Transferring a VHS.

[Max Demian]

That's what I did and ripped the DVD on a laptop.

Then the DVD recorder broke and the replacement doesn't have any inputs apart from Freeview RF.

[Dave Plowman (News]

No. You can select NTSC 30 frames or PAL 25 - as well as other variants.

[Robin]

<snip>

If you still have a PC with a PCI slot there are cheap cards available on eBay. (Many of the early TV cards included capture.)

If not I suppose it's not yet safe to recommend a visit to the tip to see what's available.

[Peter Able]

The Winfast DV2000 was/is an nice example of a PCI capture board.

It has a 10-bit video A-D converter - and those extra bits show.

PA

[Adrian Caspersz]

Have you got the VEN and DEV?

(Paul's post)

"I would start with Windows Device Manager, find the capture device in the USB section, do Properties, HardwareID, and get the VEN and DEV. Run the numbers through here.

"

[Paul]

The VCR to DVD devices record in a standard format.

It's supposed to play in set top box players.

But the record quality of those, is so amazing, that if a mate asked for your VCR to DVD recorder, you'd just give it to him. That's how good they are. "Give away good".

The only reason those sold at the store, is because they'd stopped making proper VCRs at that point. And that's all you could buy was that rubbish.

Paul

[michael adams]

It was after reading that, that out of curiosity I decided to check out the secondnand prices of LG DRT389K DVD recorders. The completed sales on eBay showed some quite low prices for working examples*, So I may buy some spares These are now regarded as ancient tecnology of course although they offer HDMI HD etc.

Depending on the connectors available its a simple matter of VHS player to the telly and then telly to the DVD recorder choosing to record AV or whatever it is, input. Its possible to record off air. The last firmware update was around

8 years ago but the digital retune function works fine.

michael adams

• which could always be further followed up via the sellers feedback

now posting exclusively via GigaNews

...

[michael adams]

[Dave Plowman (News]

I had a look to see if I'd kept the old Pinnacle card - I had. S-Video and CVBS both in and out. But of course no PCI slot on the MB. However, I's use a PCIEx to PCI adaptor before with some success so tried it. And Win10 recognised the Pinnacle card.

Playing a VHS gives quite a reasonable picture through the software supplied with the dongle that didn't work. But a recording made of it breaks up rather a lot when replayed.

[Robin]

It's nigh on 15 years since I last captured VHS tapes but IIRC that happened a lot in the early days when I used software which did the job in one go. I found it better to have separate stages for capture, editing and encoding. Names that come to mind are Avisynth, TMPGenc and VideoReDo (the latter also to correct for missing frames). But I was so much older then,...and I'm sure there's still a plethora of guides online.

[NY]

VideoReDo is intended for editing commercials etc from a recording - omitting parts without changing the order of what you keep. It also (automatically) omits isolated corrupted frames, in situations where it might be better if it replicated the last good frame so as to avoid editing out a bit of sound because of a video glitch or vice versa.

I don't think it can be used for capturing video from a capture card (eg analogue to MPEG), though I may be wrong: I've never investigated that.

[Robin]

I did not intend to offer the 3 programmes as a match to the 3 functions I listed. I used VideoReDo mainly for editing which, as you say, was its main purpose. But I mentioned it in connection with missing frames because I recalled it offered the options when meeting missing video frames to maintain sync by (a) inserting extra video frames or (b) removing audio frames.

I've not kept the software but the guide below tallies with my recollection - see under Stream Parameters

[NY]

Ah, I may have learned something! I didn't know there was an configuration option to change the method by which sound and video are kept in sync if there's a glitch.

But I've looked through the menus and there it is! For my version, V5, it's Tools | Options | Stream Parameters, and then "Detect/resync missing frames" which has options Ignore, Resync-Remove Audio, Resync-Insert Video.

Thanks for mentioning this feature.

I wonder if there's an option to set the minimum bit-rate when encoding frames. Some low bit-rate channels seem to dissolve into blockiness at joins in VRD, and the VRD support people said the solution was to set the minimum bit-rate when saving:

File | Save Profile Options Advanced Options Minimum MPEG-2 smart recording bit rate

But there seems to be no way to make the change permanent: it has to be done for each saving.

[Robin]

Sorry, can't help you with that.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Decided to buy Diamond One Touch after a bit of Googling. Software and a USB dongle at a reasonable price. And it does work well.

One niggle - the capture prog called Ez Grabber - the one I'll use most, comes up on the screen in a tiny form. So small you can't really use the control panel. The view window can be resized to what you want. You can get round this by using the menu. Wondering if it doesn't like the ultra high res monitor on the new PC?

The edit prog from the same installation disc is normal.

[michael adams]

[rick]

I am not a fan of USB video converters the end result is poor.

I bought a Video converter to convert all my tapes .... it was superb, uses FireWire connection to PC It was a Grass Valley ADVC 110 (now rebadged as Canopus) I sold after having done the job for more than I paid for it. (should have kept it)

They are available on eBay as is the ADVC 55 (not sure of difference) I also used a time base corrector to regenerate clean VHS sync, also sold that for price paid for it. (worth adding to capture method)

I then used free software on-line to de-noise, de-interlace, stabilise, resize, moire artefact removal etc. and adjust white balance, colours etc. Some VERY powerful stuff for free.

For example I had a wedding video and colour cast was off, used program to carry out exact colour change.

You just load routines into the free VirtualDub program (really is powerful stuff)

The key thing is you want to get the highest quality avi file you can, then you can post edit as much as you want, but if you have not done a good capture, not possible to do as good a job.

[rick]

Forgot to add you can skip the ADVC is you have access to a Camcorder with play-through functionality .... doesn't give the adjust and a accurate levels as an ADVC but usable.

[Robin]

+1 (I forgot that bit of the suite I used - though I'm not sure I'd tackle the learning curve again)

[Peter Able]

On the strength of this thread I've just bought an MS2100E-based Easycap.

It delivers de-interlaced video.

Any way to stop it de-interlacing?

TIA