Read VHS tape in S-VHS vcr for capture purpose?

[StephLG]

Hi,

maybe I'm asking a very stupid question but I'll give it a try :)

I'm in the process of capturing very important (at least to me) footages of Rock bands concerts, to transfer them to DVD.
I'm capturing with a Pinnacle DV500 card, wich means that the avi produced will be DV compressed.
The tapes are Pal VHS format (recorded or duplicated on VHS vcr). Would there be an improvement in terms of quality if I read the tapes on an S-VHS vcr linked to the capture card by an S-Video cable instead of reading them on a VHS vcr and a composite cable?
Maybe my question is stupid since there won't be more details on the tapes since they've recorded on VHS vcrs but, I don't know, will the playback on an S-VHS vcr be better than a 'standard' vcr? Will the S-Video cable give me less noisy pictures than composite?

Steph.

[PaulKroll]

Well, the s-video connection may give you a somewhat better capture than composite (slightly sharper, same level of noise though). But otherwise, no, the fact that it's S-VHS doesn't help the old VHS at all.

Mind, if the choice is between an old VHS deck and a new S-VHS, there might be a lot of difference: just, not because of the S-. :)

If you're capturing to DV, and then rendering to MPEG2 for DVD, keep in mind that DV is not lossless, and in a perfect world, you'd capture to Huffyuv instead. DV works extremely well for clean video sources, like, say, digital cameras can provide. But my own experience capturing to DV from videotape led me to buy a WinTV card and use huffyuv (or one of the other lossless codecs) to actually do the capturing. It just looks better.

[Kika]

My JVC S-VHS-VCR (HR-S7950) includes a TBC and a Noise-Filter. That improves the Quality a lot when capturing my old VHS-Tapes. Without a TBC or a Filter it's the same Quality like from normal VHS.

[StephLG]

Thank you Paul. That's what I was thinking about VHS vs S-VHS but I wanted an other user's opinion.

As for the use of lossy DV codec instead of Huffy, I know it's not the best solution but the reason I do this is because the DV500 card captures video AND sound at the same time, and the compression is done in hardware. This means that, after 3 hours of capturing in 720x576@25fps, I still have no out-of-sync audio and no dropped frame. I used to capture 1 hour video segments with iu-vcr and an Asus GeForce 3 Ti 200 video card (with S-video in), using HuffYuv codec. The image quality was good but the sound was sometimes out-of-sync and I sometimes had dropped frames. For me, the main issue is the audio sync. I have the feeling that, since the sound an video are not captured by the same device, the clock is not exactly the same.

I wish I could have an analog capture card, with video+audio in, AND the ability to use whatever codec I want, which means no hardware compression. I don't even know if such a card exists in the consumer market.

Steph.

Edit:
Hi, Kika. You replied while I was writing my answer. Interesting; what TimeBaseCorrection does exactly?

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

Originally posted by PaulKroll
DV works extremely well for clean video sources, like, say, digital cameras can provide. But my own experience capturing to DV from videotape led me to buy a WinTV card and use huffyuv (or one of the other lossless codecs) to actually do the capturing. It just looks better.

i said this few months ago....people laughed,discarded my thoughts,continued the ADVC talk etc.
[thanks for saying it so loud and clear!]

many people buy DV capture devices because they believe that if something's MUCH more expensive it has to be MUCH better......

a lot of money gets wasted,i tell you......hehe

after seeing quite a few screenshots and short samples it's quite obvious that bt8x8 card will beat DV system even if MJPEG is used..(!)..
i have seen this very clearly........(picvideo looks sharper and has less mosquito noise)
on both clean and noisy sources (on noisy sources excessive smoothing of DV becomes pretty apparent)

so anyone can laugh now too,or can do a small test which will prove them bt8x8 is better than DV even with mjpeg (if they have both devices)

sync is a must ,offcourse,and there are ways to combat the issue if it gets out of hands...(for example my winning combination is win98+vfw brooktree drivers)
[but my point here is that 30$ hardware beats the 300$ one when the image quality is concerned....]

back to your original question:

tbc should correct the jitter that you see on vertical lines (trees,windows,doors etc.) from vhs
also it should give you the image in cases where the sync pulses are damaged beyond the point where capture device will recognize them (ie. without tbc you should see SOME PARTS of the image etc.)

any noise reduction is working on principles of removing some parts of the image information_this one tries to remove the parts of the videosignal that contains the noise,but it's not that easy:you CANNOT remove one part of the signal without affecting the rest of the signal too....

therefore,noisereduction will result in some smoothing or softening of the image:that also translates into loss of some detail......
you cannot have both (sharp and noiseless video)

i doubt that such (vhs NR) solution is good for you (bare in mind that DV codec is a smoother in itself) but offcourse,try anything and everything that might be if some use.......

svhs machine wont give you better vhs quality (in a nutshell)

[Ookami]

@PaulKroll

You are correct, but in a perfect world all ADCs would have the same quality, wich isn't the case.

And the DV capture cards I know of are only semi-pro anyway, a capture card that's really good costs way more than an average PC workstation alltogether, so we always should draw some lines. But, *good* is something that everyone defines for himself.

I'm very interested what DV card (or camera) did you use that a cheap BT based card beat that... As you have first hand experience I'm interested in your findings, please, elaborate a bit.

In my experience (I currently own two Philips based capture cards and one capture card that uses DV compression), DV is even good for old VHS tapes, and I tried even filtering etc. I feared that the compression would make more problems to my filtering etc., altough I had in mind that DV compression, generally, is better than MJPEG, anyway. Of course, I would rather have that my DV based card can use lossless compression too... But, I'm moving, more and more, away from filtering so I will maybe even buy a hardware MPEG2 encoder card in the future. :)

<sarcasm> When I read some comments I really wonder why the whole capture card vendors are not using cheap BT based cards in a expensive retail package and selling it as *the* stuff (anyone, firewire cards ;-) )? They would not put millions into other, more expensive, ADCs, but just use the old BT chips and make millions with it *and*, as a side effect, the quality would beat all those ADCs from the other card! </sarcasm>

So, my conclusions:

-use the best ADC implementation (two cards with the same ADC don't, necessarily, have to give the same quality at the same surroundings!) you can afford (it's *always* a compromise!)
-check your capture surroundings and optimize it (VCR, cables, PC, OS, capture programs...)
-always capture as lossless as possible (especially if you filter)
-how you capture depends on what you want to do with the capture later
etc.

@StephLG

Check the FAQ. I own a TBC, because, I'm in the process of making money of this hobby, but I would call it overkill for the average user (even the cheap ones are too expensive for my taste).

Also, the audio sync is too often used as a + for the standalone capture cards like DC10, ADVC et al. IMO, that's not their main plus at all, as you can capture with different clocks with perfect sync! If it's for the sync only, I would never use my ADVC anyway ;-) .

@Kika

Funny thing I've found out that with my VCR, the capture cards like it more when I *disable* the TBC and NR feature (sadly, on my VCR it's not possible to disable only one of it). In most cases I would rather do the NR manually (if at all), later (before the compression), than using pre-capture NR from the VCR, anyway.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Kika]

@Mijo

Like i wrote: the TBC and the NR does an improvement to my old VHS-Tapes. If i'm capturing my new Tapes, i turn both of them off.
The VCR has also an Stabilizer, which can only be turned on if TBC is off. That's the setting i use for new VHS-Tapes. For S-VHS (ET), all these options are off.

[Ookami]

@Kika

Your VCR has clearly better NR etc. options than mine.

Remember the "fliegende Loeschkoepfe"? Hihi...

Cheers,

Mijo.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

><sarcasm> When I read some comments I really wonder why the whole capture card vendors are not using cheap BT based cards in a expensive retail package and selling it as *the* stuff (anyone, firewire cards ;-) )? They would not put millions into other, more expensive, ADCs, but just use the old BT chips and make millions with it *and*, as a side effect, the quality would beat all those ADCs from the other card! </sarcasm>




>non-sarcams<_borrow one already and try for yourself...._>non-sarcasm<

also,one might say that it's less of a ADC nature problem,and more of an codec issue (no ADC's will produce mosquito noise/bluriness on particular sources/parts of the image)

and,how can one know what ADC is hidden inside the chip?
you need deep inside info from mfr to see who made ADC or codec mfr (or codec tweaker...less space for manipulation with standards) made it itself....

to conclude:analog capturing is not pro's stuff:he who produces video in that way is cheating and offering lower quality than proper stuff like telecine or high quality video master tapes.....
(although there are better and worse capturing devices,offcourse..)
DV is not pro stuff either,it's consumer-grade format.....and as such not used for broadcasting or hi-quality mastering

flexibility of .avi is what's (still) selling bt8x8....

[Kika]

@Mijo

I did a long search in finding a S-VHS ET-VCR with all the stuff inside i want. ;) The VCR was "cheap" for all the Options, "only" 300 Euro (hmm.. let me Guess... 330 Dollars)

And yes, i rememder those "Flying Erasureheads"... :D

Oh, and a little Tipp: Newer VCRs do have an automatic Track Controll. If you play older Tapes from an other VCR, then sometimes you will get better quality by turning this off. It's a must-try-feature. ;)