Outputting Final Cut X film to VHS media?

[BrainRotTrash]

I've got a somewhat odd question. I edited a film from my old DV footage and my goal is to get it onto VHS in the best quality to use for duplication onto other VHS tapes for a release.

Can anyone please help me figure out the best process to do this? When I look around on the internet I find LOTS of info on hot to get VHS into a computer, but not current info on how to get it from computer to VHS.

I am wondering if I could put my edited project, uncompressed onto MiniDV via Firewire somehow, then play that back into my VHS deck and record to tape?

Am I correct that burning it onto a DVDr and playing that back to record to VHS would degrade the quality?

There are the things I have:

Video project edited in Final Cut X
iMac (27 inch 2019) (No firewire)
MacBook Pro (Older model with Firewire 800 port)
Panasonic HC-X900M MiniDV Camera
Sony TRV-103 Digital8 Camera
S-VHS Deck

Thanks for any help on figuring the best process out!

[lordsmurf]

These easiest way, possibly one of the best ways, is to output from the timeline back to a DV tape. Then record that new tape to VHS. That will require that your Mac has drivers that let it write to camera.

[BrainRotTrash]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

These easiest way, possibly one of the best ways, is to output from the timeline back to a DV tape. Then record that new tape to VHS. That will require that your Mac has drivers that let it write to camera.

Thank you for the message back!

Do you know if this process can be done using current Final Cut X, or would I need an older version?

[7jlong]

My two cents: burn a high bitrate DVD, check thoroughly that you're happy with it on playback, and then tape that to VHS. This assumes you have a DVD burner, and a regular (but decent) DVD player with at least composite but hopefully S-Video out.

As far as degrading the quality goes, I personally am of the opinion that a well-authored DVD is still one of the best ways to view captured/transferred interlaced standard definition footage on a television, and would have no problem using a DVD as a "master" for a short run of VHS tapes as long as all appropriate checks and tests were carried out first.

I haven't been Mac for a very long time, but if given the choice of trying to make one output DV or burn a DVD, the latter sounds faster, easier and potentially perfectly successful (to me). Blank discs are also a smidge easier to come across than blank tapes.

You say you want to get your project onto VHS first, and then duplicate more VHS from that tape? That will certainly add another layer of the characteristic VHS "look" if that's what you're after, but personally I'd make all of the VHS dupes from the DVD or DV copy instead, and here again I would decide against first going to DV tape - mostly to save wear/tear on tiny, aging transports.

Dubbing from DVD to VHS will still end up looking like VHS, no two ways about it, but I think you'll save yourself one generation of unwanted mush by skipping that extra VHS copy in your workflow and dubbing off a digital copy instead, be it DVD, MiniDV, D8, etc... but then again, some go after VHS because they want to play up the mush, so if that's the case - mush on!

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 7jlong

My two cents: burn a high bitrate DVD, check thoroughly that you're happy with it on playback, and then tape that to VHS. This assumes you have a DVD burner, and a regular (but decent) DVD player with at least composite but hopefully S-Video out.

I can go along with that.
NOTE: Just maintain proper interlace, don't deinterlace anywhere.

Quote:

As far as degrading the quality goes, I personally am of the opinion that a well-authored DVD is still one of the best ways to view captured/transferred interlaced SD footage on a television, and would have no problem using a DVD as a "master" for a short run of VHS tapes as long as all appropriate checks and tests were carried out first.

Yep, totally agree.

Quote:

I haven't been Mac for a very long time, but if given the choice of trying to make one output DV or burn a DVD, the latter sounds faster, easier and potentially perfectly successful (to me). Blank discs are also a smidge easier to come across than blank tapes.

Both are about the same, and each needs tools. Sadly, Mac DVD authoring is lacking, atrocious even.

Quote:

You say you want to get your project onto VHS first, and then duplicate more VHS from that tape? That will certainly add another layer of the characteristic VHS "look" if that's what you're after, but personally I'd make all of the VHS dupes from the DVD or DV copy instead, and here again I would decide against first going to DV tape - mostly to save wear/tear on tiny, aging transports.
Dubbing from DVD to VHS will still end up looking like VHS, no two ways about it, but I think you'll save yourself one generation of unwanted mush by skipping that extra VHS copy in your workflow and dubbing off a digital copy instead, be it DVD, MiniDV, D8, etc... but then again, some go after VHS because they want to play up the mush, so if that's the case - mush on!

Agree.

That was an outstanding post, 7jlong.

[latreche34]

If you are not editing the footage and just want to output to VHS you can just playback the DV footage from a DV player/camcorder and record that into a S-VHS recorder in VHS mode using S-Video and red & white stereo RCA cables from the DV player into the S-VHS VCR.

If you are editing the DV footage, that means it has been stripped from the DV codec already, trying to encode again to DV will be a lossy step, encode it to DVD is even a lossier step, What you want to do in this case is output into lossless AVI format without de-interlacing, cropping, resizing, just plain good old fashioned 4:2:2 AVI interlaced file, Although it wasn't 4:2:2 before the goal here is to avoid another lossy encode. Save this file as your master for VHS recording, Now you just have to find a media player that plays lossless AVI and has either SDI out or HDMI out that is compliant with rec.601 for 480i (576i) content ( I have few recommendations), Then using a SDI to Y-C (S-Video) or HDMI to Y-C adapter from BM, Aja or the likes of rec.601 compliant pro devices (not the chinese crap), Plenty of these online and very cheap, no one is looking for them.

Once you have the media player playing your AVI file, the digital to Y-C adapter is doing its thing, all you have to do is connect your VCR to the adapter using the same S-Video and RCA cables and record to tape, This is the best quality you can get and in most cases it is in par or surpasses the pre-recorded tapes quality done with multiple VCRs in low budget facilities.

[BrainRotTrash]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

Once you have the media player playing your AVI file, the digital to Y-C adapter is doing its thing, all you have to do is connect your VCR to the adapter using the same S-Video and RCA cables and record to tape, This is the best quality you can get and in most cases it is in par or surpasses the pre-recorded tapes quality done with multiple VCRs in low budget facilities.

Thank you all so much for the they helpful and detailed info on this. It will definitely help make deciding how to tackle this project easier for me.

In regards to burning a DVD or playing the file direct from a media player (I do have one, it's a Zidoo Z9X, which i hope would be ok?) -- If my final file IS DEinterlaced, will the act of burning a DVD or dubbing it to VHS RE-interlace the footage properly?

From reading your comment, I understand it would be preferred to have to film stay interlaced, but my project contained both progressive and interlaced footage with 32 and 48khz audio (to get multi-cam stuff to sync i had to make the audio the same rate and in the process I deinterlaced the footage I used to build my project...) So to make a long story short, I can't go back to the deinterlaced footage without rebuilding my project.

I'm learning while I go, so I probably did stuff wonky, but the end result seems ok to my eyes (and ears)

[aramkolt]

There is a free mac app called "Burn" that will convert and burn any video file to DVD. It'll also first convert the files to mpg beforehand so you can preview what the content looks like in MPEG2 without actually burning it first. The MPEG2 files are also quicktime friendly, so they are easy to view of you want to store those converted files as well. Bit rate can be changed in the settings. https://burn-osx.sourceforge.io/Pages/English/home.html

[latreche34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrainRotTrash

From reading your comment, I understand it would be preferred to have to film stay interlaced, but my project contained both progressive and interlaced footage with 32 and 48khz audio (to get multi-cam stuff to sync i had to make the audio the same rate and in the process I deinterlaced the footage I used to build my project...) So to make a long story short, I can't go back to the deinterlaced footage without rebuilding my project.

I'm learning while I go, so I probably did stuff wonky, but the end result seems ok to my eyes (and ears)

In that case I highly recommend avoid VHS and stick to DVD distribution, The end result won't look good on VHS especially if you are using a low end VCR. If you insist on using VHS for distribution, avoid MPEG-2 at all cost, use a more efficient modern codec and use CRF 0 for lossless if you don't mind the files size such as h.264 or h.265, there are other lossless codecs that support de-interlaced contents as well.