as 10 times the disk space.

Define "good". Sample needed. That is low, but that's Elgato/Elcrapo for you.

Those are the Walmarts of the video capture world, no quality. I also would not refer to GotMemories as "large", just a strip mall vendor. If you want to be known as "the cheap guy" (with cheap quality), then Elgato is your tool. Some customers will be ignorant to quality (don't know what they don't know), others will be willing to sacrifice any/all quality to saves some money (often so they have more money for their vices, $1k cell phones, gamer computers, etc -- ie, it's not because they don't have the funds to spend).

For a $2000 budget, something can be assembled for you. :)

That's a lot of tapes, and for business needs. So you need something that gives yourself nuisance-free use, and your clients the quality that they paid for. Both can be accomplished. It's actually the cheap items that give you grief, and gives your clients low-end cheap quality work.

This is not accurate. Not sure why you think this. :hmm:

We often discuss workflows that range in price from sub-$1000 (with lots of compromises) to $5000+. All Windows versions, mostly XP, 7, 10, and lately 11 -- but noting XP and 7 are best. Even some Mac, though narrow options. Certain ATI AIW were, and still are, the best capture cards around. But there are some quite nice just-not-best cards that work in Win7/8/10/11. TBCs can vary in quality and strength, and thus also vary in price, everything from ~$750 to the best $3000+

eBay is not buying, eBay is gambling. Almost all sellers there are no recyclers, and don't know a TBC from a toaster. (I'm actually shocked how young some of these flippers/recyclers are, because they actually have no concept of how a VCR is supposed to work! You'll see that in listings, in messaging questions, etc. But, of course, it's "tested" and "working", whatever that means. Yikes!)

Capturing videotapes was a 2000s task, and it's now the 2020s. Windows is now made for "cloud", and "social media", not serious tasks like video capture. Windows has slowly removed the ability to capture cards to work well, or at all, in the past 20 years of versions. It now treats all capture cards like webcams, which is bad. There are a few quality cards that still function in Win10/11, but mostly it's jkust Chinese USB junk sold on Amazon/eBay/Temu -- and that includes Elgato cards, which earned the nikcname "Elcrapo".

I often read this, but it simply is not true. :2cents:

Perspective matters. Video is one of the most affordable tasks around, a cheap hobby, a profession with a low cost to entry (but knowledge/skill still needed)

Lots and lots of people buy the most ridiculous overpriced thing we have in modern society -- those $1k+ cell phones. That's expensive! Do you realize the net/profit margins on those phones? FYI, that's why Apple is a $3T company. I can literally do the same things with my $200 phone (which I bought manufacturer refurb'd for $125). Run apps, makes calls/texts, take photos, and quality is fairly identical.

Other expensive items include packs of smokes, gamer computers (with ridiculous priced graphics cards), and even something like collecting action figures.

Complaining about costs is really more about educating yourself on what gear costs. Yes, some stuff costs more than other stuff. But too often, false assumptions lead to falsely believing it's overpriced (or underpriced, or priced fairly).

It's passable. It has lots of issues, mostly the same failures as the AG-1980P, but also a "crunchy"/noisy type quality to it. It's not really playing back the signal as faithfully, and with quality, as certain JVCs, or even the AG-1980.

That's an excuse.
That's lazy.
That's crap.

I can buy a $2 microwave pot of Chef Boyardee ravioli, but then I'd be eating unhealthy garbage. Sure, once in a while is fine. But eating it for every meal every day (ie, using garbage to convert every video tape) is uncaring about the consequences. If you want to be overweight with heart issues, watching compressed snot quality video, then go for it. But most people do want better.

"10 times the disk space" is an important issue for me in digitizing 300 1.5 hour SVHS tapes. The size of uncompressed digital files might be prohibitively expensive to store. The Elgato does .75mbps and with the hack 3.5mbps. What is the point of diminishing returns in quality vs. file size? I don't mind spending to build a proper transfer station, but only if the quality make a huge jump in going with a vintage XP setup as opposed to my Elgato. Some YouTube comparisons would be nice!

And thanks so much for all your help everyone:)

That is true yeah, I myself wasn't getting all angry over how much a workflow costed, and even then you do provide options ranging in price. Thankfully this stuff can be worth the cash as it'd be possible to make back the money spent on it by using it, earning some money from digitizing old tapes using said equipment and then selling it off once it is no longer of use to you so somebody else can buy it and use it for their needs.

This isn't like an expensive phone where you might not really need the top of the line specs, sure a gaming PC might make more sense, especially if you're the kind of person that needs to extra power to do professional work on it. But at least this ain't like spending loads of money on limited edition figures that just, sit in a box on a shelf looking pretty.

Might be wrong on the math, but if Huffyuv is 35 GB per hour, and all your tapes are around an hour and 30 minutes, then the file size per tape would be around 52.5 GB per tape. Times that by 300 and it'd be 15,750 Gigabytes or 15.75 Terrabytes, rounding that off to 16, you can buy two 8tb Seagate External Hard Drives for around $150 a piece, or just one 16TB HDD for $250.

It's not 10x.

The files are only captured at a larger lossless size. After capture, a quick quality encode to compress size is very possible, but without sacrificing quality like Elgato is doing.

When you try to compress video "on-the-fly" (during capture), lots of guess and shortcuts are made (encoding math), and quality massively suffers. H.264 "MP4" is a "delivery format", and was never made for realtime encoding in this manner. (Note that this differs from cameras/camcorders using AVCHD.)

Storage also should not be a deal-breaker. WD 22tb hard drives are now under $400, often even $300 on sale. I remember capturing lossless files back in 2002, when the largest hard drives were about 100gb. That was painful. Now is a dream. If we did a worst case scenario, 300 tapes, 2 hours filled SP, storing max lossless, you'd only be at 21tb of data. Add in some formatting overhead, encode variance, you'd still be smaller than a single Seagate Exos 24tb drive, for about $475. I paid about that same amount for my "large" 180gb drive in 2003, and I had to drive an hour (one way) to Fry's to get it.

It's a huge jump. Night-and-day. I don't have comp videos available offhand, but Youtube is filled with washed-out fuzzy(ish) VHS conversions, with various boogers and annoyances in the image. A quality VHS conversion can rival a commercial DVD, if done properly. That's the easy explanation. VHS isn't bad, methods and gear are bad.

Cheap/lazy methods/gear = lousy quality.
Good gear = good quality.

You have a sensible budget as a business, and you're seeking to do right by your clients. Do that, don't stray from it (or there will be consequences later). I've seen this game play out for about 20 years now. Cheap services usually crash-and-burn (and disappear), services that invested in good gear are often still people I have great conversations with.

But I like my pretty desk! It has a few Transformers, Thundercats, Robotech, Voltron and Smurfs on it! :cool:

All of that stuff was probably $500. Yes, in hindsight, that seems really dumb for what it is, not something useful, not tools (like video gear). But then you should see how insane some collector get, with their toy collection probably costing more than their house. It's all about moderation, perspective, being sensible.

None of my toys came from the dollar store, not "just toys" (ie, "just VHS"), but rather some neat stuff from BBTS.

Yes it is. Numbers don't lie. Decent MP4 is 4GB per hour. HUFF is 35GB per hour.

I'm interested. Please explain.

And a backup.

That's not how H.264 compression works. It's always CRF now, never bitrate. Sizing varies wildly. Huffyuv could too, but it was overall range bound to 35gb/hour. (Snow made it go way higher.)

Hybrid encode to a template, such as my interlaced 4:2:2 settings. Or MPEG-2 @ 4:2:2 in a payware encoder like MainConcept. There's quite a few options, and modern systems are faster than realtime, often double or better. You can even use ProRes422 LT using VirtualDub2 (and I think Hybrid as well). Run some basic cNR filters, mask if needed. Lots of options here, all quality.

I use 22-24tb CMR drives, and then backup to CMR or SMR smaller size drives, split contents. That's how I recycle older drives to save some dollars.

What lossless gives you is the ability to make a "flat" (low contrast) capture that gets all of the information on the tape in both the shadow and highlights area of the histogram, and restore to your preference later at your leisure. Otherwise, you're likely to lose information at one or both sides of the histogram, meaning the dark, shadowy areas turn to pure black and the brighter areas turn to pure white. There are a lot of videos of badly captured videotapes on YouTube.

With a lossless capture, you can also do other things like crop/mask the head switching noise at the bottom of the frame, correct red/green hue to make skin tones look more natural, reduce often exaggerated chroma levels, and fix vertical bounce, all without adding digital macroblocking that you would see if you started from an MP4.

Audio on captures should also be lossless (PCM) so that you can normalize it without adding digital noise. Sometimes you might also want to "compress" the dynamic range to make speech in home videos more intelligible.

Each one of these restoration tasks in isolation elevates your captures above a LOT of those you see on YouTube by people who don't make the same effort, and done together makes your captures approach DVD/miniDV quality, but you must start with a lossless capture or you lose the benefit of doing any restoration at all.

Lossless Examples?
 

Any YouTube examples of lossless capture compared to something off a compressed Elgato capture? Before spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in an XP system, it would be nice to see the difference. So many people on this board swear by the XP/TBC/All-In-One vintage route, yet I have yet to see any comparisons.

The approach depends on your objectives.
300 Tapes from a wedding business. Are these the edited deliverables, or the raw camcorder videos?
What is the condition of the tape; e.g, randon consumer home video, or well exposed, color balanced,and edited tapes.
Is this a paying job, on speculation in case a former client wants their wedding video in digital format, or a labor of love/hobby?
Do you plan to do any editing or restoration?
Is there any time constraint?
Is this a one-and-done project?
What is the final quality standard and who will be the judge if its attainment?

Not a paying job
 

SVHS edited masters. No editing needed, just for archival purposes. Some family tapes as well. I want good quality.

You can do a test yourself.

Do an Elgato capture, with it's software, at the higher bitrate. You should see an improvement over the low-bitrate captures.

Next, do a lossless capture with the Elgato with VDub or AmarecTV and render that lossless file to an MP4 and compare that with the the two MP4s.

Compare those with what you see from your tape direct to the TV and you'll get an idea of what you can expect.

Where are you?

Show me one of the Elgato/Elcrapo capture.

Feel free to re-capture it with a higher bitrate. However, cranking the knob to 11 won't do much. That's merely 1 quality vector. To put this in terms you may understand, it's like insisting the photo will look better with a faster shutter speed (without any regard given to ISO, aperture, or the non-technical artistry). "More bitrate" is a simpleton understanding of compressed video.

Then send me the tape. I'll give it my once-over. Feel free to run your worst tape, and also explain what you consider "worst" about it (if not obvious). No mold, no physically damaged tapes.

Then we'll have something to post on Youtube. :)

This isn't an offer that I extend very often -- or ever, for that matter.

Very often, you have to see the results on your own tapes to truly/fully understand.

I don't know where my Elgato card is right now, and some conspiracist asshat will claim I fudged something with the samples. I'm fully confident your Elgato videos look mediocre to terrible, and can easily be improved with proper gear in a lossless setting.

Most of those Elgato cards do not work in VirtualDub -- either correctly, or at all. Even OBS often fights it -- and noting OBS is not the software that should be used for capturing analog videotapes anyway. It tends to only work with the lousy included software that comes with the card. After Elgato discontinued this own video capture software, the suggested OBS in the KB. It's such a clusterfuck of a card and setup. It's also not immune to OS/graphics based issues.

On the topic of comparisons, I have since thrown away my Elgato card, but for the heck of it I was tempted to make a comparison using footage recorded from a game console. Sure that might not be the best case scenario but it'd be the least personal footage I could film.

While I have filmed footage of my neighborhood with the Elgato card and still have the mp4 file saved, I don't have the original tape anymore to recapture the footage, and all the footage I originally captured with the Elgato I have since recaptured with a proper workflow, completely getting rid of the crappy Elgato mp4s and instead keeping the higher quality restored mp4 copies from the recaptured raw avi files.

Topic of Thread...
Recaptured with what? And what OS? Help the OP out here.

Using a proper workflow purchased from Lordsmurf of course, with any and all footage being captured using VirtualDub 1.9 on a Windows XP laptop.

Too embarrassed to tell us what he sold you, or are you under orders so that LS gets another sale? Why is it so hard to tell us what digitiser you're using?

I'm putting my conclusion at the top of this reply, before the quote...

Hushpower/Alwyn, I'm vastly more interested in your attenuator for ES10/15 type, to address the PAL luma/exposure problem. Or your guides for OBS/etc -- even if don't agree with using the software (as a guide is a guide, if well written and BS-free). Not these endless posts trying to pick fights over capture cards. Perhaps let's move in that direction?

I'm happy you found something that works for you, for your occasional airplane hobby videos, down under in the PAL world. But this OP is a business, NTSC, and other posters in other threads have other needs as well.

Stop being so confrontational. :warning:

Aya_Rei has a couple of cards, but that's because capture cards are extremely reliant on OS.

That's why
- Linux is mostly worthless for capture,
- Mac has only a few not-ideal narrow paths using old OS X versions with Intel CPUs,
- Windows is best for capture.

But, again, analog videotape capture is considered a 2000s task by hardware makers (ie, no new quality items), and you only have "new" cheap Chinese USB junk now. To access the best capture cards, you have to use the OS of that era, namely WinXP and Win7. Any newer OS is very problematic, as older hardware only "works" with patched (often poorly patched) drivers. People can whine and cry about "it needs to be new!" but them's the facts. Ancient VCRs, into legacy/older computer hardware, to be process/watched on the latest hardware. Trying to go ancient > new is a problem, with anything (not just video). Steps needed.

The clear winners for "best", that straddles the ancient/new barrier, is the "legacy" hardware (not ancient, but also not new), mostly being certain ATI 600 USB (or clones) and certain Pinnacle type (NOT Dazzles!).

I'm sure you'll inject a comment about how you broke your Pinnacle card in Win11 (never leave in removable USB peripherals during system updates), and how the video console gamer card GV-USB2 is "bestest ever" (and using the at-least-as-old-as-VirtualDub pre-OBS analog streaming software AmaRecTV). And that's fine. But you're also a wee too vocal about this, to the point where it's almost trolling and hostile. It's a cheap Japanese card, mediocre quality (not ATI/Pinnacle best, not Easycap/Elgato worst), the end. You maintain a super-budget setup, but it has flaws compared to better workflows.

The truly "best" capture cards are also not just about image quality, but audio, and general usability.

The wrong/bad capture card is why many people:
- hate the capturing process
- wrongly think that "VHS looks bad", when in fact what they see is the signal/image butchered by their junk VCRs, junk capture cards, and lack of TBCs

I've been doing this for about 25 years now. I can see some of these conversations from a mile away. I know all the arguments (cheap, defending purchase, "good enough" excuse, etc).

I can't keep taking time for long replies like this. :(

You used to be so pleasant to converse with. What happened? Are you okay? :question:

I miss the old you. :depressed:

My fault for not telling specifics, they are as follows

1. JVC SR-MV45U S-VHS VCR
2. JVC SR-VS30U S-VHS VCR (used as a backup/last resort if the above VCR fails in the future)
3. Cypress CDM-640 Digital Multi-Scan Converter
4. Pinnacle 510 USB

Already talked to LS about this but I do plan on getting an ATI 600 clone as a means of troubleshooting the cause of my recent captures having a few frame inserts in them, it's been happen since the past couple of weeks, but I never had an issue with inserts nor drops before then. Still never dealt with dropped frames, only inserts now..

And just to add, there are versions of this card, both good and bad, like many other VCRs, capture cards, and TBCs.

Devices are designed, produced. Then popular devices have more produced, but uh-oh, the components needed may no longer be available. So a new version can exist, and due to SKU, it' not given a new model number.

The same is true of computer components, and some years ago Linus Tech Tips dedicated an episode to this bait-and-switch issue.

This is why model number alone can be quaint, not overly useful. Some items have tell-tale signs of "what's in the box", some do not.

You can look up something about compression but it might not make sense and be confusing to you right now. It’s not just the bitrate but the way h.264 compresses. https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...ompressed.html
https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...-lossless.html
https://www.archivalworks.com/blog/l...eo-compression

It would be cool to see what your tapes are going to look like before you buy gear. I know that at least for me the examples I see using cheaper gear aren’t how my tapes would actually come out. Not my 80s full size cassettes. That’s because of storage, the camera that was used, the way they were shot, age of the tape and the fact that magnetic tape isn’t a good way of storing data. There’re a lot of factors with this. It can make some tapes different from others. That’s important to think about when you see a visual example. This method deals with some of those issues. Given the age of tapes now i would think a lot of tapes have problems. Dpalomaki mentions that and some other really good questions. Once you see your sources with bad gear then see what happens as you upgrade gear things start to make more sense. I have seen digitalfaq examples on there Facebook page. The examples I saw were actually VHS-C.

He is on topic. Here’s the topic. SVHS transfer workflow vs Elgato. Everything he said has been about that. He has personal experience with the Elgato. He can relate to the OP. He knows what good tested gear looks like. You haven’t used the card but you are giving advise on it anyways. What really gets everything off topic is the weekly hissy fit from you in your next comment. He even takes the high road and says my bad afterwards and lists his workflow to try to get things back on topic and ignore your temper tantrum.

That’s a good idea.