Low-quality vs. high-quality VHS transfers?

[adaptrhombus]

Hey, long time lurker of this forum here, first time poster.

I lowkey don't understand how y'all boomers (no disrespect) are constantly arguing over the "most perfect" method for converting video. There just isn't one because different people have different needs, and no one seems to understand that lol.

You are both right and wrong, but from what I've seen, the scope of this forum is for the pros of the pros.

Lordsmurf and (IIRC) VWestlife had careers in professional video, and so they seek out the absolute, absolute, absolute highest quality video.

That's why they and other members here constantly discuss things like TBCs, comb filters, deinterlacing algorithms, etc. That's the most technical of technical things.

However, it's just not that deep for the average consumer, all they want is something that works. A crappy VCR that puts out a decent image? Whether it's a JVC, Toshiba, Symphonic, Funai, whatever brand, they don't care.

And for 95% of people, that's fine. There's a reason why "professional" video conversion services like Legacybox are so popular. The average Joe just wants their home videos, and as long as they have something, they don't care how bad it is.

That's not to say I don't believe a good quality video is important. I'd love to integrate a TBC in my workflow if I had the means for it.

This is exactly what BitcrushdBuzzLightyear was mentioning when showing their Easycrap-converted video to their friends. At the end of the day, if there's a picture, that's all that people really care about. No one gives a damn about luminance and chroma or whether S-Video is important.

[Aya_Rei]

Yeah I've done this for others, most people care about seeing the contents of their old tapes. Could be their wedding, children, whatever being digitized and preserved. They wouldn't know a thing about quality.

Remember doing a wedding for a good friend of my Father, the bride loved it and was "just surprised I could even have got it to play successfully"

This should not be an excuse to give them poor quality results btw.

The only person I've talked to so far who was impressed with the quality of my capture, and not the content itself, was a former wedding videographer who dealt with editing S-VHS footage back in the day. So you know, he should be experienced with how VHS looked like back in the day.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adaptrhombus

Hey, long time lurker of this forum here.

Welcome.

Quote:

I lowkey don't understand how y'all boomers (no disrespect) are constantly arguing over the "most perfect" method for converting video. There just isn't one because different people have different needs, and no one seems to understand that lol.

The debate on "best" was settled years ago.

It's a basic recipe:
- budget end = quality VCR > some form of TBC is required (ES10/15 passthrough at minimum) > quality capture card
- better hobby/pro = JVC/Panasonic S-VHS VCR with line TBC > frame TBC > quality capture card

Easy.

Any further debates tend to be nuance on which exact card, which VCR, which TBC.

Quote:

You are both right and wrong, but from what I've seen, the scope of this forum is for the pros of the pros.
Lordsmurf and (IIRC) VWestlife had careers in professional video, and so they seek out the absolute, absolute, absolute highest quality video.
That's why they and other members here constantly discuss things like TBCs, comb filters, deinterlacing algorithms, etc. That's the most technical of technical things.

I don't think vwestlife had a video career. (He can correct me if needed.)

I've written extensively about my "accidental" career in video. I was a pure hobbyist in the 90s (cartoon/TV collector), and the quality of my work eventually saw me employed by studios (before health forced me to quit). If not for health, I'd probably still be in that industry. I was just in the right place, at the right time.

It's never been about "best of the best", but rather "not making it worse" by using junk gear. That's really all video is about, at the capture/ingest level. I don't go crazy over Avisynth filtering, color grading in DaVinci, etc. There were parts of my studio days that I detested, and I'm not (for example) a "container purist". Nor a codec purist, outside of logistics needs.

Quote:

However, it's just not that deep for the average consumer, all they want is something that works. A crappy VCR that puts out a decent image? Whether it's a JVC, Toshiba, Symphonic, Funai, whatever brand, they don't care.
And for 95% of people, that's fine. There's a reason why "professional" video conversion services like Legacybox are so popular. The average Joe just wants their home videos, and as long as they have something, they don't care how bad it is.

A lot of people just don't know any better, until educated. (Of course, some refuse to be educated. Just look at modern politics! Some people actually relish in their own ignorance!)

Quote:

That's not to say I don't believe a good quality video is important. I'd love to integrate a TBC in my workflow if I had the means for it.

Start with the basics. At minimum, get an ES10 or ES15 into the workflow. Started somewhere, improve as you can, as you need.

Quote:

This is exactly what BitcrushdBuzzLightyear was mentioning when showing their Easycrap-converted video to their friends. At the end of the day, if there's a picture, that's all that people really care about. No one gives a damn about luminance and chroma or whether S-Video is important.

Sometimes people are just disingenuously nice.
"Wow, what a nice thing you did!"
But in their head: "That looks terrible, but I don't want to hurt his feeling."

I've run into that countless times over the years. For example, I remember "My son converted these, but I didn't have the heart to tell him they didn't look good." So she lied to him, said they got erased, and said she decided to get them done by a service to "save him the time of doing them again". Whatever. She loved the new conversions, "Those look so much better, thank you!" All because she didn't want to hurt junior's feeling (he was in his 20s ).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aya_Rei

This should not be an excuse to give them poor quality results btw.

That's it exactly. We know better. We want others to know better too!

Companies like LegacyBox rip people off with bad quality, rejected tapes, etc, simply because their consumer base is not well-versed in how VHS should look. They really take advantage of lack of knowledge. But that's true of most everything in the world. "The more you know!"

[adaptrhombus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aya_Rei

This should not be an excuse to give them poor quality results btw.

Yeah I agree 100% with you on that. The thing is, the popular misconception with any sort of old video equipment is that everything looks bad.

We all know old video formats like VHS or Betamax don't have to look terrible, it's just that most people think it looks bad.

At the end of the day, 95% of people have low to no expectations for old video, which is why they usually don't care about the quality at all. Only the pros can recognize the pros among us

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adaptrhombus

Yeah I agree 100% with you on that. The thing is, the popular misconception with any sort of old video equipment is that everything looks bad.
We all know old video formats like VHS or Betamax don't have to look terrible, it's just that most people think it looks bad.
At the end of the day, 95% of people have low to no expectations for old video, which is why they usually don't care about the quality at all. Only the pros can recognize the pros among us

We educate others. That's all we can do.

If I can make that 95% become 94%, then I did my job.

As I often write, when a person has never had a steak (or brisket), they have no idea how good beef can get. Sadly, many people never know anything other than a fast-food hamburger. To even call that junk beef is stretch.

[adaptrhombus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Welcome.
The debate on "best" was settled years ago.
It's a basic recipe:
- budget end = quality VCR > some form of TBC is required (ES10/15 passthrough at minimum) > quality capture card
- better hobby/pro = JVC/Panasonic S-VHS VCR with line TBC > frame TBC > quality capture card
Easy.
Any further debates tend to be nuance on which exact card, which VCR, which TBC.

Thanks!

Perhaps I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but even the budget workflow suggested is already kind of too complicated (and expensive) for the average person. Outside of this forum, I doubt anyone knows what an ES10/15 is, let alone what it can do.

This reminds me of that one "controversy(?)" Technology Connections had when he was suggesting to use what seemed like an Easycrap for recording VHS cassettes. The comments were absolutely bashing him for not doing it the preferred way, but he had a point in that casual people who wanted a digital version of their tapes wouldn't want to go through the entire rabbithole in legacy video. Sure, the quality was mediocre at best, but it was straightforward and not too expensive. The DMR-ES10/15 alone starts at over $100 (USD) on eBay, before factoring in a capture card and VCR, and most people (including myself) just aren't willing to spend that kind of money to transfer a few home videos.

Quote:

Start with the basics. At minimum, get an ES10 or ES15 into the workflow. Started somewhere, improve as you can, as you need.

Ngl the current available prices for those are nuts. I get that some people are willing to spend more than others on hobbies, but for most consumers, they don't see converting video as a hobby, rather, more as a chore that has to get done before "your family videos will forever rot away ." My own workflow consists of a Sony VCR and... a DVD recorder. Yes, the MPEG-2 compression sucks, and the colors are kind of washed out, but for the price of free, I can't really complain. I use this workflow mainly for digitizing videos I record at my high school, and the results are decent (though obviously not anywhere near professional, time to play the waiting game for prices to go down lol). That's the same mindset most consumers likely have. They'd prefer to use equipment/gear they already have, and if it does the job, that's the end of that for them.

Quote:

A lot of people just don't know any better, until educated. (Of course, some refuse to be educated. Just look at modern politics! Some people actually relish in their own ignorance!)

Lol this is another thing too. I assume most people don't want to spend the time doing proper research and learning the ins and outs, and it's a real shame. I did the research, so at least that makes me a little less bad, right?

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adaptrhombus

Perhaps I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but even the budget workflow suggested is already kind of too complicated

- VCR, turn on
- DMR-ES10 or ES15, turn on
- USB capture card into computer, install VirtualDub software
- connect audio and video cables from VCR to ES10/15 to capture card

If confused, read, ask questions.
Video capture isn't a natural skill. Even pooping in a toilet isn't a natural skill, you must learn it.

Quote:

The comments were absolutely bashing him for not doing it the preferred way, but he had a point in that casual people who wanted a digital version of their tapes wouldn't want to go through the entire rabbithole in legacy video. Sure, the quality was mediocre at best, but it was straightforward

That method was not only worse, but more complex than what I wrote above. He deserved to have be criticized for his ignorant method, especially because he gave out bogus info on how video works.

Quote:

Ngl the current available prices for those are nuts.
The DMR-ES10/15 alone starts at over $100 (USD) on eBay, before factoring in a capture card and VCR, and most people (including myself) just aren't willing to spend that kind of money to transfer a few home videos.

The price for ES15 is ~$100, sometimes less. That's not expensive by any means. Honestly, if $100 is expensive, you have bigger issues to worry about. Video is something I suggest you not do at this time. Get finances and/or employment settled first.

However, if this is a regional issue (non-USA, like eastern Europe, etc), where income is low, then I feel for you. However, you'll have options in your locale, in your affordability range. I know those exist, because this site is worldwide, and this topic has come up for 20+ years now, since the earliest days of the site.

[vwestlife]

1. I have never had a career in video.
2. Technology Connections recommended using a cheap analog-to-HDMI converter and an HDMI capture card. I've tried that method myself, and it does do de-interlacing to 50/60fps and upscaling to HD for you, saving the need to do so in software post-capture, but detail in the dark parts of the image are lost (which he acknowledged) and it stretches out everything to widescreen (which he acknowledged).
Cheap composite video to HDMI converter - Is it really THAT bad?

Note that people in the comments told me the one I reviewed is an "older, better" model, and modern equivalents of it look identical but contain a worse-performing chipset inside.

[KirVHS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

some form of TBC is required (ES10/15 passthrough at minimum) >

Wanted to ask... ES18 is same as ES10/15?

-- merged --

Most of Russian people buying some shit cards because they doesnt know anything about Ebay or anything.
In Avito (Place where u could sell ur useless things in the internet) i saw more than 10 AVerMedia (NOT EVEN VOLAR HX/AX) and bc of this i switched from AVer to Dazzle (Bc in some moments Aver have a color shift (this is when i should get one color but u get green or anything like this)), then learned how to use AmaRec and getting personaly a pretty solid result (If u wanted to see what is going on i would attach a link in those videos that i was digitized with Aver media note this is will be an Eternal Pain)