Fine-tune my VHS / 8mm capture process?

[zinkatres]

Hi everyone, I am currently in the process of reviving the task of archiving all my family home videos. I started to work on this nearly 10 years ago, but soon put it on the back burner after I got discouraged and wasn't really happy with the results.

I have been reading a ton of the forum posts here and have gathered a good idea of what is generally recommended, but still wanted to check in an make sure I had the most updated opinions of best practice.

Overall I have 100+ tapes, mostly VHS and VHS-C, but there is a handful of 8mm

Here is the equipment I have to work with thus far.
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Panasonic AG-1980 SVHS Deck
Sony Handycam TRV-350 Digital 8 Camcorder

Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle (USB3)
Blackmagic Intensity Extreme (Thunderbolt 2)
Retrotink 5x upscaler

Lenovo P15 gen2 Mobile Workstation (running windows 10)
2017 Macbook Pro
2015 iMac

Adobe Premier Pro CC (latest version)
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My first priority is to create a master capture of each tape to archive. From what I've read, AVI via windows seems to be the preferred format of choice, but I have had what seems like good luck capturing in prores422 from the Mac

Secondly, I'd like to make an upscaled 720p/1080p h.264 version of the file to upload somewhere for family to watch. This is where I have confused myself the most after reading numerous posts. I played around with the free version of DaVinci Resolve a little bit and did make what I thought was a decent looking upscaled clip. I'd be willing to purchase the studio version of that software if it would be worthwhile, but I have seen mixed reviews.

I do understand one thing I should add to the mix is an external TBC, I would be interested in talking to anyone who might have one for sale.

I appreciate any help the group can throw my way. Looking forward to moving this project forward properly.

[lordsmurf]

You're somewhat going down the wrong path here.

You're missing a frame TBC. That AG-1980 line/field won't prevent dropped frames, and those Blackmagic cards will drop heavy frames. The RetroTINK is also not suited for analog videotapes, just old video game consoles, not the same.

DaVinci would be fine, except it forces compressed H.264, and that's horrible for videotape sources. It will ruins the video quality.

There's really no need to convert to HD. In fact, doing so causes loss of quality (upsize distortions, loss of interlace). The only exceptions are where you're trying to appease Youtube, or create a mixed-content video to specs (ie, broadcasting a documentary).

Macs are really the wrong tools for video capture. There is another ongoing topic here, look at the past week of threads to find it. That Win10 system is your best bet, and there are better cards for SD capture. Keep the HD cards for HD work, the video game card for video games.

With 100 tapes, you don't want to do this the wrong way. Not just due to quality hits, but your own sanity. Using wrong/cheap tools can make capturing an aggravating experience.

[zinkatres]

I appreciate the reply Lordsmurf, your comments were right on point where I thought they would come in and confirms a lot of what I have been reading.

As I mentioned, most of the listed equipment I picked up years ago not necessary even for this purpose (save for the Panasonic deck). So not necessary married to any of it, just included it incase they would be useful.

From the sound of it, it looks like I would be best to start from scratch here. I need to check my back stock of PC equipment, I know at one time I used to have an ATI AIW card. I may have some pinnacle devices lying around as well, although I don't know if some are better than others, or if there are any to def stay away from.
I also have several legacy PCs around, so I should be able to spin up a dedicated XP or Win 7 box for the purpose of capturing if you think that would be the route to go.


Sounds like the ideal setup would be

AG-1980 -> [external frame TBC] -> Pinnacle USB capture via Svideo -> Virtualdub on a windows XP/7 PC

From there should I be capturing in raw uncompressed, or Huffyuv or Lagarith


With the above setup in mind, In your experience, how big of a hit will the captures take if I start without the frame TBC, while I work on increasing the budget to purchase one?

[mrmuy97]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zinkatres

In your experience, how big of a hit will the captures take if I start without the frame TBC, while I work on increasing the budget to purchase one?

Only speaking for myself, I got things set up and started doing test captures on good condition retail VHS tapes before I had the external/frame TBC. I used the time to go through all the capture settings and change things and compare different captures and ask questions here and continue reading. By the time I got a TBC, I had gotten comfortable with the capturing process and had a much better understanding of what I was doing. Then I started the real capturing. I'd recommend the same to you. Do some test captures while you wait and get everything figured out with the hardware and software. Then when you get the TBC you're ready to go.