I just want to state from the start that I am quite inexperienced at video capture and the more I read the more inadequate I feel. I have only recently discovered this forum and have spent the last few weeks reading through many posts. I have found this both enlightening and confusing. However overall I feel that you are one of the most informative forums regarding this subject and I value the advice you have given to others
Goal
I have over 100 VHS tapes made by my father that contain invaluable family videos. I suspect my father put them onto vhs tape from Hi8 and normal 8mm tapes by connecting his video camera directly to a VHS recorder and recording them onto tape. The tapes are each 2-3 hours long and are in excellent condition as he did a duplicate set for archival purposes that have not been played more than once or twice
I would like to digitize these tapes for three purposes
1. Archival – best quality
2. Editing in PremierePro CS6
3. Publishing best quality to dvd or data files on a harddrive for playback on a computer and plasma tv
I am working in PAL
Before I discovered your forum I was advised that the best way to do this was using the ADVC110
My intended workflow was to:
1 Capture straight from my VHS player (specs Samsung DVD/VCR 6 Head Model DVD-V5500) through the ADVC 110 which is connected to my iMac (specs: 64 bit OS X 10.7.5, 2.5GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1333 DDR3, Graphics-AMD Radeon HD 6750SM 512 MB)
I do have another iMac which is a year older and am not sure whether I should use this one instead for capture as it has a more powerful cpu but less RAM (specs: iMac11,3 OS X 10.6.8, 2.93 GHz intel Core i7, 4 GB 1333 MHz 1333 MHz DDR3, Graphics card - ATI radeon HD 5750)
2. Use iMovie 11 as the capture software
3. Copy the dv file from the iMovie events folder and archive as is
4. import this dv file from the iMovie Events folder into PremierePro CS6 for editing
5. Output edited file from Premiere into Encore as a MPEG2 for burning onto a DVD
Where do the following fit into this workflow and are they still recommended? A bit confused here
- Matrox's FREE MPEG-2 I-Frame-only at 25 Mbps
- HcEnc Encoder
- Mainconcept Reference - is this the same as Premiere's MainConcept SDK encoder?
I did do one experimental run exporting the file from premiere as a DVPAL in a quicktime container but the file was huge (32 GB for aprox 3mins of video) am i doing something wrong here or is this the size i should expect for this?
Since then however I have discovered that the dv format is lossy and am aware of its other flaws I want the best possible capture quality from the VHS tape as I no longer have the original Hi8 tapes
After reading your forum I discover that Macs aren’t really recommended for the job and I should be using a PC for the best quality lossless capture and a workflow like the following:
1. Capture the VHS using the ATI TV Wonder™ HD 600 USB
2.
VirtualDub
3. Saving in
Huffyuv
Problem is the only desktop PC is one I built 5 years ago (specs: Intel Core Duo 3.16 GHz, with only 2 GB RAM, NVIDIA Geforce 9600 GT graphics card and is a 32 Bit system running win 7) I don't know if its up to the job
Somewhere along the way in both workflows should I also be using a TBC?
Some people recommend archiving as hi bitrate MPEG2 broadcast – but I don’t understand why as this is also a lossy format like dv
So do I just go ahead and use the ADVC 110 or use my old pc with the ATI TV wonder? Or buy a new PC altogether? If i go the Mac path is it really going to be a painful process and will there be a huge noticeable difference in quality?
Its just that this is going to be a fairly big project and i want to start off on the right foot and im feeling pretty confused at the moment
Ty
I hope this didn’t sound too garbled