Converting massive library of VHS to digital

[MVR]

I have collected home movies tapes from family in an effort to digitize everything and secure it against the age issues of tape. I've been using composite to a ATI AIW x800 card to capture to lossless mpeg2, then using staxrip to convert the video to Mpeg4 H.264 AVC using x264.exe codec.

My old VCR's seem to be having problems with tracking, flicker, jumpy video, etc. Since I've got well over 100 tapes to convert, I'd like to find the highest quality VCR I can without breaking the bank. Can anyone recommend a cheap VCR that is flexible enough to deal with tapes that have been recorded on about 10 different VCRs that each had their own issues to start with. I'm hoping for something with advanced tracking.

I don't suppose there are any low cost VCRs that skip doing an analog output, and provide some sort of direct digital connection to my PC? Or s-video as a minimum, but maybe even component or HDMI output? I have a component and HDMI video capture card.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Modelworks]

There are vcr that transfer straight to digital, but they are not cheap, average 5k+ .
The best thing for the price would be a used svhs deck from a studio.
These have a much higher quality head and much better tracking than a consumer vcr.

Search for panasonic svhs, theres quite a few of them.

Lots of tv studios are getting rid of these now since the move to hd content.

Quick search on ebay showed some in the 100-300.00 price range.

 

[FP]

I am currently in the process of the same conversion.

I bought this SVHS VCR for playback (via S-Video, you should avoid composite connections if you can) and this converter for my analog-to-digital conversions.

The VCR is from JVC's professional line and has a TBC (time-base corrector) and other features that can improve the quality of the transfer. I like the VCR but it does have some quirks that are annoying. Keep in mind the TBC is not a magic bullet. It actually made some of my videos look worse. It will however make most of your jumpy, flickering videos look better. Also, this VCR does a direct VHS->DVD copy if you want to go the easy route. It seems like VCRs are on their way out. A new, quality, dedicated VCR is nearly impossible to find these days. Your best bet would be buying a used deck on eBay (risky, never know how much it has been used) or a used deck from a local professional video house.

The ADVC device made a world of difference in my captures though. I had initially used my DV camcorder for my conversion and it was dropping many frames during capture, partly due to the quality of the old VHS tapes. Dropped frames can be particularly painful on long conversions due to audio syncing. The ADVC never dropped a single frame. Amazing.

I stored all of my transferred tapes as raw AVI (~14GB/hour), edited them with AviSynth and encoded them with CCE Basic to MPEG2 for eventual DVD authoring. I am keeping all of the raw AVIs for backup and archival purposes.

Now for the bad news... I don't think your MPEG2 captures are truly "lossless." I may be wrong but I think MPEG2 is always lossy especially when you want to edit your source. If you want the most pristine source for restoring you really should be using raw AVI. It is a beast to work with (in terms of space) but it produces the best results.

So far I have spent about $800 on this conversion. I am recouping most of that cost by asking family members for a "donation" for converting their videos. I enjoy it but it has sucked up a lot of my time. I have probably already spent 80-100 hours working on this project and I would guess there are another 100-200 hours waiting for me.

Make sure you read all of the guides out there. Check out doom9.org and videohelp.com. Lots of great resources there. Make sure you understand the capture process and the terms used. Do not just jump into capturing. Your results will look poor when viewed on a television if you don't take things like IRE, interlacing, clamping and color space into account.

Good luck and if you have any questions I am happy to help!

 

[sdifox]

how many tapes are you talking about? May actually be cheaper, better to just buy the dvds since old releases are cheap.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: sdifox
how many tapes are you talking about? May actually be cheaper, better to just buy the dvds since old releases are cheap.

He has home movies on tape.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: sdifox
how many tapes are you talking about? May actually be cheaper, better to just buy the dvds since old releases are cheap.

He has home movies on tape.

Reading incomprehension for the lose

I guess manual work it is.

 

[Renob]

Converting massive library of VHS to digital

Why the VQ of VHS is bad as it is, then you toss in the further degradation of the conversion.

I did not read the entire thread but the only reason I would do this is if the VHS tapes were of things like home family movies.

 

[MVR]

Originally posted by: binister...I am currently in the process of the same conversion.........Good luck and if you have any questions I am happy to help!....

Hey Binister, thanks, that was a very useful reply. You too ModelWorks.

I'm going to review the hardware you suggested and see if I can get something for under $200.

Re AVI vs MPEG2:
I was doing direct to AVI using pinnacle studio (which works, but is one bloated POS code wise) but I kept getting crashes after the file size reached 10-15GB, so I played around and tried to force the highest possible (and hopefully mostly lossless) MPEG2 setting. This allowed me to capture for hours with no crash. Then using StaxRip with x264.exe I've been converting the mpeg2 files to mpeg4 h.264 AVC level 5.1 @ 800-2000kbps bitrate (depending on the value of the video). I've been using the "Insane" 3 pass encoding file with every setting maxed out. I have a Q6600 overclocked to 3.0ghz and its not too bad as I just run big encoding jobs overnight. I've read much of the "Insane" settings make little or no difference, but some of my video is important enough that I'm ok with wasting the CPU cycles for the possibility of less lossy video. In conclusion to your note, I'll happily go back to capturing to lossless AVI if I can solve this crashing issue.

Mpeg4 h.264 level 5.1 AVC encoding:
I was using Nero Recode to do these conversions, but decided I liked the flexibility of StaxRip/h264.exe better. Also Nero recode was outputting in Mpeg4 AVC level 3. Pinnacle Studio's mpeg4 encoding was ok at low def, but HORRIBLE at high definition and buggy. I was very dissapointed with that.

Adobe Premire Elements:
I got a free copy of Adobe Premire Elements (not Premire pro) with my new Dell XPS 420 (420 is the cheech and chong edition I think). I've barely played with it. Do you have any opinions to offer on it?

I have been to doom9.org and will check videohelp.com .

Something else to note, I purchased a HDMI/Component/Composite PCIe video capture card from http://www.blackmagic-design.com/ . The component and HDMI capture works pretty well, other than the fact my RAID 0 array isn't fast enough to capture 1080i uncompressed video, and their motion jpeg codec absolutely murders the quality so I haven't been able to capture just what I want. The composite capture has me extremely dissapointed, out of 3 VCR's I used to send it content, the card refused to sync to the video to the degree that nothing will display or record if the tape has even the slightest jitter. I've yet to email them back to discuss this, if they provide a solution (or show me how I am screwing up), I'll revise this post.

Capture card to use?:
I've been using my Radeon X800 AIW on my old computer to do the video capture, but its time I start capturing with my new computer. If I can't get the BlackMagic Intensity Pro to work with composite (or svideo if I get a new VCR like you suggested), then do any of you have a suggestion for a PCIe capture card that won't break the bank? I don't really like the idea of USB capture devices due to my "USB sucks" attitude.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

My dad used to do video production, so luckily we have 3-4 S-Video JVC Professional SVHS players and recorders with 3 time base corrector boxes and a whole control panel.. Pretty sweet to do our video conversions on.

 

[FP]

Re AVI vs MPEG2

I avoided the file size issue completely by forcing my captures to use 2GB files. Every 2GB a new file is created. I simply append all of them together with one line in AVISynth for editing. Going from mpeg2->mpeg4 is two lossy compression encodes. Depending on your source your end results would probably be better with a single raw AVI->mpeg4 encode. It sounds like your intention to make archival quality captures. If that is the case I would either keep the raw AVIs around or make high bitrate mpeg4 files.

Mpeg4 h.264 level 5.1 AVC encoding

I have used Nero and Pinnacle and will never ever go back to them for video production. I only use Nero for burning. There are too many better (often free) tools to get the job done.

Adobe Premire Elements

Never used it before but have always toyed with the idea of buying the Pro version. I am versed enough in AVISynth and VirtualDub that I can do almost everything I need to. AVISynth is a really cool powerful tool. There is a learning curve but it is worth it. If you are interested I can post a quick crash course in it.

HDMI/Component/Composite PCIe video capture card

You mention capturing 1080i video. What is your source? For my VHS captures I went from my deck to the Canopus unit via S-Video and then to my PC via FireWire. I used WinDV to do the actual capture and I am extremely pleased with the results. No audio sync issues or jitter (other than what is expected from 25 year old tapes). Can you give me an example of the quality issues you are seeing? Do the resulting mpeg2 simply not play? The company you linked to seems to make some quality stuff. I am surprised you are having such an issue. You should definitely try capturing raw AVI and bypass the real-time encoder to see if that makes a difference. I am guessing it would.

Capture card to use

I am not using a capture card so I can't really recommend one. The forums I posted have some pretty lengthy articles on capture cards and how to find the best ones. I didn't want to take up space in my rig and I wanted a dedicated analog->digital converter. The Canopus converter really has been my best purchase so far.

 

[JackBurton]

Good info guys. I'm interested in doing something like this shortly.