Is the ClearClick good or bad?
 

I bought one of these on Amazon a week ago and am digitizing some tapes. It seems to not be tricked by Macrovision protection, and also has a screen to show the preview of the capture.

But I'm wondering if lordsmurf thinks they're good? I read some of his posts here, and he seems to be very choosy as to what he approves or not as to capturing.

Either way, is there any terrible drawbacks I should be aware of? I like the device, however I do hope it isn't making low quality copies of my VHS tape

They aren't good because you're capturing your tapes straight to mp4 with automatic deinterlacing applied.

Basically turning your tapes into compressed mush with additional quality loss and problems caused by deinterlacing on the fly, along with other issues.

Thanks for the fast response. I would like lordsmurf's opinion on the matter as well.

I created another post asking about the Panasonic Blu-Ray VCR - is MPEG2 definitely preferable for VHS tapes so you can easily deinterlace?

Interlaced MPEG2 (DVD recorder) is generally preferred over direct to MP4 as long as the bitrate is on the higher end of 8Mbit/s. You can then choose to deinterlace or not. Some viewers do pretty good realtime deinterlacing for MPEG2. Keep in mind that most standalone MP4 devices also do some cropping of the outside of the frame on all sides. Some also have rather crappy audio bitrates.

DVD recorder method likely won't work on macrovision content though unless you have something like a frame TBC or video stabilizer that removes it. Most macrovision content will have had newer releases than VHS, so macrovision usually isn't a big consideration for those transferring home movies since it'll just be absent from those.

This is a short test capture done with a DVD recorder from an S-Video input from a regular SP VHS tape and SVHS VCR. That tape didn't have macrovision, but maybe this will give you an idea of what quality to expect with that method.

Might as well post a short capture from your device just to give a reference of what the results look like to those that do a lot of capturing.

These standalone devices also capture the video as 720x480 but without the proper aspect ratio flag set in the file's metadata, so it plays as square-pixel video and ends up horizontally stretched.

Some standalone boxes do capture as a upscaled/deinterlaced 1080p60 with the appropriate pillarboxing for 4:3 in a 16:9 frame such as the Cloner Alliance Box Pro. I think the reason they default to pillarboxing is so that the aspect ratio will always be correct on an HD display which are all natively widescreen.

You absolutely will get better non-realitime deinterlacing and scaling by capturing interlaced with additional steps using a recommended workflow.

Compared to the sort of "standard" elgato video capture (which is around 3Mbit/s at 640x480p~30), you'll get an obvious performance boost with the Cloner Alliance Box Pro which is around 18Mbit/s and upscales/deinterlaces to 1080p60 with much higher quality audio as well. MPEG2 capture from a DVD recorder is probably better yet, but then may require the additional deinterlacing and processing steps depending on your use case.

I'd rank them like this:

Elgato video capture < most current standalone capture boxes which capture at 720x480p30 < Cloner Alliance Box Pro (CABP) < CABP fed by scaling DVD recorder (which accepts S-Video and doesn't crop the frame) < MPEG2 capture (interlaced 480i) with DVD recorder or MPEG2 capture card (requires further processing to deinterlace/scale) < Traditional S-Video capture setup with frame and line TBC (requires further processing to deinterlace/scale)

This is not a recommendation for the Cloner Alliance Box Pro, it's just "less bad" than most of the others if you "must" use currently available hardware from Amazon. It's unfortunate that it doesn't have S-Video input though. The hybrid device that is similar but does have S-Video input and still records at 60fps deinterlaced is the Portta VD20P, but I don't have one of those to test against the CABP to say what the differences actually are. I need to be one of those youtubers that get free stuff for reviewing haha.

How about just saving it to a file?

You can use ffmpeg to fix the aspect ratio without re-encoding the video, but it's a hassle.

Like this:

I guess I already saved it to a file, it's saying it's in the Movies folder.

Why is ffmpeg a hassle? I know how to use it, but I was unaware the clearclick saves it with 16:9

ClearClick earned the nickname ClickCrap. :laugh:

It's not good. It's not even mediocre. It's literally awful, not too different from Easycap/Elgato junk.

This is why I have capture cards available in the marketplace. Some of the best cards that exist, pricing is reasonable. You'll spend about the same, or more, for worse cards that are "sold new on Amazon". Don't do that to yourself.

I want to see people capturing, not fighting junk hardware. :)