Transferring old home videos, looking for some expert guidance
 

I'm looking to transfer all of the family's home movies from VHS and Betamax (well one actually) to DVD for future preservation. We did all the old 8mm film movies last year, so its time to do the videos. Source tapes for this project are all going to be SP speed VHS and BII Betamax. Below is my equipment setup:

VCRS: The Betamax unit is going to be an old 2 head Sanyo, I'm kind of limited here, but I might be able to borrow a higher end Sony SuperBeta Hi-Fi if needed. For the VHS tapes, I own a JVC HR-S7800U SVHS deck that I purchased this back in 2000 thinking I was going to be working with SVHS tapes frequently, but never did. It saw very little use as a result. In hindsight, this was a good purchase as such units are no longer made.

Capture Card: I'm using an AVermedia HD DVR PCIe 1X card. No frills uncompressed capture card with composite, S-video, component (YCbCr) and HDMI input that supports DirectShow capture with VirtualDub. The only issue I have with this card is that its EXTREMELY sensitive to sync errors and dropouts on VHS tapes. It won't even lock onto the blue screen generated by the JVC and its onscreen menus :eek:. My old Matrox Marvel G400-TV and ATI All-in-Wonder (the original 1997 one with bt829 chipset) never had these problems. Which leads me to...

Time-Base Corrector: I picked up a Sony MPU-F100A full frame TBC/stabilizer off of ebay for cheap ($33). It seems to fix my audio sync and dropped frame issues on capture with the HD DVR. (I can also view the JVC's on screen menus) It also has basic proc amp controls and can transcode between RGB, component, S-Video, and composite (not like it matters with this project).

Now for my questions:

What settings are optimal on the JVC VCRs for this project?
I have all of the advanced controls on this JVC but only 2Mbit Digipure and no dynamic drum (menu settings include Digital R3, video calibration, etc.). Which work best with SP speed home videos?

What resolution should I capture at?
I get conflicting answers on this. Most people say stick with 352x240 since VHS is low-res. Others say to capture at 704/720x480 because it correctly captures both fields of interlaced video. FWIW, I will be capturing lossless using the Lagarith codec and have the hard drive space. Final video is going to be MPEG-2 for DVD burning.

Is the TBC I purchased suitable for this project?
I have read that old professional TBCs aren't always suited for these projects. The only TBCs I have used in the past in a "pro" environment were a Digital Creations Kitchen Sync in a Video Toaster (similar to the Sony in function and age) and whatever Panasonic used in their AG-DS555/545 VTRs (very fancy, had dropout compensation). The only concern I had with the Sony was that the color space in the specs is listed as 4:1:1 vs. the common 4:2:2, is this really an issue with VHS tapes (which already have limited chroma resolution)? This unit was originally designed for Betacam SP applications, I would be surprised if it reduced color quality. Also I have read that this unit tends to produce "hot" video output, that is with black above 7.5 IRE. It also seems to "cool" off the color saturation of some of my videos (mostly the ones done at my HS TV studio with incorrect lighting) with the proc amp controls set to the default/preset position. Which leads to my next question.

Do I need to calibrate my equipment?
That is, use a vectorscope, etc. (software versions anyway, hardware is a bit pricey) and SMPTE color bars and ensure my equipment chain is producing the correct color and black levels. If so, does anyone have VOB files of the NTSC color bars I can burn to DVD and play back on my DVD player for reference? I don't trust JPEG copies and would rather have it in a native video format ready to burn.

Thats all for now. If I have more questions, I'll add them to the thread.

Disclamer: I have worked in a "pro" studio in high school TV class with equipment ranging from the late 80s to the late 90s. Terms like TBC, genlock, etc. don't scare me. Feel free to use them in this thread.

I'll take a stab at offering my 2 cents on the VHS aspects of the project.

What VCR settings are optimal?

Generally speaking, you want the TBC on, the calibration off, the stabilizer off (if that model even has it), R3 off, and the picture mode set to NORM.

If you have issues with picture tearing or jitter, drop the TBC and see what you think. If the picture has waviness in it or top screen tearing, you'll want to pick up a Panasonic ES-10 which, in most cases, will clear that up. That's the cheapest option, otherwise you'd be looking at another VCR to deal with tapes that jitter in your JVC deck.

You pretty much never want to use the calibration and the stabilizer is often hit or miss and can cause it's own problems. If you need to use the stabilizer, make some test clips for each tape and compare if you run into problems.

R3 enhancement is a matter of taste -- there are better ways to add sharpness to the picture, but it does an okay job sometimes, once again test it out and see what you think.

I think the look of "sharp" gives the video a plastic look, so I never use it. Soft is great for very noisy video, although since you are capturing directly to the PC, you may be able to find virtualdub filters (NeatVideo for example) that give you a better range of adjustments for handling noise.

What resolution should I capture at?


I generally err on the side of 720x480, your other option is half D1 at 352 x 480. Don't capture at 352x240, it's not supported as part of the MPEG-2 DVD-Video standard. Either way with home movies, you're always going to want to throw a lot of bitrate at them, especially if you have lots of handheld camera or low light/indoor footage. I wouldn't go more than an hour and 20 minutes per SL disc. You might be able to get away with using a lower average bitrate with footage shot on a tripod, but that's up to you to divide up the scenes if you want to squeeze more video per disc.

Don´t use Lagarith codec to capture is so slow.
Use "Ut Video Codec"
http://umezawa.dyndns.info/archive/utvideo/
It's really fast [:)]
Check out this thread on Doom for more info on UT codec
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=143624

I'll keep that in mind, although my Core2Duo E8400 rig seems to have no issues with capturing 720x480 in realtime with Lagarith. Sounds like a must if I ever do HD captures with this card.

As for the VCR, I have all the menu options the 9000 series JVCs have minus the audio rec level and dynamic drum. The tapes I have seem to be playing fine, I do have a generic late 90s GE 4-head VCR here if any of the tapes turn out to be basket cases. Currently I have video calibration set to 'off', picture control set to 'edit', Digital R3 set to 'off', and Digipure/TBC set to 'on' and running everything through the Sony external TBC to stabilize the output. Output looks pretty good on the TV, but I'll play with the settings.

In terms of motion, its typical home movies from a full size VHS camcorder. Not as shaky as those little miniDV things they got today, but still a bit of motion. Discs aren't a problem, I'll err on the side of higher bit rate. It would be nice to have one disc per VHS tape, but I'll live with two per tape. Just as long as the result plays on any old set top DVD player.

Oh, I almost forgot. I have a few 8mm tapes as well, one of which is Hi-8. Playback will be done on a Sony CCD-TRV65 Hi-8XR camcorder (same that recorded them) that just happens to have a built in TBC and S-Video out.

Regarding the Betamax tape. I do have an old copy of it on VHS if I need to use it as a last resort. I'd rather use the Betamax copy though as thats a first gen copy (shot with a Sony BetaMovie camcorder) and Betamax seems to age better (the reference color burst signal as part of the format helps).

Decoding Lagarith is really slow compare to UT.
Those cpu cycle´s is better to spend on software filtering and encoding to MPEG-2. ;)

Good choice on getting the JVC 7800 VCR. Do try for the Sony Betamax deck, but obviously you have fewer choices with Betamax.

In general, I'd sort of give this card a cockeyed look, not quite fond of the AVer branded products. It's all generic stuff at best. But you've obviously been doing this for a while, so I'll assume there's not a visual quality issue that you're having to deal with, and that you're getting good image quality in your captures.

• Stabilizer OFF. You want the TBC, and these two cannot be used at the same time. Only use stabilizer if the signal is really bouncy and unstable. It may fix it, it may not. And then anything the TBC would have fixed would now be uncorrected, too.
• Calibration OFF. This is a nice item in theory, but it works like crap. All it does cause tracking errors. Rarely does it help, often does it add problems where none exist.
• Picture mode NORM. This removes noise while maintaining image clarity and quality.
• R3 OFF. This adds fake sharpening, and simply makes the video grainy. Sometimes, in rare cases, it actually helps, but that's maybe once every 100 tapes or so at best.

This is bad myth from the VCD days. It's not true at all. VHS is closer to about 250x480 (average) or 330x480 (best scenario) resolution. You require x480 to capture both fields and maintain full resolution.

You've read some stuff written by confused people. Best to ignore whatever that was. In fact, feel free to post anything you read, so I can thoroughly debunk it.

You need x480 for both fields. The first number is the resolution of the tape, or the "horizontal resolution" ("lines" of resolution). VHS was about "250 lines" which comes in at about 1x to 1.5x in a digital value. Again, 336x480 is theoretical max, while realistically it's closer to the 250x480 to 300x480 range.

So you can capture 352x480 and be fine. Or if you want, you can do 704x480 or 720x480. Sometimes this is determined by the card, too. Many cards are lousy at 352x480 captures, so you basically have to do the 720x480 capture to avoid problems. I don't know enough about your specific card to make that judgment for you. I'd just be safe and capture 720x480. Since you'll be grabbing it as AVI, you can always downconvert resolution later, for making DVDs or whatnot. There's no harm in having a larger palette to store the image, aside from file size (determined by bitrate, whereas more bitrate is needed to maintain quality on larger resolutions).

Will come back and add more to this later, -admin :)

In terms of the capture card, its composed of the following chips:

Silicon Image (can't read the numbers): HDMI interface
Analog Devices AD9985A: likely an ADC going by the datasheet
Trident TVMaster TM6200: All I can find is that this is a "PCIe PCTV system on chip". Likely does comb filtering and other functions like the sound ADC.

The price was good for a component/HDMI HD capture card. Only cost $80 vs. $180 for the Blackmagic Intensity Pro (which has its fair share of problems).

I may also be picking up an Diamond ATI Theater HD 700 USB stick (mostly because I want an ATSC/DVB-T tuner for laptop use). I'll do some testing and compare the capture quality. Perhaps it will be more tolerant of weak/out-of-sync video signals.

OK, running into some issues with my "bargain" TBC in terms of color. Its killing reds and softening video level with all the proc amp controls set to their "default/preset" position. Using the Color Tools plug-in and a recording of the SMPTE color bars off of my Powerbook G4 via s-video, its pretty clear I got an issue somewhere.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1285702571
Without the TBC and the capture card's procamp adjustments on their default settings. Pretty close to ideal color calibration.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...0&d=1285702571
With the TBC, and the capture card and TBC proamp adjustments on their default settings. Video level is a bit lower and look at the red.

I did play with the "Hue" dial on the TBC and recorded the results for reviewing on the vectorscope. I can get it pretty close to ideal, but its obvious I will have to do some real time adjusting. I don't know if I can completely correct the video levels though. My other issue with this TBC is that it appears to add some electromagetic interference to the video (a subtle noticeable 60Hz flicker like you would get running an electric motor by a TV). It could be cables, but the source is definitely the TBC's power supply.

Are these color and interference problems typical of most TBCs? I'll splurge for an AVT-8710 if I know its not going to butcher color like this Sony does (and not have the flickering interference). I noticed the change right away when capturing a video of someone in a red sweater... it looked more like magenta :p.

Older TBCs were created in the days before we had so much electrical/electronic crap like we have in the 21st century. These items were not designed with the idea that wireless routers, cell phones, TV antenna, and things of that nature would be in the same room. In addition to that, these were made for use in video equipment racks, often on dedicated breakers in a relatively "clean power" type of environment. Having video gear connected into computers -- which have their own smorgasboard of electrical noise issues -- was simply not within the original intention of the device. Putting these unit on typical home/office shared breakers, in typical inadequatedly-juiced areas, makes it even worse. When your TBC and VCR shares power lightbulbs, toasters, microwaves, routers and computers, all hell breaks loose.

One common fix is to use a good UPS -- uninterruptable power supply, or a "batter backup" -- with AVR (automatic voltage regulation) which tends to clean the power up a bit between the wall and the devices. I suggest APC, not Cyberpower or a no-name (Best Buy "Geek Squad" brand, for example).
Look at what Amazon has for APC UPS: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.ht...reative=390957

The other fix is to use a modern TBC that was created during a time when VHS>DVD work was an understood (and even intended) use of the device. The DataVideo and Cypress/AVT TBCs were made in this generation, with these tasks in mind. The power supply on a AVT-8710 has never been affected by pwer noise in the 5+ years that I've had one (cannot say the same about the TBC-1000), and input is true to source sans timing errors that were obviously removed.
AVT-8710 from B&H (best price) at http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...3167/KBID/4166

You'll find many proc amps distort the incoming signal a bit. For a TBC that has a true proc amp inside, I'm not surprised by this. As much as I truly adore the Elite Video BVP-4 Plus unit, it alters the incoming signal a bit, too. Of course, I'm only using it for video that needs proc amp work anyway, so it's not a big deal -- I'm changing the value anyhow.

The AVT-8710 has a rather weenie proc amp inside, so it doesn't seem to be afflicted by this common issue. In fact, the AVT-8710 is rather transparent to the incoming signal color-wise. At most, it might alter IRE or gamma by -/+1, but I only see that once in a while -- not a constant thing I notice. It may be my eyes playing tricks on me, or maybe a side effect of the bad tape being corrected.

The other thing to remember is most sources, even so-called "studio sources," are all over the map in terms of the values of luma, chroma, IRE, etc. So don't get too lost in the quest for perfection. I nearly got sucked into that void about 5-6 years ago.

A UPS is on my shopping list anyway. I did just try to hook up the TBC to an old APC Back-UPS 280 I have here (dead battery), no improvement. I don't know if it has any power filtering though.

I'm just trying to preserve the videos in question. Color really isn't an issue on these tapes, I'd rather not make it worse in the process.

I might pick up one of the used ones on this forum, sounds like a good investment. Being a modern unit, its likely a single chip solution, less likely to have signal problems. All is not lost on the Sony though, I can use it to transcode 15.75khz RGB sources to YCbCr... and if I ever need to genlock anything (not likely).

My biggest peeve about capture cards.....I wish more came with full frame TBCs built in, you skip that added digital to analog to digital step the external unit adds. The added hardware and cost would even be minimal since you already have the ADC.

Tell me about it. In the TV studio we had a character generator that munched up color and IRE worse then this Sony TBC could imagine. I would go out of my way and use the Video Toaster or the computer running Premiere and the mirovideo DC-2000 (I would chroma key it in) to do all my CG work. Then again, both the VT and Premiere had WAY better CG editors then that POS standalone unit.

Filtering generally means power was running through the battery. No battery, no filtering.

Yes, indeed, two great deals on used AVT-8710's from our own forum members! Don't miss those.
There's always something good in the Marketplace forums: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/foru...tplace-43.html
Even that Sima color corrector may be good for basic proc amp functions.

While this would seem to be a good solution, it opens a can of worms. I'll list out some things for you:

• There's no universal definition of a TBC. Much of this is explained at http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...base-2251.html
• As an example of the above, many DVD recorders claim to have TBCs, but in actuality the circuits do nothing or near-nothing in most cases. But it helped sell the unit to unsuspecting dupes who had minimal understanding of video and were told to "get a TBC" for their conversion work. As much as I use and respect the classic JVC recorders, which claim to have TBCs in some version of documentation, I have no idea what it could be doing. It acts a neither frame sync nor TBC. A real TBC is required before video is input to the JVC recorders. The JVC stops recording at continuous sync loss, and will halt recording or record as-is timing errors. So clearly it has nothing inside.
• A true TBC + frame sync would remove all the artificial errors that create analog "copy protection" and studios get all bent out of shape about the ability to convert decades-old VHS tapes to homemade DVDs. The studios and MPAA are the ones who have pretty well destroyed the available choices in capture cards and DVD recorders, as well as other areas of video where the technology they hate had very legitimate and valid non-piracy uses. Idiots. Greedy bastards. Most of us are perfectly willing to buy new/used DVDs when they exist. And beyond that, many of us have a primary interest in our own homemade productions and family videos, not copying their stuff.
• It's rare for an item with multiple features to do all things well. I can imagine a great TBC on a crappy capture card, or a great capture card with a flawed TBC. While I despise the A>D>A>D>etc repetitive conversion, I'd almost hate to be stuck to a bad combo device even more. At least right now I can pick the 3-4 devices for the 3-4 separate tasks.

Good in theory, but not sure how it'd play out in real life.

Getting back to my first reply, expanding on it...

You plan to capture lossless, then possibly edit/restore, and then encode to final MPEG-2. That's a fine method.

Lagarith is built with compression in mind, not speed, so it tends to be slower to work with than HuffYUV, which I far prefer. You can download and install all of the HuffYUV versions from this thread: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...-pre-1727.html

User _K__ mentioned UT as an option, too. While I've not used it, I've heard of it. It's another viable option. And I'd also rate it above Lagarith, because Lagarith has an impact on your encoding/decoding times.

That just doesn't sound good at all.

Ideally, you want to maintain 4:2:2 for VHS work. While 4:1:1 should theoretically capture all the color bandwidth, I don't find that true in practice. And this may further explain the oddities you're seeing with your reds/magenta, as that's a very common issue with VHS>DV (4:1:1) colorspace compression. It may not be the proc amp at fault, but the colorspace. It's another avenue to go down, at least.

I try to avoid known-IRE problematic equipment. Again, that just doesn't sound good.

Even if it was designed for Betacam SP, which is an approximate 3:1:1 colorspace compression, and is still better quality than S-VHS or VHS, it still doesn't mean it's an appropriate device for working with the non-Sony formats. That's just my initial inclination to the situation.

I would. :)

I use Avia. DVD Essentials is another one.
Amazon has these new for under $25 or about $10 used: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.ht...reative=390957

Certain DVDs have hidden test files, such as the Ice Age DVD release, Ice Age 2, Toy Story 2, and some others -- often heavy CG productions, either wholly CG or even just partial CG (like new Star Wars versions, although I'm not sure if any of the SW DVDs have tests on them). These include test patterns, THX patterns, Dolby or THX audio tests, etc.

I would go the "buy one" route if you're serious, instead of scrounging for freebies online. As you've noticed, many of the freebies are degraded for various reasons ("shrinked" DVDs versions, from JPEG, badly homemade test kits, etc). The $10-25 cost also gets you more patterns and tests than a few toss-in's found on the DVD releases like Ice Age.

Regarding capture size myths, most of it dates back to 2000 or so when VCDs were still popular. This was the following procedure that I remember and actually used on this (in)famous Youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmEvPZUdAVI&fmt=18

1. Capture 704x480/29.97fps.
2. Use Donald Graft's "Smart Deinterlace" filter.
3. Use the "Resize" filter to do a bicubic resize to 352x240.

The equipment used on the above video was the following.

Matrox Marvel G400-TV capturing to MJPEG using onboard Zoran chip with Win98SE, soundcard was a SB Live!. The VCR was a generic GE 4 head thing from 1998, no TBC was used. I did not compress the processed video with MPEG1 (even though I had the Ligos encoder), I used the then popular DivX 3.11 codec..... it took forever on my PII-400Mhz. It could look better if a modern MPEG4 codec was used for compression along with a TBC.

It's because people (most of whom knew nothing about video) confused 352x240 VCD resolution with "240 lines" VHS resolution, and just assumed both 240 numbers referred to the same axis. It did not. x240 is a vertical digital measurement, while 240 lines was a horizontal analog measure. In an analog/digital equivalency, it would come out to 240x480. But this should be adjusted some, as true digital equiv comes out closer into the 250x480 to 335x480 range. 336x480 is theoretical max, with actual quality being around 300x480 for SP, and down into the high 200's for LP or EP (SLP) modes.

That's hilarious. Never saw that before, although I do remember much of the marketing from that era.

You can embed Youtube videos using youtube bbcode inside the square parentheses -- not the () versions.
Just put the ID between them. In this case, it's dmEvPZUdAVI
Explanation of embedding can be found at http://www.tvpreservation.com/forum/...deos-9565.html (our sister site for entertainment talk)



Too bad you didn't crop or mask the overscan. So many videos on Youtube like that, which would have looked better properly masked or cropped. At least your quality came out great! Much better than most. I do see some errors with tearing that could be fixed with certain TBCs.

The video predated YouTube by quite a few years. As a result, I basically compressed the crap out of it to share it with friends. The final file was ~40MB, which at the time was impressive for that quality. Now with modern codecs, one could do much better. I will likely re-record that video with the JVC+TBC, crop out the noise, and re-upload it.

It's a shame that you'll end up losing all the stats of the current video. :(

from http://www.google.com/support/youtub...n&answer=58101 --
I'd leave the old one up, and then edit it to reference the location of the new better-quality version.
Just a tip. ;)

Got the AVT-8710 today. Looks MUCH better on the vectorscope and visually colorwise. I am almost ready to go with this project, just some last minute questions.

1. Is it OK to capture 720 or 704x480 and later re-size to 352x480? I would like to play with the MPEG-2 encoding bit rates with half vs. full resolution, but I'm afraid that a re-sized video will introduce artifacts from the halving of the resolution post capture.

2. How can I tell if I'm crushing blacks or crushing whites? I'd like to calibrate this if possible.

3. Should I fully fast forward and then rewind all my tapes before capturing? I have been reading its recommended to re-tension the tape. The only thing I'm worried about is at least one of the tapes I will be working with had to have one end reattached to the right side reel with masking tape.

4. Should I capture the video in segments to avoid audio sync issues? I have a TBC, so frame dropping is no longer an issue, but I'm afraid of it drifting ever so slightly over the course of a 1-2 hour capture session.

Random nit pick: automatic white balance on the camcorder is evil to deal with in terms of color correction (particularly with tint/hue shifting). I'm sure you guys knew that already. ;)

1. Yes. Use a good resizer, however. VirtualDub is good. Adobe Premiere or MainConcept Reference, however (as crazy it sounds given their 4-digit prices!) are terrible at it.

2. If pastels turn white, white is crushed. If brown or gray turns black, black is crushed. It's a visual inspection. Be sure the TV or computer monitor is calibrated before trying to make these kinds of judgment calls.

3. Yes. I suggest using a VCR that does slower winding. Or better yet, one of those dedicated rewinders that stores like Blockbuster used to sell back in the days when they rented VHS tapes. If a tape is known to have damage, then don't risk it. Or hand-FF and hand-REW it. Do it while watching a movie, as it'll take an hour or more.

4. No need for that. Capture at once. If there is sync error, troubleshoot. Dropped frames is related to bigger problems. Don't just avoid the symptoms by capturing in time-consuming tiny chunks.

Camcorder tapes tend to be a supreme nuisance. This reminds me of a color correction project I did that will be a new guide.

I've added it to the list in the Premium Member for: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...-web-2468.html
You really should upgrade to Premium Member!

Hmm, this video capture card is being a royal PITA. With the AVT-8710 in the chain, I'm back to randomly dropping frames and loosing audio sync. This time I think its the capture card driver or computer thats causing the problem. I'm dropping frames from DVD sources (no macrovision using the component and svideo-in on the card) or even just recording the VCR's onscreen menu!,Certainly no timebase or sync problems with those that I know of. I'm going to have to play with this, otherwise I'll be ordering a USB capture device.

Further testing is showing something is up at the capture stage. I'm dropping and inserting frames capturing live feed from my camcorder (direct s-video connection, no TBC in chain). This is bizarre, it seems like I'm running into a classic case of latency spikes. It doesn't appear to be a CPU or hard drive speed issue. Then again, these problems did crop up with the original drivers for this card.... grrrr.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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. :eek:

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.