Yep, free is always worth trying. But from experience, it rarely works. Same for cheap items.

Given lack of frame TBC, and valid concerns over dropped frames, you really want the specific Pinnacle I have. It's a resilient card, more than ATI, more than GV-USB2, vastly more than Blackmagic. When you cut corners on TBCs, the capture card quality becomes even more important.

OK - cool, I'll give the HUFF codec another look. I tend to go over my content reasonably well before posting it, but perhaps things are slipping through I'm not noticing. For my vintage TV commercial YouTube channel, the results are probably above and beyond expectation. I got the HR-S2901U for $14 at a flea market - looked like it was a part of some boardroom VCR as Eaton corp, that hardly got used. That was an extremely rare find. I just don't like the audio from EP mode.

Thanks for all the insight and help. It's appreciated.

Oh and this one is on me for trusting the stupid AI answer results at the top of a quick google search before I bought it. I know better and still fell for garbage AI answers anyway.

The 5400 arrived today, by the way. Since it's slightly below freezing in Iowa, I'm going to just let it set overnight before I open it up tomorrow morning and check it out, just to let the VCR normalize temperature and avoid any condensation risk.

I'm optimistic, the box is large and good quality and it looks like there's probably at least 3-4" of padding around the VCR inside. Probably not double-boxed, but a little better than I'd expect from an average eBay seller.

-- merged --

This morning, I got the VCR unboxed and it's in great shape! Looks like new, operates perfectly on every function I've checked so far. No funny sounds, video problems or smells that I can tell, and the chassis is literally like new, not a single scratch or scuff on it which impressed me for a device that is ~32 years old. I tested a couple of throw-away tapes and I'm very happy with the results! I think this will work quite well for my needs.

Then I walked down to my local thrift shop and picked up a little 32" 1080p Samsung TV from 2018 for $22.50 that should make a semi-decent monitor for this secondary computer setup at my house for this project. (I know some of you will cringe pretty hard at that, this is not a video editing display by any means)

Cat Tax:
Attachment 20204

That looks like my Samsung!

Do you know how to set the inputs for PC? It makes a huge difference.

Select Source / highlight the HDMI input.
There should be a down arrow below the source at the top of the screen.
Press the down arrow on the remote.
Edit Device Type and choose DVI PC.

Thanks, I knew I was going to need to do that but not the exact menu sequence, so that's super helpful, thanks! This one didn't have a remote, but it's not so bad navigating the menus with the little joystick button on the TV itself.

Right now I just hooked it directly to the VCR with composite cables because I need to grab a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter dongle from the office before I can attach it to the computer tower.

Very nice! I'm glad the VCR is working well. That's half the battle. Good luck with your project!

Still waiting for the ES15 to arrive, as well as the breakout cable for the Intensity pro. Before sending the GV-USB2 back, I decided to do a quick test run on a secondary tape I didn't care much about, and honestly? I think if I used this for the whole project, I'd probably be happy. I think I like it enough to start this project with the S5400U>ES15>GV-USB2 as the hardware chain.

Here's a 2m 57s test clip I captured with virtualdub2 and deinterlaced with Hybrid.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2nFuAhLmJ3ExMrWR8

Are there any good main discussion threads for properly using Hybrid? I'm sure I made plenty of mistakes that would make you guys roll your eyes, but at a basic level, I did QTGMC slow, trimmed 8px off the bottom to get rid of the tracking noise line (sorry I'm blanking on the proper term), then added 8px back in to correct the resolution. Black levels are a very pushed in this scene but I did that intentionally in virtualdub because the play that follows this 3 minute behind the scenes intro had some really challenging dynamic range on the community theatre stage shot with a 1990s VHS camcorder. So I adjusted the histogram to that part which was the bulk of the tape.

Heck, is Hybrid even the recommended tool for a capture workflow like this? Or is there a simpler tool? The main things I care to do to the tapes are to deinterlace, crop, and encode to H264 with a CRF about 17 for the files I share around.

I think I have decided to hold onto the masters as FFV1. I don't have any plans to take them into Premier or anything, so I'd rather see the improved compression ratio while hanging onto the 480i masters.

Edit - I just recaptured and reprocessed it with Hybrid, and uploaded it to Google Drive this time instead of Google Photos, because I think I have storage saver turned on: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TNo...usp=drive_link

Edit2 - rewatching the new encode I still don't have the PAR right. I saw a YouTube video saying to set input PAR to 10 x 11 and output to 1x1, but it still seems to be coming out wider. If I set 4:3 in VLC then it snaps back tot he right aspect ratio.

Input par doesn't matter, at least I don't think it does. Output being 1x1 works if you resize the video to a 4:3 resolution.

Like 720x540 or 1440x1080

Also Google Drive link does not work, file is restricted.

Samsung monitors are pretty awful in terms of color accuracy, so be very wary about tweaking color on it. I'd suggest saving that task for something better, something that can calibrate. Samsung is often very contrasty, with overblack black levels. Just use it as capture preview, understanding the actual video may look much different.

Awesome. :laugh:

Back in 2015, I had to unspool a VHS tape, to repair another tape with the clamshell...

Attachment 20207

...and it quickly became something fun to play with... :laugh: :smack:

Attachment 20208

He's no longer with us, but this is one of my most fun memories with him. :angel:

Two concerns:
- How well did you examine for dropped frames, and audio sync issues? That will require a long sustained capture to showcase the problem, not quick test..
- Again, that Samsung monitor is almost certainly hiding color/contrast/darkness issues.

QTGMC tip: Slow blurs, as it's NR heavy. Faster can often be better. Slow or Medium only for videos with complex scenes that Faster chokes on. For example, wrestling matches, water skiing, race cars, marching bands. Lots of fine detail moving fast.

Again, that Samsung monitor will not be accurate. You'll calibrate your video to a monitor, rather than to any standard.

- Yes, Hybris is suggested.
- And Hybrid is the easiest tool. (Handbrake has a dumbed down interface, so some consider it "easier" at first glance. But it has lots of issues when it comes to handling interlaced video tapes. Handbrake was made for non-homemade DVD conversions, and it shows.)

- 720x480 capture file, master archive file
- deinterlace
- hard crop 16px total, making it 704x480. It must be 2px widths, but that can be 8+8, 12+4, 14+2, or 16+0, etc.
- resize 704x480 to either 640x480 or 720x540 for 4:3 viewing ---- or 1280x960 for YouTube as pre-process step. This is where GAN upscale matters in Hybrid. Resize/pad from there to the final 1920x1080 compressed 16:9 streaming file.

You seem to be doing fine.
- better card would help a % for quality and continuity
- don't calibrate to a monitor
- be mindful of deinterlace and resize settings

Video captures can easily be done vastly worse.

EDIT: I do see visual quality concerns from the attached clips. But I'd need to see more, longer, and bigger, for more analysis. Again, better card + monitor + be mindful of settings.

Woops, my bad, I changed permissions to "anyone with link".

Oh I definitely understand that, but that should be irrelevant if I'm going by the vdbub histogram, correct?

Attachment 20209

On that capture I was adjusting the video proc amp settings to just pull back some of the blown highlights that were very prominent throughout this tape of a community theatre play down into acceptable range. Looking at the footage again I shouldn't have pushed the blacks so much though.

Since my family home movies are going to be a vast array of scenes across a tape, I doubt I'll use this much in that scenario, unless there are some recommended defaults that apply across the board to make the capture safer or something.

duly noted, thanks. Is "Fast" better than "Faster" or is "Faster" truly the one I want to stay with?

I re-ran one test clip with 720x540 and that definitely fixed it. Another way I found that seems to work is to leave 720x480 as the target resolution, but add --sar 8:9 which gives the file the right flag for VLC to play it back properly. But I presume the former is preferred due to the variety of playback scenarios the file may encounter, some of which might not honor the flag?

Just want to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly. I still have a decent bit of tinkering and testing to do before I decide I'm ready to start capturing the real tapes.

Correct, H.264 flagging is rarely obeyed. It's mostly just MPEG-2 where flags get any proper attention.

If you open the QTGMC.avsi, you can see exactly what each mode does.
Hint: Look at the column names, not the rows.

You may want to crop the borders while adjusting the contrast/brightness since non-representative areas of the frame like the head switch noise on the bottom tend to force the waveform to spike at either end (measuring at Y=0 or 255) where it should really taper off before then. Useful if for no other reason than to get a better look at what the levels really are. (Don't forget to undo the crop before capturing.)

If you're going straight to delivery after capture, you'll want to make sure nothing's in the red.

Would you be willing to glance through my virtualdub2 settings and see if anything stands out as horrifically wrong before I lock these in as my capture settings? Any other areas I should check?

You'll note in the screenshot I'm using FFV1 at the moment. I think I lean slightly toward the more efficient compression of FFV1 since I'm not planning to ever pull these into Premier, but I'm still weighing it against HuffYUV.

One thing that's kind of annoying with my GV-USB2 is that whenever I re-open virtualdub2 it defaults the Capture Pin framerate to 59.94 when I want 29.97 and I have to change it every time. Besides that, it seems like most of my other settings "stick".

The FFVI is a modern codec with better a compression ratio than HUFF and enjoys current attention from developers. HUFF is more interoperable with editors and media players because it's been around a very long time. Bottom line is that I'm sure you can find online pros & cons to help you decide which suits your needs. I capture FFV1, then deinterlace with QTGMC to H.265 since my system can process it with hardware at over 100 FPS and YouTube accepts it the codec - which is my typical delivery mechanism. You needs may vary.

Note: I see you're capturing at 10 bit. This will increase the size of your files but it might help QTGMC in post - depending on the source quality. Most likely 10-bit is overkill for your final MP4/MOV delivery files. VHS itself doesn't carry that much color information.

Yes, the VirtualDub Capture Pin will need to be set every time you start VirtualDub. This is not unique to the GV-USB2 - it's what VirtualDub does. 720x480 @ 29.97 FPS is the correct setting. It will stick as long as you keep VirtualDub open and don't re-open the Capture Pin dialog. But every time you re-open the capture pin dialogue, it resets to its best guess again. Just set it again and leave it alone.

As I'm doing more reading, I'm thinking I won't miss anything as far as quality by capturing 8 bit masters. Thanks for pointing that out.

Now, I'm capturing 92.97 in Virtualdub, but when I do QTGMC I've got bob selected, so the output framerate for my H.264 playback files is 59.94fps. Is that generally recommended? I noticed the video looked a lot smoother but almost had a "soap opera effect" to it that I wasn't sure I loved. I want to capture as much as possible from the tapes and not leave any fields on the floor if I can help it.

The 29.97 at capture is because VirtualDub recognizes the difference between Frames (two full interlace scans of video), and Fields (a field being one single scan from top to bottom, which only populates every other horizontal line of the screen). It takes two full scans of teh odd and even fields to properly fill the screen, thus creating a Frame. This *is* the correct setting for capturing in VirtualDub. Even your computer will declare the properties of the captured file to be 29.97 FPS - which is techinically (but not visually) true.

What QTGMC is doing is taking both sets of Fields to form one "Frame" of progressive scan, deinterlaced video. So from frame #1, the odd (top) and even (bottom) fields and magically blended together to form a single progressive frame of video. BUT then... it takes the even fields from frame #1 (the set that comes second in time in that frame) and combines them with the odd fields in frame #2 (which come later in time than the even fields of frame #1) to form a completely new frame of video that sits between the original Frame #1 and #2. This process is repeated over and over, thus double the frame rate. It makes 29.97 FPS (which is really 59.94 fields per second) video into 59.94 FPS progressive scan video - which is correct and what you want if you want the final product to "move" like NTSC does.

BTW - if you ever capture DV over FireWire, the bottom fields are first (BFF) instead of top fields first (TFF).