Best way for highest quality video from VHS, VHS-C, MiniDV?
I am hoping someone can help me. I am working on converting VHS, VHS-C and Mini dv tapes to digital.
It's important to me to get the highest possible quality image and sound. I have been doing extensive research and have come to the following conclusion. That I should get a firewire card and capture card of some kind. It sounds like the Canopus products may not produce as good a final product as capture cards? I want an uncompressed final product. Here are some questions I have about the process: 1. It sounds like it would be good to invest in an S-VHS VCR. Which one is recommended and where could I find one? Do all S-VHS have tgc built in so I wouldn't have to buy a separate tgc? 2. My computer is a smaller lenovo PC with tower. Can I add a firewire card as well as a capture card on this computer? 3. Are ATI capture cards still available anywhere? (They seem to be getting good reviews on here). 4. Do you connect the capture card to VHS-c camcorder and VCR via S-video cable? 5. Is this something that someone can do at home realistically? I so appreciate any help anyone can give me as I'm having trouble finding clear answers. |
Let's see if I can guess what the experts will say. It's April Fool's Day, and I'm feeling froggy. :-)
Your DV tapes are already digital, so it's just a matter of copying that data to the computer via Firewire. Those data ARE compressed, so there's no such thing as uncompressed for DV tapes. You just get what you get. You're correct you'll need a capture card for the VHS and VHS-C tapes. You can search this forum for recommended capture cards. There's a list ready for you. 1. YES. Just like with capture cards, there's already a list on this forum of recommended S-VHS VCRs. Search for exactly that. You'll see a lot of JVC and Panasonic models. Not all S-VHS models have TBC. The later ones do, and you definitely want that if you can find one and afford one with it. I'm a huge fan of the JVC models where the TBC with digital noise reduction is activated with what I call the "magic green button." You may still need a standalone full-frame TBC to correct the signal further as it comes from your VCR, especially if you have problem tapes. Again, the forum has a recommended list if you want to go that route. 2. If your PC has two open PCIe slots, you should have no trouble adding whatever you want. Exceptions can occur. 3. Yes. My knowledge runs aground here since I haven't shopped for an ATI device, used or new. 4. Yes. Always use an s-video cable from a S-VHS VCR to your capture card. Way better color. 5. Yes. I'm doing it. And if I'm doing it, you can do it. :-) |
Welcome to digitalfaq! :)
To add to leeoverstreet's post: Quote:
This is not rocket science. But you could say, to some extent, that some of it is art -- the acquired art of making sensible judgements toward accuracy, a pleasant visual experience, and lively re-living of taped memories or favorite entertainments -- as opposed to sloppily getting whatever is cheapest and quickest. Anyone can create a digital rendering of an analog tape or make a copy of a DV source. Seriously. No skill, no learning, no patience, no special hardware is required. Just push a couple of buttons. It's done all the time. But your question introduces a complication, in the form of the concept of "highest quality". I can try here to define or map out a path of how to get the highest quality we generally assume would be the target of users who come to an advanced video/audio site looking for answers. How far along that road you're willing to travel is up to you. Quote:
DV sources for quality processing are not captured, and they are not re-encoded through an encoding card such as a Canopus. As mentioned earlier, they are transferred as a 1:1 exact digital copy via Firewire using software such as WinDv, which is designed to transfer that digital source without alteration into a same-format digital file on a computer. To avoid further quality loss, DV is put through a post-processing workflow which, from the time the 1:1 copy is made to a PC, is the same process we recommend for edit and restoration of captured analog signals -- which is as follows: Analog tape is captured to a lossless YUY2 colorspace in an unencoded AVI file using lossless codecs (huffyuv, Lagarith, or UT Video Suite). DV sources, after copying as a lossy DV-format AVI file, are converted losslessly to YV12 colorspace interemediate working AVI files using lossless codecs (Lagarith or UT Video Suite). In other words, analog and DV sources are both used as lossless working files for repair, cleanup, edits, color correction, etc., and for final format encoding. For cut-and-join edits and simple application of transitions and special effects, titles, etc, you can use any editing app you like that will accept lossless codecs (which includes almost every editor out there, from basic to "pro" editions). However, editors are not restoration, repair, or major image modification tools. Programs we recommended for the restoration and repair phase are Avisynth and Virtualdub. These are good enough for professionals, so they should be good enough for us. They are also free. They are used to clean or repair DV compression artifacts, noisy edges, oversharpening, edge halos and DCT ringing, chroma noise (blotches, stains, rainbows), analog tape grain, dropouts (spots, ripples, horizontal streaks, static-filled frames), frame hops and jitter, excessive interlace combing, illegal video levels, chroma bleed, chroma shift, high-precision colorspace conversions, proper deinterlace or inverse telecine where required, and a host of other common defects that are ignored by the unskilled quick-and-dirty crowd. Lossless working files can then be used for archives and can be encoded to any desirable output format: broadcast grade MPEG or h.264 for archiving, generic MPEG, DVD, Bluray, AVCHD, mp4, web posting, or any other standard or non-standard format. Quote:
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Recommended VCRs for NTSC and PAL are listed here: VCR Buying Guide (S-VHS, D-VHS, Professional) for restoring video Which of those VCR line you should consider depends on your analog tape library. Are most of them retail tapes and tapes recorded at high 2-hour speed? All of the listed brands will do them justice. Are they slow-speed recordings, 4 to 6 or 8 hours??? I'm afraid Panasonic is your only choice. Slow-sped tapes look like crap on a JVC. Quote:
What is a TBC? Time Base Correction for Videotapes Who uses a DVD recorder as a line TBC, and what do you use? Quote:
Can't answer the rest of your question. How "small" is your small Lenovo? What's its model number? Does it have one hard drive (don't capture to your operating system's hard drive. Capture to a second drive). What's the operating system? The most recommended ATi All In Wonder cards require Windows XP and AGP-mount or PCIe motherboards. Quote:
ATI All In Wonder card models & Brief History of all In Wonder cards The favorite AIW models are the 7500 AGP Radeon and 9600XT AGP Radeon. But they are all excellent cards. Quote:
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For real-life examples from a real-life user (yours truly) who started out knowing absolutely nothing and made all kinds of stupid mistakes, here vare samples of some typical problems encountered with analog tapes. One sample is from a badly recorded original VHS, a second sample is from a poorly mastered and partially damaged retail tape, and the third is typical junky stuff you often see from home cameras (in this case a dying camera battery that resulted in underexposure and awful color). All of the repairs and encodings shown were made with techniques I learned in this forum, and using free software (Avisynth and Virtualdub) plus a couple of budget-priced final output encoders. These samples show that even an idiot like myself can survive typical source problems. A) The linked Liv5A_cut_EP_original_cap.mp4 is from a 6-hour VHS tape recorded Dec 1992 using a noisy, under-powered analog cable signal fed thru a cheap RF amplifier, multiple cheap RF splitters, sent thru the world's cheapest home cables to a cheap mono 2-head 1989 RCA VCR on cheap no-name tape. As if that weren't dumb enough, I recorded at slow, low-detail 6-hour speed on used tape. The sample is hard telecined. Captured with a Panasonic PV-S4670 SVHS VCR (no dnr), a Panasonic ES10 tbc pass-thru, an AVT-8710 exernal rame tbc to correct false copy protection issues, and an All In Wonder 7500 AGP Radeon capture card. My expensive AG-1980 VCR wouldn't track this tape without serious top or side tinted border noise in various parts of the tape, so I had to improvise with another VCR and a pass-thru device. The original is telecined, from a 1954 movie. In the unfiltered (A) original look for 2 frames near the clip's end (frame 1456-1457, 48.6 seconds) with a huge dark gray ball at screen center. B) Liv5A_ivtc_cut_EP_playback sample.mp4 is the cleaned-up version of the above. I'm not perfectly satisfied (of course not, and there are remnants of cyan and magenta rainbows in the blue sky). The unique look of 1954 Technicolor film isn't easy to get from bad tape. The two videos above were posted earlier in this restoration thread: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...#ixzz5BTlegvEk Links "C" and "D" are examples of other damage control. There are 4 short, edited scenes. Besides horrible color that varied from scene to scene, there are spots, gigantic blotches, projector punch holes, chroma bleed, dark halos, white stringy stuff on faces in one shot and whitish flareups, the usual tape noise, etc. The capture was made with a Pansonic PV-8662 rebuilt VCR with composite output, a Panasonic ES10 tbc pass-thru, An AVT-8710 frame tbc for Macrovision, and an ATI All in Wonder 9600XT AGP Adeon card. "D" is the clean-up version. C_defect_samples_original.mpg D_defect_samples_after.mpg Finally, here's an underexposed home video tape made with an old JVC VHS camera, whose light meter battery was dying out. The capture was made using a Panasonic AG-1980 VCR, an AVT-8710 frame tbc, and an ATI All In Wonder 9600XT Radeon. The "E" version is directly from the lossless AVI capture, unfiltered. "F" version is the cleanup. E) home_tape_original.mp4 F) home_tape_rework.mpg All of these samples were previously posted in earlier threads and are typical of analog capture cleanup and encoding practices -- although many of them are not as troublesome. But you don't learn anything from "perfect" tapes and cleaner sources. |
Thank you!
Thank you both so much!! This is extremely helpful. You've given me much needed clarification on a lot of issues. It sounds like the best place to purchase the items would be this page so I will begin my search for the parts that I need. Thank you again! I very much appreciate all your help and advice.
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What did you use to do that? Can you link a thread? Thank you! |
That video, like all the others I worked with, was repaired and restored with tools in Avisynth and VirtualDub. That particular repair job was discussed in detail in a post subtitled Information Overload #5. However it was preceded in the same thread by discussions and examples of how to use many common filters and controls detailed in Information Overload #1, followed by Information Overload #2, Information Overload #3, and Information Overload #4.
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