My blog post?
 

Hello, hope all is well.

I recently took on the endeavor of converting my VHS tapes to Digital and ended up writing a blog post about my experience and feelings:

https://foreverliketh.is/blog/vhs-to-digital/

This forum was a priceless resource throughout and though I don't exclusively sing its praises in the post, I believe I made its worth clear. The intention of this post was one of advice to others and gratitude for this website, VHS and a couple of other things. I didn't always end up following 100% of lordsmurf 's advice, but I really appreciated its existence and that of the countless others here who contribute.

I'd love to hear thoughts and comments, and if there's anything in particular you feel really needs correcting, I'd be more than happy to update it.

All the best.

I think your picture is clipping.

How did it go with no frame TBC or frame synchronizer? Did it show any dropped or inserted frames in VirtualDub?

I hadn't seen that DigitalFaq Meme haha.

I think a fair number of people want the "best" results when capturing VHS and that's what leads to the rabbit hole - too many variables and reading opinions without seeing evidence (video samples) of their claims as to why one capture chain or device is better than another in a certain situation. I prefer to be "shown" specifically why (and how much) something is better than an alternative to keep the opinions/subjectivity to a minimum and not "told" that something is better without evidence.

It very well may be the case that the "recommended" methods and hardware here truly are ideal IF hardware availability, ease of use, and cost (both money involved and time involved) are removed from the equation. Yet, I don't see a big head to head comparison that shows most popular methods of conversion and video samples of the results of each (that are all captured from the same source tape) that you should expect to get with each method.

If there was one capture chain that cost $3k (that requires multiple computers and is done in several steps) versus a method that costs $200 (and is done in a single step with all items available currently on Amazon) and that user personally cannot not tell the difference or the difference observed to that user was negligible, why would they ever be encouraged to go with the $3k setup?

Each method/hardware chain will have pros and cons, so you can't really say that one method is the "best" for all situations. I think if people STARTED their capture journey by looking at possible end-results-to-be-expected with each method and chain done on an identical/ideal source, there would be a lot less confusion surrounding the topic.

My guess is that's why you like Video Capture Guide's YouTube channel - he provides evidence and direct comparisons when changing one variable at a time in the capture chain or process. It's not exactly broad ranging in terms of devices tested at a time, but it will give a good idea of what you should expect with the devices being compared if you had to choose between one or the other. What I am suggesting is that videos like that be considered in reverse (look at the results FIRST) and then go back to the part of the video where you see how that was achieved and if that's too complicated or cost prohibitive, go to the next best looking result and see how that was done. A good comparison would have data to go along with the videos to consider as well, such as revealing number of dropped frames, deinterlacing issues, size of the final file per hour, total time and cost involved etc.

You'll have to be more specific with what you're referring to with the clipping; sorry, I'm not sure.

I think it varied wildly by tape. The conditions of each tape varied significantly. I had one tape that was so bad, it shedded. And there were moments were only parts of a tape, in passing, were bad and resulted in dropped / inserted frames. But there were cases like the wedding video that I was blessed to have none. Additionally, no cases were so bad that they resulted in audio syncing issues, fortunately.

Meaning to say, I believe the tapes were the largest variable in the process. Not the absence of any additional equipment. That's, ofc, just my experience / opinion.

Heh, perhaps you'll enjoy this one as well: The VHS Tape Digitization Iceberg

I agree, that certainly sounds like it'd make for a more straightforward approach to the endeavor. As I was working on the project some friends were asking: "is this some audiophile-tier stuff?" I'd reply that I didn't think so, a lot of it seemed practical and reasonable and understandable, to a point, I think. Though I can't really say, I've never been audiophile either. But that's why I also felt it was important to find charm in the imperfections, though that too only to a certain degree.

I recently bought a modern cassette player and everywhere I read talks about how garbage they are, particularly bringing up the sounds the player generates. But I like the hum! Take from that what you will.

This is clipping https://youtu.be/htqrTTSZp-M?si=EgG3eLJlzYSmWobi. You can use your histogram in Vdub to help you stay within the legal levels than you can check them in hybrid with a waveform monitor.

That’s fine for you to share your opinions/experience. I’m just sharing my own experience /opinion also. The tapes are the issue but there are tools that help with that issue. If you have something there it will help a lot compared to nothing to prevent dropped frames. A Pannasonic es-15 or es-10 would of helped. You would of wanted to turn off the TBC in your VCR if you were using that though. From what I’ve heard there’s downsides. You can look through the forum for that. I don’t own one so Idk from personal experience on that. I know about an actual frame TBC but i don’t really wanna go into that because I don’t think you wanna go that route. Something would help out a lot. The shedding tape is a different story.

Ah, yes. VirtualDub complained about the GV-USB2 capture card I used. Didn't allow me to play with the video levels (nor the histogram if I'm recalling correctly).

I'm afraid I don't have enough experience or knowledge to agree or disagree on this front. I'm a tad skeptical though.

I got ya. Well good luck with your captures. I hope it goes well.

Yes, evidence. It's so simple. You'd think that the stronger someone recommends this way or that, this piece of gear or that, this signal chain or that, the more keen they'd be to put up the visual evidence to prove their visual claims. Let the pictures do the talking.

That "word of caution" Reddit posts irritates me, and you shouldn't link to it.

It's a reminder of a sad era for me, for our family. During the back half of the pandemic, in late 2021, several family members had sudden declines in health. We lost them in 2022. My attention was often on that, not video. I tried my best to maintain composure, to keep operations running smoothly, but I couldn't always do it.

That was the only guy who did not care, even after he was told the situation. Everybody else was quite understanding, and several reached out to console me/us.

I'm still trying to heal, to move forward, but that page isn't helping. Every time I see it, hear about it, it brings back feelings of sadness and loss.

It was just for a single tape project. It wasn't worth all this pain. :(

This is a frustrating thread.

I see this at the beginning.

Then I notice bad clipping and a workflow that is asking for dropped frames so I have comments but I see the quote below and I can see his attitude about gear recommendations. So I make it really minimalistic recommendation and then I get into a situation where someone doesn’t believe me that there are ways to prevent dropped frames and it’s someone that just wrote an article that mentions the importance of not rushing things and doing your homework.

That really isn’t good to be done with your project and not know what clipping is and not know that you can prevent dropped frames.

It just sucks because he publishes something saying yeah I did it with this gear then someone else thinks that’s all they need and that they can’t prevent dropped frames. It takes information from this site and passes it down like some game of telephone but the cord is real long and information is leaking out of the cord for like 100 feet so when it gets to the other person there’s nothing left hardly.

I don’t care what he does with his project. I just hate for the new people to be mislead.

On the topic of clipping, heck I understand it but I don't really adjust my TBC nor capture card's proc amp to counter it and just leave it at it's default settings, why? Well I suppose I'm not comfortable with needing to tweak it and just let it's default values handle everything.

Which, in comparison to not using the CDM 640, helps with the whites.

https://imgsli.com/Mjg5MzIw

Personally looking at the image in the blog post, it looks like it is suffering from crushed blacks. You can't see any detail in the groom's suit. At least it isn't a stupidly bright mess that hurts my eyes.. I've seen captures like that on YouTube..

Maybe Im being harsh. I don’t think so though.

I have to adjust mine but I think my sources are pretty bad.

https://youtu.be/XCSQ8CDSxTE?si=8MD3ovBoJXcCYZyZ Im not trying to hate on the decode project or anything. I actually think it’s an interesting project but they always have the worst example videos.

Certain gear "just works". That CDM is legalizing values, and has properly pillarbared.

That specific TBC was about $1k when new (20 years ago), mostly sold to overseas broadcast facilities that were based on budget end tapes (S-VHS, Hi8). It did rough PAL<>NTSC formats conversion ("good enough" for the small TVs used in those locales). Like other Cypress, it was ruined with bad chips in latter years, and those bad units are vastly more common to find.

I'd actually bet it's double-crushed, due to combo of gear and AGC.

This is pretty easy to recreate -- just use lower-end gear, no frame TBC.

That 7500 is actually a recommended JVC, but it can have some aggression issues with NR/values, and cannot be turned off. The 9500 is similar. Note that I keep both a 7500 and 9500 in my arsenal, but it's never my first deck. It does have strengths that make it desirable.

A main concern I've always had about the GV-USB2 is that it respects IRE 0, as used in Japanese NTSC (where the card is from) and PAL. Only PAL users ever praise it. Even then, even for IRE 0, it's always seemed dark by default. I bought one, I never use it beyond testing.

So:
- IRE 0
- dark card
- no TBC
- 7500 AGC

After you're done some of these things for decades, it's really obvious where the issue might be.

The VC500 has known AGC issues. It's not a comparison sample at all.

If someone is coming from YouTube then I can understand not knowing some of those things. I just don’t see it coming from here because they mention it a lot. Im just trying to give some honest input which OP asked for at the beginning.

Anyways if OP is still taking request for things to change then I would say mention the dropped frames.

I wonder if this:
... should perhaps go at the top of your blog post. It gives an instant and relatable benchmark for your own personal expectations, which - no offense - seem to be on the lower side? Unless you bought the cassette player to make noise art or glitch tunes or something?

It’s soo strange that someone made a page about this site and they have nothing to prevent dropped frames like that. It seems like he put more work into the page than he did researching what to do for his project. Then he was soo defensive about the gear recommendation. I’m not a gray beard either. Well a little gray. I’m 35. I was really clueless before this site myself.

There’s no real particulars either about what software he used or if he captured losslessly. It’s just a few stereotypes that repeat stuff he probably read off of Reddit. There’s no valuable information.

Heck, I'm in my 20s and I was just as clueless as you Gary, I was the perfect kind of person to be swept by the YouTubers recommending Elegato's.. I actually could've stuck that route as that is how I started up digitizing tapes but, shocker. The equipment I was using was not at all giving me ideal results, it "worked" but I personally felt like I was not getting the best possible quality out of those VHS/8mm tapes, I wasn't doing the precious footage of family moments any justice, which is why I invested the time and funds, reading Lordsmurf's posts, ordering a workflow from him and talking to him in PMs to overall try to figure out and understand how to handle this task properly.

Now I can say that I am confident enough in capturing my own tapes, even tapes from other people so long as they don't have any mold and other physical damage, which I do inspect for whenever I get VHS tapes specifically. If the signal is completely screwed up and manually tracking doesn't help, then that is when I cut my loses, such as the 1999 Kodak branded VHS Wedding tape, in which I'm trying to determine if it 100% is a copy by figuring out what camera was used to film the footage, hoping that the original video8/vhs-c tape still exists so I can capture that instead.

Handling a VCR itself is another story, for now I'm trying to avoid that by carefully inspecting tapes for any mold and wrinkles so that I don't accidentally play them. Usually when I'm done capturing a set of tapes from a family member/close friend, I pop it a known good movie tape and let it run for around 5 minutes, just to see if the VCR is still in good shape.

I guess it's funny how I started out with a crappy, not ideal archiving method to capture VHS/Video8 tapes before jumping ship all the way to a high quality archival capture workflow.

Hello again everyone.

I wasn't aware of the context in its entirety. First off, my condolences for what you went through. The intention of that section, the links to discussions outside of this website, was to encourage the reader to not solely limit their reading / perspective to any single source / authority. I believe it worthwhile to always consider (reasonable? kind?) criticism, to have an open mind. I can achieve the intention without including that link in particular. I think you have a strong case for your request and I apologize for including it. I will swap it out shortly.

This one's a bit of a knot... Maybe the mistake was mine in even sharing with this strongly technical website, but I really was just asking about my blog post. Not my results, nor my workflow, nor my equipment. You'll notice that including the cost and hardware was an afterthought, it's on the "Cutting Room Floor". Perhaps that was another of my mistakes, I gave the technical side an inch and a mountain was made of a molehill.

My post, and I think its self-evident, is not a technical one. It is my feelings and experience. The image I shared was emotionally significant, not technically so. So, yes, I apologize that I wasn't the most interested in your responses, they're not really the ones I was looking for.

Regarding the clipping, I thought you were going to be way more specific with what you're referring to but it turned out to be rather general. For what it's worth I did want to mess with the video levels and histogram, but, as I said, could not.

And I think it's within my right to say I feel skeptical, am I mistaken? Particularly when the dropped / inserted frames have no relevancy on the blog's screenshot in particular.

---

I'm not sure why this thread was moved to Video Project Help, when I originally put in General Discussion where, given the nature of the kind of blog post it is, I think is more accurate.

I'd like to appreciate more the discussion but it's hard to not feel some hostility. Unwarranted imo, given:
-how it's just a small post on my personal website (very, very small audience)
-the main points of the article are, I think, reasonable
-and I came, immediately after posting, to transparently receive feedback.

Is my post really as bad, for beginners, as recommending Elgato?

The General Discussion forum will be eliminated in the near future, in line with a general overhaul of this forum, of the entire site, to reflect a new direction. Still heavily about digital video, but it will better reflect what members here need and want. So I'm trying to move all new topics, in addition to move old topic. Your blog post is about digital video capture, so that's where it was moved.

Now then, the intention of your post was apparently about the blog itself, how it discusses capturing, and not the actual capturing. And I'll be glad to give my non-technical thoughts to you when time permits.

I meant what I said. This whole thread seems troll like anyways IMO. If you have a question start a new thread or use the search bar.