My equipment checklist for VHS transfer!

[VideoTechMan]

Hi everyone,

Been a long while since posting here but have been reading regularly in regards to VHS and SVHS captures. A good spell ago I had thought to do most of the conversions to DV to edit later. But now after reviewing everything again and doing more research, I plan to capture lossless for the analog S/VHS based captures. Stuff I shot directly in DV can be transferred to DV in the PC.

I still have my XP box with the AIW 8500DV card with the purple breakout cable. I also believe I still have the VirtualDub to use for capture. I intend to do this for eventual serious work as I am aiming to get more involved in video work.

Here's the equipment list of the gear I have so far for transfer work (list has grown quite a bit lately):

Panasonic AG-DV2000
Panasonic AG-DS840-850
Panasonic AG-1980, AG-5710
JVC BR-822U, BR-525U (S/VHS)
Sony EVO-9800 Hi-8 Pro Deck
Sony SLV-R1000 SVHS
Sony BWV-D75, PVW-2800 (BetacamSP)

For TBC, I have:

Leitch DPS-575
Feral A422

And for audio I have:

Mackie 1402-VLZ3 analog mixer

Other gear includes the ADVC-3000 (broadcast level converter with ability to input/export SDI) that I may incorporate somewhere in the workflow, and a BetacamSP broadcast video camera which I may do some SD shoots down the line.

I have two audio cards at my disposal for the VHS capture work, and that's the E-MU 1616m and the M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496. I could possibly use either card for the XP box I have for the audio.

Alot of things have went on in the past year. With the passing of my mom last spring ('14) from a vehicle accident, there's alot of VHS material that I want to preserve and store. So I've taken charge to put together a small studio in a spare bedroom to do all my A/V work in. But besides that, I also want to get into video editing with HD material eventually and get deeper into audio editing and composing.

With that said, I know the bulk of the S/VHS decks I have are the broadcast ones (all serviced with low hours) and only works with SP recorded tapes so those may not see moderate use right now. With the built-in TBC and proc amp controls, no external TBC is needed for them. Though the two TBC units I have are the large rackmount versions (i've built my own equipment racks for them) they work well for the non-TBC equipped decks.

My question is, with the AIW 8500DV card, even though the purple breakout box has the audio connections, would it make sense to connect the audio to that to pass-through the audio or would it be better to use the external sound card for the audio? I've read older posts that referred to the A/V sync issue, but I don't believe I will have that problem; I will have to make some test captures to find out.

End goal would be to capture the analog sources losslessly to where I can store/archive the videos to a 24-bay file server I've built for future processing/editing. I believe Huffyuv was a good codec and YUV2 which would be lossless. I have an older Cheiftec Dragon case I bought in 2004 that has plenty of room for hard drives so plan to load them up with 2TB drives and possibly get another SATA PCI adapter since the older MB has only around 2 ports.

Mom has a ton of material she recorded on VHS as well as material I have as well. Some of the stuff I plan to linear edit via edit controller and make new tape masters to transfer later. So SVHS isn't entirely dead just yet, for me anyway.

I know my subscription ran out recently, but plan to renew for premium membership soon. Lots of good stuff here.

[lordsmurf]

Eww, terrible stuff! ............ I jest, of course.

My feedback on your gear:

Panasonic AG-DV2000                = DV cameras often better
Panasonic AG-DS840-850             = no idea
Panasonic AG-1980, AG-5710         = excellent
JVC BR-822U, BR-525U (S/VHS)       = mixed feedback, not something I've ever sought out
Sony EVO-9800 Hi-8 Pro Deck        = 8mm cameras often better
Sony SLV-R1000 SVHS                = should be decent
Sony BWV-D75, PVW-2800 (BetacamSP) = no opinion on BetacamSP stuff
Leitch DPS-575                     = never used one, but feedback has always been good
Feral A422                         = seen it mentioned through the years, but no concrete yay/nay
Mackie 1402-VLZ3 analog mixer      = for video, only EQ really matters
ADVC-3000                          = is it 10s better than the sucky ADVC-300 ;)

Test the audio input. The main reason for the ATI input is convenience. Sometimes due to delay as well. See if bypassing the breakout box still has sync'd audio.

Huffyuv is really just an intermediary for editing or restoring. If the footage is done, I archive as 15mbps MPEG-2, and did so long before the Blu-ray existed. It's just a happy coincidence! I only keep important footage as Huffyuv, or undone projects (and I have far too many of those!)

Glad to have you back.

Some of this thread may share content with your other newer one: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/news...ond-video.html
I have a backlog of posts in my queue.

[VideoTechMan]

Yes, LS you better be jesting! LOL

Most of the gear I acquired over a 4-5 year period. I knew that if I was going to get serious on doing video work (and possibly as a side job in the near future) I needed some good gear to get started.

The DV deck I had because I never owned a DV camcorder until awhile back and gotten a Panny DV based 3-chipped camcorder. Didn't have a firewire port so the deck would obviously be easier to play back those tapes without doing unnecessary A/D conversions, since DV has an odd compression scheme.

As for the broadcast decks, like the JVC BR-series and Panasonic AG-DS units, I remember a poster 'Deter' used to post on such decks sometime ago. As I know they only do SP tapes, I have a good number of them (non-commercial) and have a few projects in mind where I could finally try my hand at linear based editing. Would be fun working those features. I had all of them serviced so they play very good at optimum quality. Of course still may need to do adjustments once I start working on them. The 1980 and 5710....was a no-brainer adding those to my arsenal.

The Sony 9800A deck; though I do have two Sony D8 camcorders that do support Hi8 playback as well as A/D conversion, the 9800 has one feature that the camcorder does not: ability to write time code. I have another batch of 8mm and Hi-8 tapes that i want to write time code to, where it can be easier to do (yep more linear editing) with the edit controller. Just some cool stuff to do that I missed out on when these decks were mainstream

The DPS-575, I briefly tested it, and it does work well, but only downside I discovered was that there was a breakout cable that had the S-Video output (input was on unit), which I didn't have of course and wouldn't do me any good for S-Video sources unless I can hunt down that cable somehow. But it has all the other connectors though like SDI and CAV (component). May sit on the sidelines for now. The Feral unit worked well with the sources I tried, and the TBC cleaned it up pretty nicely, but haven't tested the proc amp functions. Basically these VCR-sized units were really meant for broadcast decks that had no built in TBC circuitry or proc amp controls so most edit suites I am sure had one of these at some point.

BetacamSP....I had bought a BetacamSP broadcast camera in Fall of '14 and the tape unit has very low hours on it. The seller I got it from on Ebay was an enthusiast with BetacamSP gear, having several cameras himself. These units of course were the standard in TV broadcast for decades. I figure I may try my hand at shooting some video with it and editing it on the decks....fun fun! And who knows, if I ever get a client one day that may need some transfer work done, I'll have the gear to do it. I also had one of the decks serviced so should last me a good while.

The Sony R1000, I bought that new which ran me $1K back then. Still works very well to this day and makes an excellent SVHS player. I plan to use it in conjunction with an TBC for backup purposes. As I have read in one of the posts here, its always good to have different type decks to just about handle any tape (except molded ones, wont touch those).

And at last the ADVC-3000. I got this converter new on ebay awhile back, when it originally retailed around $3,000 I snagged it for $400. Can't beat that deal. Unlike the common units like the 110 and 300, this unit is broadcast level since it has mostly BNC connections, SDI in and out and the ability to convert the DV back to analog format, including component, composite and s-video plus 4-channel audio (for decks that has them). It also supports RS-422 deck control via the DV port also. After reading some postings on how unwise it would be to convert VHS and other analog sources to DV, I changed my game plan in how I was going to deal with that. So that's what prompted me to rework my XP capture boxes and build a second box where I will have plenty of room to capture all analog video (except component) through the AIW cards. There's a good wealth of info here on this site on the tools needed to do this job right the first time. The component based sources I will work on getting a Kona card to take care of that.

So even is the 3000 may not see too much action, it will be cool to have just because it looks cool!

A few more pieces of gear I recently attained was a 32-port RS-422 switcher, where I can connect all of the remote-controllable decks to it and route whatever decks I plan to use/control to the Sony FXE-120 edit controller, which supports 2 play decks and a recorder. Beats having to disconnect/reconnect cabling.

I have a feeling I will also have alot of projects to work on--temporarily store on a storage server until I get more time to work on them. Selecting a proper storage format will be just as important as the finished format once done. And I am sure I will learn alot along the way.

[lordsmurf]

I don't miss linear editing.

In 15 years, I've only had 1 request for BetacamSP, 1 requested for Digital Betacam (DigiBeta), and maybe a dozen requests for Betamax. I've had more requests for oddities like MicroMV (which I can do).

I honestly thought 3000 was a typo. It's really a card. Huh.

[VideoTechMan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

I don't miss linear editing.

In 15 years, I've only had 1 request for BetacamSP, 1 requested for Digital Betacam (DigiBeta), and maybe a dozen requests for Betamax. I've had more requests for oddities like MicroMV (which I can do).

I honestly thought 3000 was a typo. It's really a card. Huh.

Nope no typo. The ADVC 3000 is actually an external box, about the size of say a small A/V switcher box (like the JVC JX-S777) No internal card was made for that model.

Hmm never heard of the MicroMV before....so many formats its mind boggling.

[Goldwingfahrer]

Quote:

The Sony 9800A deck; though I do have two Sony D8 camcorders that do support Hi8 playback as well as A/D conversion,

My Sony EVO 9800P can only analog output,
same as my 2 9700P or two EV-S9000.

The DSP575 is but normal S-Video Anschlüsse.see image

My JVC Broadcaster have special S-Video connectors with bayonet

[VideoTechMan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Goldwingfahrer

My Sony EVO 9800P can only analog output,
same as my 2 9700P or two EV-S9000.

The DSP575 is but normal S-Video Anschlüsse.see image

My JVC Broadcaster have special S-Video connectors with bayonet

Yep the 575 has the S-Video input, but the output is only via the breakout cable which I don't have. The TBC automatically activates when the S-Video mode is used.

The JVC decks, yes I have the Y/C 7-pin connector (two of the M/F cables) and the 7-pin adapter to the 4-pin connector. I had to have those cables custom made.

Yeah I know the Sony Hi-8 pro decks only do analog, I was referring to the Digital8 camcorders that have Hi8 playback and A/D conversion via the firewire port.

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by VideoTechMan

Yeah I know the Sony Hi-8 pro decks only do analog, I was referring to the Digital8 camcorders that have Hi8 playback and A/D conversion via the firewire port.

Why would you want to record analog Hi8 to DV? There is a ton of discussion about analog-to-DV methods on this and other tech forums. Analog is usually captured to lossless media (DV is not lossless) for restoration and quality encoding, or at worst directly to high bitrate MPEG or h264, neither of which are designed for editing. Either way, you would have to clean up noisy Hi8 and re-encode as a last step, since lossless and DV are PC-only playback. DV compression is a problem that's only compounded by a second re-encoding to a more playable format. DV is not supported by external players or the web.

[VideoTechMan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn

Why would you want to record analog Hi8 to DV? There is a ton of discussion about analog-to-DV methods on this and other tech forums. Analog is usually captured to lossless media (DV is not lossless) for restoration and quality encoding, or at worst directly to high bitrate MPEG or h264, neither of which are designed for editing. Either way, you would have to clean up noisy Hi8 and re-encode as a last step, since lossless and DV are PC-only playback. DV compression is a problem that's only compounded by a second re-encoding to a more playable format. DV is not supported by external players or the web.

I never said anything about recording Hi8 to DV, i just mentioned that the camcorders were capable of doing so. I ran a tape in my Sony 9800A last night (going through an external full frame TBC) in virtual dub and captured very well using Huffyuv with no frame drops. Ive read many posts in the past weeks on it being a bad idea to record analog to DV, with the exception of DV material shot from the start to transfer.

Trust me, im for getting the most quality i can out of my analog sources.