Recording digital to VHS? (Not VHS to digital!)
 

Hello!

While I've not actively participated in the year I've been a member here, I have gotten so much useful information which I am eternally grateful for. Piles of old home camcorder tapes have found a new life and I could not have done it without this community, my first ignorant attempts at it are a testament to that.

Now I have a scenario of a different sort that I'm looking for some advice with. I am collaborating with a few online pals to produce a videotape comprised of a handful of different clips that will be filmed by all of us individually, and may or may not have some vfx compositing work done. PC->VCR output is planned to be done using a bog standard off the shelf av2hdmi (I am open to alternatives), my main question though is frame rates.

Digitization from a VHS is done at 29.97i then de-interlaced to 59.94 progressive, but what is the opposite workflow to this? Should we film at 59.94? and interlace it before layback? Film at 29.97i and keep that from the start to finish? Given the amount of fingers in the pie, and the possibility of vfx work being done, I'm hoping for a single parameter everyone can follow. I'm sure I could cobble something together that was just ok, but if I was interested in "just ok" I wouldn't be here in the first place.

Thanks in advance!

For output you need HDMI2AV, not AV2HDMI. It will convert whatever you throw at it to 480i for NTSC or 576i for PAL. Far from the best quality, but it will get the job done. The hardest part will probably be getting the aspect ratio right. A lot of those devices ignore aspect ratio and output everything as 4:3, but some try to detect 16:9 content and automatically letterbox it, so for 4:3 video you'll need to provide it with an actual 4:3 video source, not 4:3 video pillarboxed within 16:9, which would come out with a border on all sides.

And yes, for the best results, record everything at 59.94p for NTSC or 50p for PAL. Recording interlaced HD video will just make it worse because you'll need to de-interlace it before it gets converted to standard definition and then re-interlaced, adding an unnecessary extra step and losing more quality.

Thanks! The error was mine, it is in fact an HDMI2AV I just got my wires crossed with the name. Everything is capable of being shot and run through post in 4:3 so that's not a concern, I appreciate your input with the frame rate.

If you want to go the more expensive route, you can feed VGA into something like the VSC500 or VSC700 and that will give you S-Video, RBGS, Component, and composite output all at the same time. Basically those can downscale anything you feed them into high quality 480i and are commonly used by video gamers that want to play modern consoles on CRTs.

It leaves behind so many artifacts that it's really unacceptable viewed on a large modern TV. It only looks "good" on a cell phone, an old 13" or smaller CRT, or the tiny preview window for computer capture cards. It's pretty pitiful/craptastic viewed large.

This is one of those situations where I'd highly suggest a DV box (Canopus ADVC), outputting the DV file from an NLE time (like Premiere), saving to DV tape (DV camera), then playing the tape, and recording the 720x480/576 (ideally interlaced) signal to VHS.

Not that $5 piece of Chinese junk

Been there, done that, As LS mentioned avoid HDMI2AV cheap crap, they have all kind of weird artifacts, flickering, tearing, clipped levels ...etc. What I ended using for testing the recording function of a VCR is getting this combo of two devices online, One of them is indeed cheap but it only handles the digital section, the digital to analog conversion is handled by the Aja box, it was designed in the era of analog by engineers who knew analog better.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...ed#post2551583