Basic info needed: VCR, TBC connections?
 

My marketplace equipment has arrived, JVC-VHS and FOR.A TBC and now I need guidance on connection wires and order.

I bought these to hopefully improve from what I had --a SONY VHS and the ADVC-300. I was about 5 video tapes into my approximately 120 tapes (VHS and D8 mixture) using just these two items and my family thought the quality was good but I was not so sure after reading this forum.

Ok, so here I am scouring this forum for the basics.

Is it VHS-- S video cable to TBC--S video cable to ADVD-300 then firewire to my MAC.

My MAC PRO is running the current software 11.2.1 and I am unable to go back to the older software like it is recommended here and I have no access to a PC computer with older Windows.

If someone could also direct me to the proper threads on whatever settings I need to set on the VHS, I would be most grateful.

Hi Paula. I take it your Mac Pro is the 2013 model (affectionately known as the trash can)? Or do you have one of the brand new ones? Or is it a MacBook Pro?

I guess though if you were already using the Canopus box before then you already have the appropriate cables/adapter(s) to connect the firewire output from the ADVC-300 to your Mac.

But yes you will need a couple of S-Video cables--as short as is feasible. You run one from your JVC VCR's output to the TBC's input. Then another one from the TBC's output to the ADVC-300's input.

I take it you're using iMovie to do the transfers?

Also, if you have D8 tapes I'm assuming you have a D8 camcorder to transfer them. For that setup you will not use the TBC or the ADVC-300. Just a cable connecting the firewire output from the camcorder to your Mac's firewire port/thunderbolt to firewire adapter.

Yep, it is the ol' trash can with the legendary Thunderbolt display. Don't laugh but I kept this whole setup for just this project so I don't disturb all the external hard drives and what not attached to the trash can. I have a dedicated area in the house. I am determined to get this done and reclaim the space.

I do have the camcorders so that is a bit of a relief!

When I first started this project I was doing one tape at a time. After uploading yes in iMovie I would do all the chopping and make short 7 to 15 minute movies so no one would later be bored. I would then upload to a family playlist on YouTube for any family members near and far to view at any time. That was extremely slow. I am now going to upload all the movies to external hard drives and get all these tapes out of my space and work on editing movies over time. NEW YEAR NEW PLAN.

Thank you for this quick reply.

I am going to start it all up and ask more questions. I am also gonna cross my fingers that these results are better than the old way because I have a husband who thinks I am crazy for upgrading the equipment. He thinks the prior movies looked perfectly fine.

Two many conversions in the chain especially when it ends up with a lossy codec like DV, Why don't you connect the S-Video cable straight from the VCR to the ADVC-300? What went wrong that forced you to use an external TBC? I know the ADVC-300 has a good frame synchronizer so there shouldn't be any dropped frames there.

To be very honest nothing went wrong. I just thought from reading this forum I needed a TBC. I will compare and try and discern whether I need the TBC. My husband is in your camp latreche34.

She may have been going off of LordSmurf's suggested workflow. I think she bought the stuff from him.

latreche34 makes a valid point that the DV codec used by the Canopus box is lossy and reduces the already crappy chroma (color) resolution in VHS tapes even further. I think it's debatable how noticeable that loss is if you're just planning to use the footage as-captured.

But part of making VHS look as good as possible is by using avisynth filters to process it, and filters do the best job when they have as much chroma and luma resolution as possible.

That said... you're sort of at a crossroads here. Macs are really only set up to capture DV via firewire (as you're doing)--especially in the Catalina/Big Sur era where Apple has removed a lot of underlying support for other methods. There probably are still some working solutions to input analog from Blackmagic devices (latreche34 do you happen to know?), but I know LordSmurf is not a fan of Blackmagic's analog capture hardware.

The other way to proceed with your Mac would be to get a box that converts analog to SDI (there are a few available but they can be pricey unless you luck out on ebay). SDI is a high quality digital format that would capture the full quality of VHS tapes. Then once it's in SDI format you can use a simple box like Blackmagic's mini Recorder which has a thunderbolt output that would go right into your Mac. You would then use Blackmagic's included software to do your captures--and that does work on Big Sur.

But then once you've got these high quality files and want to run them through avisynth, you're stuck again because avisynth is a windows program. There is a Mac version called vapoursynth, but I have no experience with it and I don't know if it can use all of the avisynth plugins (which are the meat and potatoes of the whole thing). Maybe someone else can clarify whether vapoursynth is doable for the normal VHS restoration plugins.

The cheaper and perhaps easier alternative (especially if you already have a Windows PC in the house) is to buy a windows-based capture card (which doesn't have to be expensive) and use the free program Virtualdub to do the captures from Windows. You could then run the them through avisynth and end up with files you can then edit and assemble on the Mac if you desire.

Technically, Boot Camp (running windows on your Mac) is an option here, but I don't know how complex you want to make this.

By contrast, none of what I just said applies to your D8 tapes, which will be a cinch in comparison. They are already in the DV codec and all you're doing by connecting your D8 camcorder to your Mac is dumping the digital files off the tapes into iMovie. Easy peasy.

You can also just ignore everything I said and continue down the path you are already on. Capturing VHS to DV the way you're doing it is perfectly valid. But by skipping the avisynth step in the process you might prove your husband right (in that you may not perceive much of a quality improvement).

The JVC VCR should definitely give some improvement though, by virtue of its TBC and noise reduction, and the For.A TBC is a reliable option (and could be used with the windows setup if you choose to go that route).

Thanks bookemdano for your thoughts.

I am now sitting here with about 40 VHS tapes from 1988 to 1997 and wondering about life and the pursuit of happiness.

Will my kids even appreciate this journey? Is this process helping me avoid dementia? Is Tiger Woods going to play golf again? Yes my thinking is all over the map. :)

I am very appreciative of your efforts to help me here.

We do have a Windows Computer in the house. It is my daughter's. She had to move back home due to financial issues. It is downstairs in her work area. She has two jobs one to make some money and the other in her field which involves the computer. The job she has to make money she leaves the house and I could set up downstairs but I have been a Mac person since 2007 and thus I just am not sure about that process. I love editing video/movies on my mac. Also her Windows computer is running the latest Windows which as I have read here is another problem.

Can you share with me what is a box that converts the analog to SDI? You said I may have luck on eBay.

Is running Boot Camp a complicated deal? I do have 3 Mac computers in my house. Turning this old trash can into a Windows computer might be ok. I am only using it for this video to digital process.

What do you think?

While I am trying to figure out where to go from here, I did try to just go from the JVC VHS to the ADVC-300 to the computer without using the independent TBC but alas I have no sound capture only video. I believe the video is better than my Sony VHS but now I have no sound whereas with the SONY my captures were sound and video. Can anyone suggest why this might be happening?

I totally get your thought process. I went through a similar dilemma a couple years ago when transferring my family's ancient old 8mm movies (film, not video) via a contraption that did the job, but at mediocre quality compared to what I know it *could* be if I had used better equipment ($$$). Ultimately, my family was over the moon just to be able to see that old footage after many decades of it lying fallow. No one noticed the poor quality except me.

That said, I promised myself that once I had a sufficiently better method available, I would transfer them all over again--if only to satisfy myself. I like to think that maybe distant relatives might care (sort of the way we look in amazement now at old restored movies from the early 1900s, color footage from WW1, etc.). Since you're the one who's going to be doing all the work, it's really yourself you have to please.

If you decide to stick with your Mac (I'm a Mac person first and foremost too, so I get it) and you want to go the SDI route for capturing your VHS tapes then I think maybe the cheapest way to go would be to pick up a Blackmagic Design Mini Converter on ebay. It's a small box that takes a composite or S-Video + stereo audio input and converts it to SDI. Then to get SDI into the Mac you'd need a Blackmagic Mini Recorder box. There are now two versions on the market. The original UltraStudio Mini Recorder has a Thunderbolt output, which would plug directly into your trashcan without any adapters (though you would need to buy a thunderbolt cable if you don't have one). It's been discontinued but is available used on amazon/ebay. The new UltraStudio Recorder 3G uses a Thunderbolt 3 connection. For that you would need to buy Apple's Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter, plus a thunderbolt cable (if you don't have one).

The Blackmagic recorder has its own Mac app (free download on their web site) that will capture your video into whatever codec you want. If you're going to go through the trouble of this type of capture you would want to use 8 bit uncompressed video, or Apple's Prores422 HQ (which is only lightly compressed and visually lossless). You could then take those files to avisynth on your daughter's computer, or you could use Boot Camp to set up a windows partition on your Mac Pro. Or maybe someone will chime in if vapoursynth directly on the Mac is workable.

There are more expensive analog to SDI converters that incorporate a TBC/frame sync (such as the Ensemble BrightEye 75), but given that you already have a good frame TBC then I would just go for the Blackmagic Design Mini. Note that you would also need a few cables/adapters to connect everything up. I can detail those if you want, but I've already thrown a lot of info at you.

I'd say to go that route you'd be looking at about $250-300 (~$100 for the Design Mini Converter, ~$125 for the Ultrastudio Mini Recorder, and $25-75 for cables/adapters, depending on what thunderbolt stuff you'd need).

If all that has you feeling overwhelmed and you want to step back from the brink, your two simpler options are:

1. Just use what you have and take comfort in the fact that your family won't care about how it looks. VHS is pretty much potato quality to begin with, so it's not like you're ever going to be able to make it look like it came from an HD camera.
2. Use your daughter's PC for the capturing and processing (you would get a lot of handholding here if you want it--most of the gurus here are well versed with Windows capture/restoration tools). Once those steps are complete you could retreat to the comfort of your Mac for the editing/assembling in iMovie. Note that this option would still require purchasing a suitable capture adapter for the PC, but you can get one for less than $100--perhaps much less.

Whatever method you choose you'll need a lot of storage space. Hope you have (or plan to buy) some large external hard drives to store your captures.

You may want to set aside some more time to think about and research this before deciding what to do on the VHS side. In the meantime, you could work on capturing the D8 tapes, since you already have everything you need to get those done.

Just saw your newest post. Did you connect the RCA white and red cables from the JVC to the Canopus box? The S-Video cable is only video (which can be confusing since it has four pins inside). You still need the red and white cables for the audio. Make sure all cables are firmly connected, and that you've got them plugged into the VCR's output jacks, not the input ones).

bookemdano, I just read this and I felt the empathy from your soul. I am going to go to bed get up and reread this again with hope in my heart.

Thank you for your kindness.

-- merged --

And I am going to redo those cables in the morning. Even try a different set than was sent to me.

Thank you.

My pleasure. There are plenty of helpful folks here, so rest assured whatever route you decide to go you'll get as much help as you want.

Video = all s-video
VCR out > frame TBC in > frame TBC out > capture card in

Audio = VCR direct to capture card via RCA (red/white)

Nothing to be set on the TBC, essentially preset to act like a TBC-1000.

VCR needs menu set, must have remote
R3 OFF
Picture mode AUTO/NORM
Calibration OFF
Overlay/Superimpose OFF
blue screen OFF

This isn't entirely accurate.

Capturing DV/D8 over Firewire isn't the end-all/be-all "best method" often touted. There are valid reasons to capture over analog. The transfer method can lose footage. Just seconds, but those can be valuable. It's also a nuisance when it breaks into clips, and software often ignores your setting to NOT break. Consumer optics never hit 720x480 true resolve, so you're not missing anything. The conversation changes when pro glass was shot, higher end DV25 camera.

Modern Firewire is a PITA, adapters don't always cooperate, PCI chipsets can suck.

Do so with extremely good bitrates, and good deinterlacing (use Hybrid for Mac, for QTGMC).

My cat likes her cat food. I'd never eat it. Yuck. :screwy:

No.
No frame TBC = terrible idea.

Immaterial.
Loss in one areas is no reason to create/allow loss in others.

I'm not anti-DV. Not great, should be avoided, but sometimes only viable method (mostly Macs). The quality hit here is still better than quality hits from lack of TBCs.

Eh. The primary issue is good hardware to capture. Without that, Avisynth has nothing to work with.

It drops frames without reporting. Unacceptable.

I don't think this person needs to go down that path.

Unlike capture, you can run Avisynth in a VM. I did that 10+ years ago, on a Mac Mini that I still have (OS X 10.6).

Newer macOS are apparently forcing Win10 only for Bootcamp, and then the new M1 chip may not support it at all (not read either way on that one).

Yes. :congrats:

That JVC VCR will give a large quality improvement, and the frame TBC will ensure stable quality.

Yes, they will.
Sadly, you may be gone by then -- which is the catalyst for them to care.
Tip: make family time include family history, and photo/video is an important part of it.

Actually, yes! Research shows.

This is a can of worms. I'd not go down that path.

No.

People are often too nice to say anything. But they notice. You'll know because you'll often get compliments for how good it looks when it does look good. Again, experience, been doing this for 25+ years now.

Yep. Exactly. :congrats:

I think now is a good stopping point for her. I really do think she has what she needs here. Too much more, and it'll overwhelm, and result in project abandonment.

This is a good option as well.

Much less? Doubt it. That's the territory of crap cards (Easycaps, Elgato, "grabbers", etc), and you're better off with a DV card.

Note: You cannot capture directly to external drives. Capture internal, transfer files.

DV capture boxes such as the ADVC-300 cannot be used as a pass-through I get that. but capturing DV to a firewire they work and produce a very stable signal (I've seen their captures). Now, if the OP wants to use an external TBC I suggest that he captures lossless with a USB or PCI card under a windows platform. In my opinion using an external TBC with a DV capture device is not a such good idea but the OP is free to do whatever he thinks it works better.

Not really. I have one here, have for years. These boxes drop frames like anything else, can lose audio sync. The "TBC" is laughably worthless, does nothing. I have some excellent captures to show how craptastic the ADVC-300 boxes are, just not had time to craft sample videos yet. The box needs a good VCR with line TBC, chased by frame TBC.

Then the worst aspect is the DV chroma loss.

If you have to swallow a tough pill, DV loss is the one I'd prefer. It tastes foul, but you'll live. Because lack of TBCs is like swallowing poison (captures ruined far worse).

Good Afternoon,

I took a day off from thinking about this project.

First off the OP is a SHE! Just wanted latreche34 to know because I realize most of the time it is the guy of the house that is charge of the video projects because he most likely was the cameraman. In our house I was the family historian. I carried two cameras around my neck for years. One manual and one point and shoot. Sometimes I also had what I feel now is the dreaded video recorder/camcorder. If I wouldn't have taken those dang movies I wouldn't feel guilty about all this.

Back to the game plan.

First off, I started thinking about this project 18 years ago. At the time the ADVC-300 was something people were suggesting as "the thing". I am not sure if you all had this forum going that far back but I read it somewhere and I can probably safely say not here. Anyways, I bought it and there it sat for 18 years. In 2013 when I got my MacPro I started puttering around with it but never but my foot on the gas.

So I started back up again and came upon this forum around December 2020. I felt I probably could do better and thus I got some equipment from this forum's marketplace.

As it stands today. I am a bit confused as to the use of "lossy codec like DV" as described by latreche34. I gather it means the ADVC-300 is converting the analog into data that is not all that great. My question is as opposed to what? DV means Digital Video right? So what are the different codecs? And if my goal is to share family history via editing a 2 hour video down to interesting snippets with the best possible resolution what codec should I aim for that is reasonable?

Next, let's say I move the whole project down to the basement and use my daughter's desktop Windows based computer. What exactly is a "capture card"? Are you saying after the TBC there is a piece of equipment or is it software I get for the computer? I am kind of confused about this. And if she has Windows 10 is this going to impede the process? Also, I for sure need an end product to do the editing on the Mac.

lordsmurf, can you clarify what you mean by, "You cannot capture directly to external drives. Capture internal, transfer files?" Are you saying don't even open the external hard drive just do everything on the computer's hard drive and the copy it to external hard drive? So does that mean I don't even open the external hard drive just do one video at a time and copy and paste onto the external hard drive? My computer is 1TB. I prepared for this project with two 12 TB external hard drives and a few 8 TB ones. My flow was to have everything on the 12TBs and the finished edited movies on the 8TBs.

I did on a happy note resolve the sound issue. I had my connectors in the wrong output slots on the back of the JVC.

Thank you one and all.

First sorry for referring to you as "he".
DV is a format that was used for storing video on DV and Digital8 video tapes, It did okay back then but it was never intended for capturing and archiving analog videos, The format used for this purpose is called D1 standard, it is a lossless AVI 720x480 (720x576 PAL/SECAM) 4:2:2 chroma subsampling compared to DV which is only 4:1:1 for NTSC.
With lossless AVI you can edit, correct and de-interlace with minimum loss, and off course you can always encode to a much efficient and better codec than DV such as H.264 for sharing, even when keeping the chroma sub. at 4:2:2 and a decent bitrate you will end up with files equal or less to DV in size but with much much better quality.

I'm chuffed to see some female representation here, Paula.

LordSmurf will likely chip in his take but here are my answers:

The DV codec has a long history dating back to the mid '90s. There are multiple "flavors" of it, but the type that got used in consumer camcorders (and firewire boxes like the ADVC-300) degrades the color resolution a bit in order to keep the bitrate down. A distinction should be drawn here between DV camcorders like D8/miniDV and boxes like the Canopus.

With D8/miniDV camcorders, the encoding to digital (in DV format) was done in the camera at the time that footage was filmed. Its resolution is "baked in", and the act of transferring it to your computer over firewire is simply copying those digital 1s and 0s off the tape to the computer.

With the Canopus and other similar boxes, the video starts out in analog format and the ADVC-300 is what digitizes it to DV (reducing the color resolution in the process). There is nothing wrong with that per se. That reduction is not really noticeable when you're simply dumping off footage and then viewing it as-is, but it can reduce the effectiveness of processing that footage with filters, color correction, etc.

If you think you won't want to do any fiddling with the footage (other than just editing it), then you may just want to continue on with the ADVC-300 and your current methods. Advantage being that you don't need to buy anything else, mess with Windows, etc.

But if you want to capture your VHS tapes in the highest quality possible, either for further clean-up now or just to keep a "master" copy of the tapes so you can get rid of them, then you may want to explore using a capture device (it's sometimes referred to as a "card" because they used to always be an internal PCI card that plugged into the motherboard of a PC/Mac. Nowadays there are USB and thunderbolt options). One of these other capture devices would allow you to obtain a capture that preserves the full color resolution of the VHS tapes.

Maybe a half-decent analogy would be scanning a 4x6 print of a photograph with a flatbed scanner versus using a specialized scanner to scan the original film negative. Both give you a decent-looking scan on the monitor. And if you're just looking at it casually you may not notice any difference in the two. But the film scan has more detail, which matters if you wanted to tweak the colors, enlarge it, etc.

Given that you want to do your editing on a Mac, the best codec to use for the best quality capture is called Apple ProRes422. iMovie can handle it fine. It takes up more space than if you used DV, but you get better color resolution, which would be a boon if you want to process it with filters.

To reiterate, with the D8 tapes you have, the conversion to DV has already occurred there, so there's no extra resolution to capture.

RE: the TBC, TBCs are hardware--full stop. The TBC you purchased can and should be used for any analog tape capture, no matter whether you do it on your Mac or a PC. The frame TBC's job is to take the sort of unstable signal from the VCR and correct it to something the capture device expects to see. I guess you could sort of think of it like a faucet filling up a funnel with water--no matter how hard you turn on the tap, or if the tap is inconsistent, water will always come out of the funnel at the same rate. A frame TBC sort of does that for frames/fields of video.

Windows 10 is a problem for certain capture devices, but I think it's OK for others. Some of its issues are just annoyances that can be ameliorated.

If you have (or are willing to acquire) a copy of Windows 7 then you could install that on your Mac Pro via bootcamp. It's not exactly childs' play but it's not rocket science either. Macs have a built-in app called "Boot Camp Assistant" that assists you through the process.

Regardless of where/how you capture the footage, you should be able to use iMovie on the Mac to edit it, add titles, upload to YouTube, etc.

External drives can sometimes be too slow for the actual capture process. That and occasionally they can lose power or connection to the computer (like say the family dog trips over the USB cable) which would cause the capture to fail. So I think LordSmurf was just conveying that it's a best practice to capture to an internal drive. And then you can move those files to an external drive later (either as you go or capture a bunch of tapes in order and then move all the files to an external).

I think your drive setup (internal and external) is fine. You can always buy more externals later if you need them (you might not).

There's always been a bad assumption that video is male, and older. And that this forum is USA only. But all are false. While male does have the majority, a large/not-small minority is female. Of all ages. And from all over North America, Europe, Australia, and South America -- with only Asia and Africa taking smaller stakes in viewership. We have a nice community here. :)

Lemmings parroting Canopus marketing. Fake advice. Not actual advice from knowledgable users.

Canopus was a real BS operation back then, before bought out by Grass Valley. All of their stuff was inferior, be it Edius, Procoder, ADVC, etc. They were 2nd-string behind Matrox, ATI, Adobe, MainConcept, and others. So they used marketing to bluster and BS buyers. Of all the offerings, Procoder 1.6 was excellent, but that was really it (nothing later, nothing earlier, just 1.6).

2002, but I had guides and info on other sites years earlier. I've been around a while, using this same name for about 26 years now.

No. "DV" actually means nothing. It was a play on term, to make you think it meant Digital Video. But it does not. "DV" means DV.

This is easy.

VCR > TBC > capture card ... standard workflow
Win10 need approved capture card known to not have issues with Win10 (and Win10 is the SOB here, the card is not at fault), and I believe that graphics cards play a part here, with nVidia cards being the main vilain, not integrated Intel/AMD graphics.

Correct.

1tb is empty?
DV video is 13gb/hour
Lossless is about 2x-3x that, with Huffyuv about 35gb/hour (it varies on content)

Seems fine to me.

Ah, good. That deck should serve you well.
I need to make some per-unit diagrams for connections and menus. Added that to my to-do list!

50% is more than I'd consider "a bit", for NTSC 4:1:1. It has noticeable color loss, in addition to DV blocking (similar to straved-bitrate MPEG), and most DV codecs also soften (like certain MPEG encoders). For PAL, 4:2:0 is like most of compressed format, and I'd be more okay calling it "a bit".

That's a really good analogy. I'm using that for a guide I'm writing! :D

Not best practice, but required. And it has nothing to do with Fluffy or Spot. External drives communicate in different ways, including the through CPU. The speed is not there. It's not sustained, but burst. You need sustained. The internal drives are directly into motherboard BUS/PCI lanes, sustained, and fast.

Ok just for the sake of full decision making effort, what all would I need to go from here with the equipment I have to the PC/Windows route?

What capture card?
What software?

Goal being, all the VHS tapes onto the external hard drives, take those external hard drives upstairs and work on editing one video at a time on my Macs. So I need guidance to make sure the end product is something I can work with in iMovie. Now if correcting color and whatever through filter software is something I could learn on the job I would consider that too.

I guess I just want to feel real solid on my decision and then throw out these tapes!

https://imgur.com/a/KA96Pal

PS From what little you all know me here am I better just going with the Mac set up? I am throwing this in because besides you all will anyone be able to tell I went the Windows route? Are there any video clips somewhere for me to view the differences I might see with PC/Windows computer vs this DV set up I have at this time?

I think you should start using what you got right know at least you get to practice a little bit, try all combinations don't get intimidated by our advices, analog capture is full of surprises, what you were advised may not work for your case or for some tapes, so try different combination of workflows and stick with what works, this is not exact science, it's a trial and error process and you'll only know what's better by practice.

I think you could be onto something here!

I will file a progress report soon!

Yes, stated that some posts ago. :wink2:

JVC > FA TBC > ADVC on Mac
Do that for now. You have all of it there, and some understanding of what you're doing.

Quality will not best, due to DV.
But quality will be far better than what you've been getting in the past. And that may be enough.

Report back!

Just a little update and a question:

I decided to do the JVC-->TBC-->ADVC-300 starting with a VHS tape not taken by me but just something one of my kids was given at the end of his senior year. I thought he might like to see it again now that he has graduated 20 years ago from high school. In other words quality doesn't matter to me and required no editing on my part. Kind of a good practice run. It basically was a slideshow to music and the quality was not there probably because the yearbook committee didn't exactly have high tech back in 2002.

One thing that sort of stumped me was the whole thing of using the computer's hard drive to process the incoming movie and then putting on the external hard drive. To me this process was not all that user friendly on my Mac. Most likely because I don't think I have ever tried to do a copy and paste with two drives and one app. I was unable to have both drives open in their respective iMovie application. I just wanted to drag from one drive to the other and that did not work. I had to copy the movie to the desktop then move it into the external hard drive. Is it because the external hard drive needs the main hard drive's app?
This all probably sounds confusing but in any event the process took longer and I am hoping I am not losing data. God forbid I lose more data after all this. I have currently about 500 GB free on hard drive. I am planning to delete from hard drive every time I complete a movie.

The other question I had on the JVC. The on button is green and the TBC button is red. Just wanted to verify that means TBC is on.

Project Report Filed!

If you attempt to capture directly to external drives, bad things can happen. Not just video problems, but computer crashing problems. Mac OS is a bit better with truer sustained, but still not foolproof. Feel free to try it. Anybody using Windows shouldn't even try.

DV is only 13gb/hour, really compressed, so it may be fine directly over Firewire/Thunderbolt. The format was made to work with slow IDE drives in 90s.

TBC light = on
no TBC light = off

Do you have the remote, remember to adjust settings? If questions, post.

RE: the issue copying movies from drive to drive: iMovie "helpfully" maintains everything inside a single "iMovie Library" file. If you open up the Finder > Go menu > Home > Movies, you should see it there.

There is a trick to view what's inside if you feel like it. Once you've navigated to the iMovie Library file, right click on it and choose "Show package contents". It will open up as if it was a folder. You should see your iMovie project names in there, and if you drill down a bit you should see your movies.

Thinking about this, it may be problematic to do as LordSmurf suggested and capture to the internal drive and then move them to the external. Because iMovie requires everything to be within its database file, and that database file has to exist on a single drive, it would just get too discombobulated I think.

So it may be better to:

1. Quit iMovie
2. Plug in your external drive
3. Open the finder and go to your iMovie library file as I explained above
4. Drag and drop the entire iMovie Library file to your external drive
5. After it's done copying, reopen iMovie
6. Go to the File Menu > Open Library > Other
7. In the box that comes up choose Locate, then browse to your external drive and double-click on the iMovie Library located there.
8. It should appear in the box. Click on it to select it and click the "Choose" button.

That should do it. You should see the existing movie you captured in there.

After you do that, you may want to delete the one that's in your internal drive just so there isn't any confusion as to which library you're viewing/saving to.

From that point on, your entire iMovie library, including all captured movies will exist only on the external drive. I highly recommend that periodically you plug in one of the other external drives also and copy your iMovie library to it, so that you have a backup. Hard drives can and do go bad, and sometimes you get no warning when they do so.

Hope that helps! iMovie will run a bit slower when the library is on a hard drive (your Mac Pro's internal drive is an SSD which is much faster), but ultimately I think this will likely be an easier workflow.

In previous years it all was getting captured on the external hard drive. So I am going to try bookemdano's workflow idea and see if this makes the process smoother.


Ok so TBC light is red and it is on and yes I did adjust all the settings via remote.

-- merged --

bookemdano, I have a 20 year old football VHS probably something the high school team put together. Even though my son basically sat on the bench he still would love to to see it. So for this VHS tape I am going to try your method. I just need to get a flow here because I am all over the map.

I never used iMovie till this project. I am a photo buff so I like doing slideshows with music. Though I do use movie snippets every now and then. I have used FotoMagico for many years. FotoMagico is very intuitive. This iMovie has one too many areas for me, like events, projects, movies and thus I have some trial and error going on here too!

Oh! I guess I thought you were already familiar with iMovie (bad assumption on my part--you never actually stated that).

For the record, I agree with you. I find it really unintuitive.

Unfortunately, on the Mac there aren't a lot of choices for transferring DV. Aside from iMovie, Apple has a professional NLE (non-linear editor) called Final Cut Pro, but it's a very similar workflow to iMovie and costs a few hundred bucks.

I can't personally vouch for this app, and I think it's overpriced, but I have seen it mentioned as an alternative for folks who just want an app dedicated to dumping the DV from their camcorders (or your Canopus box). So if you find iMovie to be too aggravating for that purpose, you could consider LifeFlix: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lifefl...30212114?mt=12

However, ultimately I think you said you would like to edit these movies, and you really need an NLE to do that kind of job. And that leads you back to iMovie, Final Cut Pro, or something like Adobe Premiere.

One advantage of LifeFlix is that it should just produce capture files that you can easily shuttle around, rather than iMovie and FCP that want to contain everything into a database. But $100 for a single purpose app when you already have iMovie--hard to justify the cost in my book.

What you may want to consider doing is look around for instruction on iMovie. Depending on your learning style you could go with books, paid video tutorials (like Lynda.com) or free content on YouTube. Maybe if you saw a capture demonstrated (or had a list of steps to follow) you'd feel more comfortable with just using iMovie.

Hi back at you bookemdano,

I have used iMovie and made about 15 edited videos from the application. The problem is I am not sure I know what I am doing in terms of saving stuff properly.

I want to save the full VHS DV all of it the best I can in one spot in a nice column in order.

Then I want to dissect that long two hour boring thing down to some interesting 7 to 15 minute stories.

I then one to keep both.

I just want that original full length unedited DV intact on a external drive and available if I ever want to look at the whole thing again though I probably won't but just in case. Then I feel safe throwing out the VHS tapes.

The movie that I make from the DV I am putting on another external hard drive as finished products.

Right now I have Events and Movies. Are the Events the captured DV? Is a captured DV viewable like a movie or do you have to make the whole captured DV into a movie and then save that thing.

See if you can figure out what is my problem.

Maybe that app for $100 will help? I just want moveable things to organize them on the external hard drives accordingly.

-- merged --

I just reviewed the LifeFix and it feels like it does have my name on it. You are right $100 seems like a lot but it would save me time. Do you think it compromises quality in any way?

LifeFlix looks interesting, but "Video8, Hi8" is misleading. False.
DV and Digital8 only.

LordSmurf - Yeah I agree that it's misleading for them to mention Video8 and Hi8.

But yeah, the reviews on the App Store seem pretty decent overall, so it may be just what you're looking for Paula. I saw in one of the reviews a mention of a free trial that lets you transfer one tape, so I would do that to make sure it works for you. The catch is that you have to download it from their web site rather than the Mac App Store link I posted before (unfortunately, Apple in their infinite stubbornness has never made a provision for trials of apps, so developers who want to offer them have to do it themselves).

Here's the link: https://www.lifeflix.com/products/lifeflix-free

Should be pretty straightforward to download and install it. It says they don't ask for any payment info, so the trial should be 100% free. You can try transferring the football tape and see how it goes. If it works well and you like the process then you can buy it either directly from them or go back to the App Store and buy it there.

The video quality will be exactly the same as if you transferred it with iMovie. The Canopus box is actually what produces the DV video 1s and 0s--iMovie or LifeFlix are just two different ways to copy those 1s and 0s over to your Mac. Just make sure in LifeFlix when you're importing that you do not check the box that says "Convert to HD". That will compress your footage to h264, which is a good codec for sharing but a bad one for archiving. You can convert the files later when you're editing them down. As long as you don't use the "Convert to HD" function in LifeFlix, your captures will stay in the DV codec the Canopus box created them in.

Looks like they have some video tutorials on their site, so you could watch those if you want to see a demonstration of the importing process.

Good Afternoon!

Here is a little progress report.

Decided to take the plunge and get the LifeFlix last night. By the way, whenever I get a new app I always think about the time spent by the developers picking the right name and icon. Last night was no different. So the team thought yes, LifeFlix capturing your life for a flick. haha

I did see the free trial option on the developer's website but decided that Apple will just give me my money back if disaster strikes so I went with it. Well, to be honest it was a very rough go with about 5 FORCE QUITS of the app. I had that lovely spinning wheel of death a few times and I felt like the app was not recognizing the ADVC-300. I sent the developers an inquiry last night to see if this was an issue because it is not a camera. So far no response.

After sending an inquiry to the developers of LifeFlix I decided to go back to using iMovie on the external drive just like old times for the football VHS tape. It worked out ok but like you all say with a poorly shot tape 20 years ago what can one really expect in terms of quality. Also as I stated before with the tapes other people took and gave to my kids I am not going to work hard on and just go with the "as is" policy.

This afternoon, I decided to go back to the LifeFlix and it worked like a charm. I imported Football Tape #2 a Varsity Football tape which according to my son was done with better "stuff" than that first one I did which was the JV team the year before. I used the LifeFlix route and made sure not to check the HD box and I went with the uncompressed option. It is interesting LifeFlix does not allow sound during the process. Kind of quiet and a bit disconcerting because one is not sure if the sound is ok. But I did it.

So the tape starts out wonderful because as my son later told me the Varsity football tapes are better than the JV ones like I did yesterday. It looked really darn good in the beginning. Then it looks like as the football season went on they had poor camera days. There was a center horizontal line flicker about every other highlight especially the ones that were long distance shots. I decided to do an experiment and take the middle TBC out and just go JVC to ADVC-300 for the exact same Football #2 tape. I then ran both movies one with the middle TBC and one without side by side for an in-house poll and the participants were not told why I was asking for their opinions. I gave no guidance except to ask them which movie looked better to them.

Results
Daughter an animator/storyboard artist chose the movie with the external TBC because she thought the resolution was better
Husband a general surgeon picked the one without the TBC because he thought the movie was brighter
Me I felt the resolution felt the same but the one without the TBC had more realistic and brighter color.

So there ya have it. I am going to save the one with the TBC but if anyone has suggestions about why one might be brighter I am all here for it.

Tomorrow I am going to work on a workflow for the organization of these DVs on external drives and import Football #2 movie into iMovie to see how that works though I am not editing.

Over and out and I hope everyone had a pretty good week-end.

The reason for the frame TBC is to purify the signal. NOT using it will likely lead to dropped/repeated frames, and audio sync loss. You may not notice it now, but you probably will during a full viewing.

All items in a workflow have some % of process noise. Others can actually fix invalid levels/properties from other items in the workflow. So, for example, while the color may be "bright", that may be a bad thing. The VCR can output illegal levels/values, and the TBC may be correcting it.

Now, that said, this TBC have the ability to tweak chroma and luma. Get a screwdriver, and slower tweak the front panel controls to your liking. Just realize that you may like bad levels. But it's possible to do. In fact, you can pump color even more, make it brighter. I calibrate gear, but you can break the calibration if you want (as it can always be put back).

So do NOT take the TBC out of the chain. Just compensate.

The ADVC also has value tweaks, a proc amp, if you don't want to mess with the TBC calibrations.

Resolution should be the same.

I am curious to see actual sample clips. And comparison clips would be great here as well. For example, have you ever calibrated the computer monitor? Because you NEVER want to miscalibrate video to a miscalibrated monitor! We could help you with that. My monitors are calibrated (and recalibrated, as values can drift as monitors age).

At very least, does that JVC improve quality? :)

Hello Friends,

Latest Update:

I ditched the LifeFlix app. I asked for my money back and thru their Apple Support system I did get the refund. I just felt it wasn't giving me anything more than importing straight to iMovie. Yes, one did get files but too many files, files of lists, files of thumbnails, actual files and quite frankly I just decided to go back to what I know and that is iMovie.

Next, I decided to just keep importing to the External Hard Drive. I am not having problems right now so it just makes life easier for me because my computer is 1TB and I would have to do a lot of copying, pasting and then deleting. I just decided to keep with what is working that is, using the 12T external drive. Now, if someone says I am absolutely decreasing quality I will go to using the computer's hard drive and moving the imported data over to the external hard drive iMovie Library but it is way more work.

I am not going to lie I do envy all of you with the perfect setup capturing the best with a PC, Windows OS and the best capture cards. I kind of feel guilty every time I read posts that the DV I am making has lost whatever and is second rate. I had to make a call and at least finish this thing before I leave this world.

Heck, I shared the two football movies with my one son via YouTube and he got all mushy talking about being a part of that team 20 years ago so I do have that going for me.

QUESTION:

Is there any way I can improve resolution of import? Right now it is 640X480. Is that all there is my friends?

Also when I go to export a project out of iMovie if given the option does changing it to 720 help or hurt it? Most of the time iMovie is not allowing me any upgrades from the 640X480 but a few times it did and I can't seem to figure it out.

I guess I need a bit of a tutor session on resolution.

As always THANK YOU!

First of all there is absolutely no qualitative difference between capturing to your Mac's internal drive or your 12TB drive. The only potential issue is data loss if the external drive gets disconnected (but it's very low probability so long as the drive's cables are firmly plugged in and your house's power stays on). I think the main downside is that the external drive will be slower than your internal drive, but as long as you're not finding the speeds intolerable you can keep on keepin' on.

Also, don't fret that you're not doing a lossless capture. That way involves a ton more time, money and expertise. And quite honestly, diminishing returns is a big factor. Doing it the way you're doing it is getting you 80-90%. Even the best capture methods and filtering can't overcome the inherent low resolution of VHS tape. Yes, there are ways to make it a *bit* better, but fundamentally it's still crappy old VHS--nothing will change that.

And fact is, there is a charm to old school video. I mean if I could wave a magic wand and transform my old childhood tapes into 4K high def I'm not sure I would. Those videos (which I have watched probably a hundred times over the years) in all their crappy quality are an artifact of the time in which they were so lovingly created. Trying to make them *not* look like what they are seems sort of phony to me. I mean of course you want the video/audio to be in sync and you want them to look like what you remember. But the method you are using largely does just that.

As you found out, your family is there for the actual memories, not a 1080p re-creation of them.

But if you aren't ready to completely close the door on improving the quality, you can use the tactic I took with my family's old film--save the originals. Pack'em up into a big plastic crate and store them somewhere out of the way in the basement, assuming you have a basement :) They will be completely fine, and that way you can hold onto the idea of doing them again in better quality, while knowing that you probably won't. :laugh:

To answer your question... No. VHS isn't even 640x480 resolution to begin with. If you try to enlarge it to HD or something you just end up magnifying its underlying flaws (sorta like when you try to pinch to zoom using your phone's camera--it looks pretty bad because the detail just isn't there to zoom into).

You can export as 720p from iMovie if you want to, but that just burns in black bars on the sides, since 720p is a widescreen format (16x9) but VHS is a 4x3 format. I would just leave it as 480p. People can still make it "full screen" on YouTube if they want to. It won't look any worse than if you export it as 720p and they full-screen it. VHS just lacks sufficient resolution to get any extra detail out of it.

WOW bookemdano you must be an amazing person in real life. Some how or other you always seem to have a very comforting and informative reply. In this messed up world I find people like you a godsend. You have been immensely helpful with just words. Imagine that!

Ok and now you are gonna laugh really hard. Oh probably about 15 years ago I bought those nice plastic VHS cases. Put all 40 or so of my VHSs in those cases. I restarted this project about December 2020. So I am 5 tapes into it, 2 Football, 2 Home Videos, and one kid's senior year in photos from the high school. I pitched every completed caseless tape into a box with a DONE sticker on them. I then carefully put the plastic cases in another box to sell one day on FaceBook marketplace for probably $5 haha. While importing a tape today I started reading more forums and threads feeling guilty again about settling for DV. I must of read half dozen very entertaining threads on this issue! lordsmurf always in the mix haha. The guilt was so strong I took the videos out of the pitch box and put them back in the nice plastic cases. Yep even before your suggestion tonight I was already dreaming of that day.

OH AND I HAVE A HUGE BASEMENT! :D:D:D:screwy:

Very kind of you to say Paula. I think you and I are probably kindred spirits... I can really relate to the agony of wanting it to be perfect--even knowing that no one else in the family really cares (at least they don't care nearly as much as I do). Not sure if I admitted it in an earlier post but I did a DV transfer of all my old Video8 and VHS tapes seven years ago and it's been gnawing at me ever since that I didn't use better tools and methods (they were certainly available back then, and for cheaper than they are now!) So the past few months I've been acquiring way too much gear in preparation to do it all over again. I'm enjoying the process though, and I have every expectation that my results will be better this time around.

One big difference though--I was using a pretty crappy low-end Sony VHS VCR in my first go-round. So there was a lot of chroma noise and timing errors that got baked into my transfers. At least you've got an excellent VCR with both line and frame TBCs. Those will go a long way to cleaning things up and getting you a stable capture.

Loved the anecdote about the fancy plastic tape cases. Totally something I would do :D

Analog video is always captured at 720x480 for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL/SECAM, If your captures are anything but the above you are doing something wrong.

For you, I think the most important aspect here was that JVC S-VHS VCR with line TBC (better image quality), and the frame TBC (to ensure a problem-free capture).

For you, this DV setup seems to be doing what's needed.
NOTE: I'm not anti-DV -- as long as you see/understand the chroma quality reductions that are happening, and are fine with it -- as it's one of the only viable workflows for Mac. Past OS X had some fungibles with Videoglide and specific ATI 600 clones, but that's really it. Mac is just not a capture platform. And I say that as a satisified Mac Mini owner.

As mentioned, external HDD is about data loss. You probably have a somewhat bleeding-edge system, as certain combinations of hardware have reduced that risk in recent years. If it's working, then it's working! (I envy you.)

640x480 is a common Mac limitation. But it's fine. The actual resolve of the source is 300x480 max. 640 is a 4x3 AR.

When prepping for upload, you need to properly mask overscan (not crop) and deinterlace. There is a Mac version of Hybrid (freeware) that you should really look into. https://www.selur.de/downloads

@bookemdano: Too many people dismiss VHS is crappy. It's really not. Analog formats can look quite good, if captured and processed correctly. I don't accept the idea that SD (thus VHS) is crappy simply because of resolution. HD and 4K can look crappy if captured and processed wrong. I used to review Blu-ray releases, and I had to be brutal at times (and it always pissed off the studios, all they wanted was cheerleaders, not actual reviews).

Shoot, I forgot about mac being limited to 640x480, This really sucks for PAL being 720x576, So the vertical resolution has to be downsized to 480 from 576. NTSC should be fine.