I have lots of S-VHS tapes with stuff on them I'd like to keep, as it were. My S-VHS machine was broken for a long time, but I fixed it today (PS problem) So I'd like to transfer everything to a hard drive. What's the best software to use and what's the best MPEG type or whatever? The quality on much of it is as good as S-VHS gets.
This is a bit like how long is a piece of string. It is worth researching the available video capture cards available now and selecting one that reviews well for ease of use and image quality. First step grab a representative chunk at highest bitrate then decide what to use for the archive version.
You can always get a bit more image quality by making a much larger MPEG stream but after some point you are just preserving tape noise! Deciding the best size/quality tradeoff for your system should be one of the first things you do. Otherwise you will end up with huge files that are not noticeably better than much smaller ones but faithfully preserve every glitch and speckle in the tape images.
I use Pinnacle 14 for video editing but I can't actually recommend it. Steep learning curve and some perverse non-standard behaviour in DVDs it makes that means they won't play on all DVD players. I had to get a video editing expert friend with a Mac to redo the Village Panto DVD.
The thing I produced worked fine on modern players but the indexing was shot to pieces on older units and/or the disk wasn't recognised at all. This was the same physical disk and all permutations of +/-R/RW.
My first assumption was wrong sort of medium so I cut one of each.
So if you need the disks to play on many DVD players do check first. I got caught out badly. I can't recall the Mac software but I can ask.
As Martin already said, it's not an easy question to answer. Capturing analogue video is more difficult than digital. One easy way to do this is to get a DVD recorder with an analogue input and then archive the created files.
If you want to edit or need to cleanup the video first it may be better to get an analogue capture solution and use a NLE program.
I use the analogue passthrough on a DV camcorder (which turns the analogue video into DV). I then use Sony Vegas to edit the video and turn it into DVD format. DVDs have to use MPEG2 but there are better algorithms available now.
Most formats involve compression which can result in a noticeable drop in quality. The general principle is to capture at the best quality possible, edit, and leave the main compression to last.
HTH.
I'd already got a card - part of the Studio 10 system. That has an S-Video input.
Yes - I was hoping someone had already done the sums. ;-)
Not had that problem with Studio 10 which is also Pinnacle, IIRC.
I'm not intending making DVDs - I just want to keep them all on HD. Hence wanting to know the most efficient data reduction for that.
I've already got a DVD recorder which makes excellent copies off S-VHS - but of course the subsequent file size is vast.
For a first try I'd suggest video at 2000k and audio 128k bps. Then try 1000k and 4000k on the video and if 1000k is visually OK perhaps go lower and then diddling the audio bitrate down a bit is probably worth considering. Default audio quality is likely overkill if you were only using the on camera mike.
It is harder than it sounds to find one setting because some difficult content may be degraded if you cut it too fine on the bitrate.
They were some very old DVD players that went haywire on its DVDs, but it made my life hell so I was not impressed. All the players I had easy access to worked OK, but enough antiques didn't to be embarrassing.
I'd strongly recommend the empirical suck it and see approach. The most demanding in terms of showing up artefacts are things like sunlit water spray against a dark background. Water skiing for instance.
The exact opposite of the content they show on in-store TV demo loops!
It also depends on the settings of the VHS recorder used. SP/LP/EP or whatever they are.
I must sort mine out when a get a Roundtuit. Run up to Xmas isn't it though!
In message , at 23:29:53 on Wed, 31 Oct
2012, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:I've tried a couple of PC-based cards (and a USB dongle) for this, but they are very pernickety. My final solution so far is to pipe the VHS machine's SCART/S-video output into my PVR's SCART input; the PVR then has a "copy to DVD" function so I write them to a DVD-RW and then clean/ edit on my PC, using the "Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3" software from the now-discarded dongle solution.
That software allows the screen to be cropped (a lot of my old VHS recordings have very poor framing), and for some of my tapes which were made using a camcorder, the "anti-shake" feature is useful, if excrutiatingly slow.
The PVR has three recording qualities, and I'm currently using double the quality I normally record off-air, so that's about 2GB/hour.
This setup also has the advantage that the "real time" recording is being done by dedicated boxes, away from the PC, whereas trying to multitask a PC while recording can be prone to hiccups.
Is this a DC10+ by any chance?
There's no definitive answer.
FWIW The MPEG2 encoder on the version of Pinnacle Studio I had was poor, IMHO.
There's no point converting SVHS to HD. Use an SD format which will give you smaller file sizes and better quality for a given bitrate.
It probably uses CBR (Constant Bit Rate) conversion. You can reduce the filesize by using a VBR converter.
IMLE, and as others have said, much depends on hardware (both capture card and PC if the card does not encode). But when capturing a couple of hundred really grotty VHS tapes to DVD for SWMBO a few years ago on a P4 I found it best to use (the free) VirtualDub to get clean(ish) avi then convert to MPEG separately. VirtualDub allowed me to deal with sync, dropped frames, noise etc before encoding. May not apply to you though as I was at the opposite end of the spectrum from top quality S-VHS ;(
I then encoded to variable bit rate DVD compliant MPEG (using MainConcept encoder) as SWMBO wanted to author DVDRs. If you just want to play from HD why not use h.264 and drop the VBR until you can't see the difference?
In message , at 12:45:30 on Thu, 1 Nov 2012, Mark remarked:
I think the OP was talking about HD = Hard Drive, not High Density.
Sorry. By HD I mean hard disc.
Sorry - I should give some more information. These aren't home movies but dubs made from broadcast master tapes so have decent quality stereo audio. They are mainly of progs I worked on so don't have the commercials etc as if recorded off air. ;-) The earlier masters were Panasonic MII - later Sony Digibeta. Some 150 hours worth. I'd like to stick them on a hard drive (and do a backup of that) to cut down on physical storage space and allow easy indexing/access. Plus I'm not sure how long my recently repaired S-VHS will still work for. ;-)
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