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Originally Posted by dummptyhummpty
(Post 17688)
I'd like to beging capturing my and my girlfriend's old home movies to digital format
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Excellent. :thumb:
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1. Are there any issues with my above plan?
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I'll reply inline...
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to get rid of our space wasting VHS tapes.
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If these are precious home movies -- weddings, family events, childhood videos -- never trash the original tape. There may be next-generation hardware in our lifetime that will allow us to go back and re-digitize the videos to better quality. I've already seen this happen once (minimum) in the past 10 years since I started down that path.
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I was also thinking of offering this service to friends depending on how I do with our tapes.
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This is generally not going to be an enjoyable experience for you -- even with pay. While you can set up a great mini-studio, built around the workflow needed to convert your girlfriend's videos to high quality, you'll often find the next person has videos that need an entirely different workflow. Different hardware, different needs. No two VCRs or cameras tend to record video the same, and it's the main reason a serious video business will have a dozen or more VCRs per workstation. (Or two per workstation, with several custom workstations, which is what I do.) This gets expensive.
There's also the problem of doing business with friends/family. Trust me -- don't.
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JVC HR-S9800U (from eBay) - I'm planning to have a local shop look it over for $25.
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I just hope the "local shop" is competent. Most of them are not. There are four really important things to check:
- VCR alignment. A misaligned VCR tends to "eat" tapes.
- Head damage. This is the difference between a good picture and a noisy one.
- Cleanliness. You don't want a VCR full of mold spores, rust, dust, animal hair, etc.
- Condition of replaceable parts. Test the rubber bands and plastic pulley teeth.
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ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB - I believe this should allow me to capture in Huffyuv, correct?
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Yes -- PAL or NTSC.
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Apple MacBook Pro (thunderbolt model) - I would be happy to use this for capturing (via VMware), but I don't really want to tie it up for those longer tapes. I plan to use it for editing/authoring.
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You can't use use capture hardware through virtualization anywhere. Direct hardware access is required. Since a Mac is nothing more than a standard PC with an Apple version of a Linux OS kernel (Darwin), you have the option to load Windows directly via BootCamp. I personally don't suggest it, but it's possible.
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Acer Aspire E380 (Specs although I upgraded the graphics card) - I plan to use it to capture video and I plan to add a few high capacity hard drives for storage. This system doubles as our media center computer and captures cable TV via a Ceton InfinTV. I'm thinking it should be able to handle both tasks if I segregate the data across multiple drives.
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As long as you're not trying to stream video at the same time you're capturing and/or encoding, you should be fine. Be very sure to refer back to this guide:
How to Prevent Dropped Frames and Audio Sync Problems
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2. Is the TMC builtin to the HR-S9800U good enought or should I look into an external unit as well? I'd like to do this only once so I don't mind investing in equipment now.
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Read this:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...time-base.html
That's a long and detailed answer that goes over TBCs, including the differences between internal and standalone external boxes.
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3. Would a proc amp benefit me?
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Only if you find yourself with tapes in need of color tweaking. Generally speaking, many VHS tapes would be improved with a quality proc amp in the chain (an EliteVideo BVP-4 PLus, for example, or a SignVideo PA-100). The competing home movie formats from Sony, however, generally need little to no tweaks. I refer specifically to Hi8 and Video8 (the 8mm tapes). Same for DV -- little corrections needed.
No problem.
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