VHS PAL to digital capture recommendations
 

Newbie here. Sorry...

Been trying to read through all the great posts but there's a lot of information and I wanted to get some advice.

I want to convert all my PAL VHS tapes to digital.

I am working on tracking down a listed VCR but trying to figure out what capture card I need.

I see a lot of recommendations for the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB but can't figure out where to buy one.

Is that still the best for PAL VHS capture? What is the next best?

Some people have recommended Diamond VC500 or Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle USB 3.0 to me. How do these rank?

I want to make sure I am buying the correct bits for an ideal setup as I track down bits and pieces of what I need.

The Intensity Shuttle drops frames really easily. https://youtu.be/VZY_gtp9Rak?si=86Z3ZaZNfLC9HrfB. The Shuttle drops frames without reporting it https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1652812. It’s just not a good card for this.

The VC 500 has AGC issues but also it might actually perform like an easycap. Some of the VC500s have the chips of an Easycap which is an awful card.

Video99.uk does his PAL captures with DV converters which is 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. It's pretty foolproof and you are unlikely to have audio sync issues, but does require a computer with firewire. The hardware DV converters tend to have line-TBC-like activity all on their own. Lossless 4:2:2 is better, but the tradeoff is that it'll usually require a line TBC at a minimum and ideally also a frame TBC. Properly stabilized video can be captured with an intensity shuttle as long as it is used with a good frame TBC, but that's a lot to risk and finding one can be difficult.

For currently available devices, some users really like the Hauppage USB-Live2 or the IOData GV-USB2, though some users will tell you they are inferior. They still need to be used with a line TBC in most cases either in the playback VCR or using certain DVD recorders as a passthrough device.

If it was me and I had a computer with firewire, the DV method is inexpensive enough to try and see if the result is satisfactory before getting more advanced. Some Digital8 and DV camcorders can also do the conversion and if you happen to have access to one, you might be able use that without any initial cost to try it out. DV files will still will take up 13GB per hour or so, though lossless can be about 3x that size, so keep that in mind as well. Either option requires deinterlacing in software later if you plan to post to somewhere like YouTube.

Sure, lossless is superior if done correctly, but DV is much more user-friendly and more cost effective.

You've mixed up concepts.

TBC has nothing to do with DV.

DV boxes, computer capture cards, capture appliances, DVD recorders, and some others, are simply ingest devices. Nothing to do with TBC, or causing/preventing audio sync.

Using any of these ingest devices does not remove/preclude/eliminate the need for TBCs on consumer analog videotape formats. Not DV, not DVD recorders, not SDI appliances, none of it.

100% fully separate topics.