Transferring old home videos, looking for some expert guidance

[admin]

AVerMedia has never been a high quality capture card manufacturer for this very reason. There are issues spanning many cards across this past decade. Given the history of products from that company, none of this really surprises me.

Indeed, using a better card is a good next step.

Another option would be the drivers for the motherboard, which control IDE and/or SATA. I don't think this is the problem, but it worth an attempt before you resort to removing/replacing the AVer card. Give that a try.

[NJRoadfan]

Fixed the problem in a very odd way. I put the machine to S3 sleep. Wake the computer and surprise the card works fine. Its definitely a buggy driver. It seems that when you boot the machine the driver doesn't initialize the card correctly, but when one resumes from sleep, it does. I don't know if is my combination of hardware, but either way its a buggy driver.

I did manage to re-capture that promo video using the JVC and TBC, came out a bit nicer (I have embedding disabled):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxC6PytZMqc

One noticeable difference is the color. The Matrox Marvel on the default settings seems to have had the brightness and contrast settings jacked up, washing out the colors. The new card is better, but I'm sure could use some tweaking.

[admin]

Yep, that new encode looks really good.
While I do see some potential for improvements, the limitations of H.264 and YouTube would mostly counteract it.

[NJRoadfan]

Did a 2 hour capture session with one of my tapes last night. Zero problems with the capture card or audio sync. I'm pleased to say, this tape held up well after 20 years. Lets hope the others are just as good. I just have to pull out the Beta machine and make sure its running well for that one tape. Now I get to sit through hours of home movies....

[NJRoadfan]

Did the Betamax tape today. TBC was a big help on that one. It played well but the tape had a flaw where a horizontal line formed about 1/4 up the screen for most of the tape. The backup VHS copy had it too, so it rules out the VCR. Good thing I got the Beta copy transferred, the VHS backup with EP and didn't look so hot. Also I think the Beta VCR either overheated or crapped out, because it isn't playing tapes anymore... thankfully it it went on the fritz right after capturing the whole tape!

I will attempt another capture with a borrowed Sony Betamax, but at least I have a good copy to work with. Its going to be fun restoring it. All the video was shot with an original BetaMovie BMC-110K. The camera lacked auto focus, was tube based, and had manual white balance, so some of the color is pretty off.

[kpmedia]

You can always correct white balance in software, either with a modern version of Premiere (CS4 works well), or with ColorMill in VirtualDub. I've used both of those for professional restore projects, and neither one disappoints. There's also a special white balance (WB) filter available for VirtualDub. I believe it's part of the "with filters" download available on this forum. I've used it with some success, although I'm a bit more "hands on" and prefer manual corrections. The WB filter is more automated, and based on sample images that is user-selected. I would note that it may crash on certain CPUs, so save your VCF (filter settings file) before trying to add it!

[NJRoadfan]

That White Balance filter keeps crashing on my machine, along with a slew of other VirtualDub filters. I'm running an Intel Core2Duo E8400 with Windows 7 x64. I can't seem to find any info on what CPUs are causing this problem or why.

[NJRoadfan]

Finally, all the tapes have been digitized. Next step will be to separate and arrange the segments for each disc and then move on to compression. First I have to go out and buy another 1TB drive to work on all this video with. Expect more questions in the future on that, looks like I will be going with the highest bitrate possible (1hr max per disc) and will be utilizing TMPGEnc for encoding since the price is right.

I also borrowed another Beta machine to re-capture that tape... came out ALOT better. I think the heads on my machine are worn out and basically shot, so I splurged on ebay and got a high end Sony machine for a good price if I somehow manage to obtain the other tapes my uncle made. Hopefully its in good working order. Sadly there are no Betamax machines with advanced filters like the JVC SVHS units, and only the rare ED-Beta and SL-HF2100 units have S-video output.

[NJRoadfan]

Just a quick update. Capturing is pretty much done, I'm currently logging and sorting all the clips for placement onto DVDs. I also bought a 1TB drive to move all the video to as I needed the space.

The highend Sony Betamax from ebay came. I popped the home movies in and... well, looks like I might just have to capture that tape again... it looks that much better in the Sony. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though... I have logged 20+ hours of home movies according to my spreadsheet!

[lordsmurf]

Premiere CS4-CS5 can do white balance, too. Not sure about the earlier versions. Premiere's come a long way in the ability to filter and restore video in the past 3-4 years.

No surprise here, on the Sony high-end Betamax deck providing better quality. What surprised me more is that it actually works well. A lot of those best decks have been abused and are in rather poor shape from what I've heard (from reliable sources, not just online gibberish in random places). Did you get a good deal on it? Curious what you had to pay for a good deck. And if you ever decide to sell it, put in the Marketplace forum here, don't bother with eBay or craigslist unless you like to give kooks like former CEO Meg Whitman a paycheck.

FYI, the Sony decks don't really need filters as much as VHS does -- differences in how the formats record. Not that Beta was better than VHS, just different. Both have major weaknesses.

Even if I captured a tape a day, I'd probably finish my capturing in 2013. Ugh.

[NJRoadfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

No surprise here, on the Sony high-end Betamax deck providing better quality. What surprised me more is that it actually works well. A lot of those best decks have been abused and are in rather poor shape from what I've heard (from reliable sources, not just online gibberish in random places). Did you get a good deal on it? Curious what you had to pay for a good deck. And if you ever decide to sell it, put in the Marketplace forum here, don't bother with eBay or craigslist unless you like to give kooks like former CEO Meg Whitman a paycheck.

FYI, the Sony decks don't really need filters as much as VHS does -- differences in how the formats record. Not that Beta was better than VHS, just different. Both have major weaknesses.

I picked up a SL-HF860D, which was Sony's top model for 1988 for $180.. I chalk it up to dumb luck. They seem to go for $200-300 in working condition for the more common models, the exotics like the SL-HF1000,SL-HF2100, and ED Betas can hit $1000. I should do a write up on which units play what. The unit I got is in mint condition and all tape transport functions work perfectly. Sony Betamax VCRs are generally built like tanks, and are of high quality. This particular model listed for $1000 in 1988. I was trying to get a 870D, which adds a Faroudja frame stabilizer (a similar unit is found on all ED Beta decks, likely not a full TBD), but this will do for now.

I am quite impressed with the trick play and digital gimmicks this unit has. It does perfect pause and slo-mo using a digital frame buffer, something my JVC can't do (the dynamic drum models might). It also does silly effects like zoom, mosaic, and solarize. When the digital effects are active, it does regenerate the sync signal of the outgoing video, I'm guessing the 870D just outputs from its digital frame buffer full time.

[NJRoadfan]

Correction, the SL-HF870D has a tape stablizer on the transport, nothing electronic. I found some of my "bad advice" that I had posted up back in 2002 that I never finished.

http://web.archive.org/web/200411081...v/vcdhowto.htm

Doing a quick back link search on Google, apparently a few people actually followed this advice back in the day and got decent results.

[kpmedia]

Well, in your defense, it's mostly decent information:

• Good JVC S-VHS VCR
• HuffYUV codec
• VirtualDub and Premiere
• s-video
• 352x480 as a viable option
• A suggestion for a good capture cards (although you stray into some bad advice with the "any" card comment -- quite a few cards were absolute garbage at the time)
• 29.997 should have been 29.97 fps for NTSC
• VHS tape actually has a lifespan of about 30-65 years, including standard indoor temp-regulated environmental conditions. Only harsh non-home/office conditions lessen it. For example, basement, attic or garage storage.

So I can see how results might be decent.

The unaddressed issue, of course, is how to make it VCD standard, by proper deinterlace and down-resolution to 352x240. Back then, deinterlacers were awful, even with professional hardware. And then the 1.15Mb/s bandwidth of VCD led to blocky video. So it's probably best the guide stopped there, anyway!

Back in 2002 is when the original ATI All In Wonder guides went live on a previous incarnation of this site. That seems like a lifetime ago, to be honest. What's more impressive is those guides still get traffic for both conceptual information on capturing, and ATI-specific information. They've been updated a few times, but more are forthcoming.

[NJRoadfan]

Video is all compressed... thank goodness for batch processing. Although I think I made very good use of TMPGEnc's 15 day free trial.

[NJRoadfan]

Just created a test DVD playing around with TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 trial. Wow... looks great on the DVD player. I also confirmed Princo stinks, I tried doing a test burn on one of those blanks, and my set top DVD player barfed at playing it back. The 16X Memorex branded Ritek +R blank I used the 2nd time worked much better.... saving the Verbatims for the final copies.

[NJRoadfan]

Well the project is done and turned out to be a success. My DVD cover art was minimal (due to time constants) but effective. I landed up having to create my own templates in Microsoft Publisher since there weren't any built in or easily found on the internet.

Meanwhile word got out and I now have a few more tapes to transfer to DVD (some are VHS-C but thats for another post). I am also working on trying to obtain a bunch of Beta and 8mm tapes from family members that we aren't on speaking terms with right now... that might just be the hardest part of the project yet!

[admin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NJRoadfan

I landed up having to create my own templates in Microsoft Publisher since there weren't any built in or easily found on the internet.

Most DVD case artwork is designed in something like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. I've used all three of those for artwork, but my preference is to Photoshop because it's just easier and quicker to use. That's why you don't really see anything available for Publisher, which is essentially an extremely crippled clone of Aldus PageMaker from the early 1990s.

Photoshop DVD case templates are in this forum. // See http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...twork-430.html
And then there are a pair of guides that briefly discuss artwork creation.
You'll find both of those at the above link, too.

[jmac698]

Btw, you asked about calibration. No need to buy a disc, in fact I recommend to stay away from Video Essentials. They do *not* have good quality test videos. The colorbars built into AviSynth are correct, in fact I added that feature myself It's been carefully checked to standards.