VHS collection to digital files: transfer project on Mac OS?
 

Greetings.

Several years ago I took into possession a collection of 550-600 VHS tapes.

These tapes were used to record televised news reports, documentaries and films between the late 1980s and early 2000s. Some tapes were used to record multiple programs. As such, each tapes contains anywhere between 60m and upwards of recorded content that needs to be transferred to a digital format.

Much of the content on these tapes is difficult to obtain today and hence I am looking to make a digital archive of the collection.

I have had no prior experience with such projects and I am hoping to gain some advice on what equipment will be suitable for the task.

Unfortunately, I only have access to either a 2012 MacBook Pro or a 2008 iMac for the digital transfer process and as such I am looking for OS appropriate recommendations for hardware and software.

I intend to purchase OS appropriate hardware and software for the project as well as a recommended VCR.

I have looked at the Elgato Video Capture package - http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/118858/V...C108601001.asp - but the video resolution it records at is 640×480. Is this the best possible resolution I can expect from VHS-Digital transfer? For instance, is the 640x480 resolution a consequence of prohibitive file-sizes? If not, what other options might be recommended in order to obtain a higher resolution from the transfer process.

Another aspect of this project relates to the VHS collection itself as it has not been stored in an appropriately climate controlled environment. The tapes could have suffered some damage from excessive heat and cold. Any advice for checking for, mitigating or amending such possible damage is welcomed.

I feel that this is a substantial project for a non-professional to undertake with content that may not be recoverable if not conducted correctly. Any advice that can be furnished will be greatly appreciated. If any further information is required for assistance - tape specs., etc., - please ask and I will do my best to answer in as much detail as is needed.

Kind regards,

dia.

Hello, and welcome to digitalfaq. :salute:

The majority of readers here are involved in similar projects, although I guess I'm fortunate to have started with only about 300 tapes.

Except for the pros who manage this forum, almost everyone here arrived as a newbie. If you haven't done so, spend some time in the forum's capture and restoration guides: http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video.htm. Some of the hardware mentioned has changed over time, but the methods and principles for decent analog to digital transfer and restoration have never changed.

With all due affection for Mac users, that's unfortunate for doing what you propose. A few things are possible with a Mac, but it won't meet most of your pressing needs. If you browse this forum for earlier posts you'll see that the subject has been approached many times, with the same conclusions. A few examples:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post37312
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post29118
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post32614

Here is a recent list of recommended VCRs for VHS capture: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ing-guide.html. If any of your tapes were recorded at slow 6-hour or 4-hour speeds, we do not recommend JVC players for those tapes.

XP still offers the best platform and hardware availability for analog capture. Vista and Windows 7 have more limitations for capture, but are often preferred for after-capture post processing and encoding (which can be done with XP also, of course). Windows 8 and 10 or disasters for capture and restoration.

Frame size aside, that's the wrong tool for VHS,

VHS is usually captured to lossless media as a YUY2 colorspace at 720x480 NTSC (720x576 PAL), using lossless codecs such as huffyuv, Lagarith, or UT Video. Many capture at 640x480, but keep in mind the intended final delivery format after capture and cleanup. DVD is the most universal media, but one can also encode lossless VHS source as standard definition BluRay at higher bitrates than DVD. Lossless media can be carried forward into any format you want without altering the original capture.

If by higher resolution you refer to HD, you're in for a disappointment. High definition isn't based on big frame sizes, it's based on source resolution. Low resolution VHS in big frames looks nothing like HD, it just looks like low-definition blown up into big blurry frames with serious scaling artifacts. Even if you do decide on the upscaling routine (we'd advise against it), noisy analog defects and tape problems have to be cleaned up before any kind of resizing, or the results will be borked. One of many factors to be aware of is that VHS is interlaced, but the documentaries and movies you mention are progressive film-based video with hard telecine embedded. Video with those frame structures cannot be resized as-is. There are prescribed methods handling these sorts things, but they're among some tricks you will have to learn about.

Video correction and repair are referred to as restoration. Good players, line-level and frame-level timebase correction, and decent capture devices are essential for aged and/or damaged sources. Without a good start, restoration is severely limited if not impossible. Post-processing with lossless media, Avisynth, and VirtualDub are the prime restoration tools we recommend, short of spending 7 figures for the huge computers and custom software used by the likes of Disney. Avisynth, VirtualDub and similar repair tools are not available for Macs.

Yes, indeed, this undertaking is indeed a project, for pros and hobbyists alike. The first advice we can offer is that learning and patience are prime requisites. The quality you get depends on what you put into it, which isn't always measurable in terms of $$$. Yes, the hardware isn't free. but most of the software we recommend is free.

This is a big subject (like, really big). Hundreds of taps is not a quickie summer project. You might want to consider a DVD recorder (using high bitrates) for some of the cleaner tapes, which alone will save months of worth. That isn't a good method for damaged or discolored tapes, however.

600 tapes, at 60+ minutes per tape. Some quick numbers just to put the project in perspective.
- That is maybe 700 hours just to capture (capture is at real time - about a year at 3 hours per day, five days a week).
- Captured to a DVD recorder - 600 DVDs at best quality (1 hr) recording speed.
- At DV compression (lossy and not recommended for restoration) that is 12 GB per hour, perhaps 8 TB of data. figure on several times that that for compressed lossless data.

As sanlyn said: Starting points include deciding what ultimate format(s) you need the material in, what quality you need, and what you are willing to invest in time and money to get there.

Video takes at least 3x realtime. So 600 hours is about 1800 hours of man hours. That's 75 days of 24/7 video work, assuming a single capture workflow (at about $1k each). Maybe $500 if you go cheap, but quality will suffer. This doesn't include learning curve time, nor mistakes.

Worse yet, Mac is the wrong tool. Mac is great for certain things, mine is awesome -- but not for capturing.

I also have about 700 tapes homemade tapes, and transferring them has taken years. I'm still not done, especially with the bad ones. This doesn't include my retail tapes, many of which are not released to anything digital. Though admittedly my issue is time, as I spend too much paid time working with video, so going home to a video hobby can be tedious.

The biggest issue with tapes, physically speaking, is mold and physical tape shedding (black particles falling of tape). Those are both bad scenarios. The signal is another story.

My personal suggestion is to use an ATI AIW card setup based on Windows XP, capturing to 15mpbs MPEG-2 for the best balance of quality archiving and speed/space of the project. You'll need a suggested VCR, and a good TBC as well.

If the tapes are labeled you can save time and money by looking up those titles online some of them you may get on DVD for dirt cheap and better quality than VHS, Then you can focus on the ones that never made it to digital format.