massive VHS to DVD conversion

[wopster]

I've recently taken up the task of converting my family's entire collection of VHS and miniDV home movies to DVD. The miniDV conversion is simple (firewire), but I am having some difficulty with the VHS. I bought the ATI TV Wonder Pro for use with my solid Dell desktop system. 1GB of RAM, 300GB external HD, Pentium 4, etc...

My questions:

(1) I want GOOD results. I will not settle for a decent product. Will this ATI TV Wonder do the trick? Should I get something more advanced? Or something that is quicker? Time is an issue, money not so much.

(2) If I stick with the ATI TV Wonder should I get a NEW VCR that supports S-VHS. The ATI TV Wonder has an S-VHS input, I think I should use it.

Thanks

[Guest]

Save yourself a lot of time by connecting the VCR via S-Video to a good standalone DVD recorder.

[sumpm1]

maybe you should give your hardware a try and see how it looks, that would be a good start

[jggimi]

For miniDV tapes, use IEEE-1394 ("Firewire") rather than analog video to capture. This is a digital copy, which on your hard drive is "DV" video in an .avi container. See our DV forum for details.

[Guest]

Originally Posted by jggimi

For miniDV tapes, use IEEE-1394 ("Firewire") rather than analog video to capture. This is a digital copy, which on your hard drive is "DV" video in an .avi container. See our DV forum for details.

Did you miss the part where the OP said this: "The miniDV conversion is simple (firewire), but I am having some difficulty with the VHS."

[jggimi]

Yes, I did.

[wopster]

Originally Posted by neuron2

Save yourself a lot of time by connecting the VCR via S-Video to a good standalone DVD recorder.

I would try that, except I want to edit SOME of the videos and create fancy DVD menus (which I already know how to do).

I guess I'll give my current system a try. I think I'll buy a new VCR to boot (one that has a S-VHS output). I went to Best Buy but they had only 2 VCRs to pick from, both didn't have S-VHS.

Can anyone suggest a good, cheap VCR and where to buy it?

[Guest]

Good DVD recorders allow editing and menu creation.

[olyteddy]

Unless the source tape is S-VHS, there is little to no advantage to the S-Video connection.

[Guest]

Not true. S-Video will reduce luma/chroma crosstalk (aka, rainbows and dot crawl).

[wiak]

Originally Posted by wopster

I've recently taken up the task of converting my family's entire collection of VHS and miniDV home movies to DVD. The miniDV conversion is simple (firewire), but I am having some difficulty with the VHS. I bought the ATI TV Wonder Pro for use with my solid Dell desktop system. 1GB of RAM, 300GB external HD, Pentium 4, etc...

My questions:

(1) I want GOOD results. I will not settle for a decent product. Will this ATI TV Wonder do the trick? Should I get something more advanced? Or something that is quicker? Time is an issue, money not so much.

(2) If I stick with the ATI TV Wonder should I get a NEW VCR that supports S-VHS. The ATI TV Wonder has an S-VHS input, I think I should use it.

Thanks

You should take ATI TV Wonder Elite
as elite got theater 550 pro chipset that uses 3dcomb and noise filters that can realy help VHS a lot, plus it outputs mpeg-2 steam that is 1GB for 20min and uncompressed 20min = 27GB! and the quality is the same

[wopster]

Originally Posted by wiak

You should take ATI TV Wonder Elite
as elite got theater 550 pro chipset that uses 3dcomb and noise filters that can realy help VHS a lot, plus it outputs mpeg-2 steam that is 1GB for 20min and uncompressed 20min = 27GB! and the quality is the same

How much is it? Can my current card output to mpeg2 directly? Can i apply those filters with my current card?

[Arachnotron]

Using a device that captures straight to MPEG2 can be a great time saver, especially when you need to do a lot of captures. The disadvantage is that you are pretty much stuck with the result. If you intend to do a lot of editing and filtering, capping to another intermediate format like mjpeg, huffyuv or even DV might be better.

For example, the head switching noise from the VCR will be very visible at the bottom of the capture. With a 'classic' TV you would not notice it because of the overscan, but on a computer screen or anything else that displays the full image they can be irritating. With overscan slowly disappearing in this digital age, masking that (and the often ugly vertical edges) can make for a better DVD.

3D combfilters are only of use when you capture composite. Wether or not capping s-vid is worth it for VHS is a matter of debate. It does not matter a great deal for VHS *but* VCR's that can do s-vid generally are of a higher quality in other area's too. And if you do happen to own one, capping s-vid will certainly not hurt . Having a good VCR with TBC can be a help with old tapes. (and cleaning the heads after playing a very old one )

At my work ( I work at a university ICT department) we also do VHS conversions for the teachers. The bulk work is done with a DVD recorder, but when any additional editing or filtering is needed, we use a capture device. Editing more than 1 chapter using a remote is hell.

A final observation: don't go overboard on the filtering. The source is VHS, which pretty much limits the maximum quality you can get. You can spend days tweaking filters, only to find out your family never notices the difference......

[wiak]

Originally Posted by wopster

How much is it? Can my current card output to mpeg2 directly? Can i apply those filters with my current card?

you card cant, but avisynth filter can do that to, but it will take many hours compaired to a card with it
ATI TV Wonder Elite card cost 92 usd at amazon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...IG234?v=glance

review:
http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/mul.../tvwond/elite/

you can get the card from sapphire & powercolor to just under another name

[WayneRocks]

I was very disappointed with the ATI capture card. I think I had a different model tho...It was the "All in Wonder".

It complained about everything on my system...bad timing latency...not DMA drives...not enough memory...everything to preclude the fact it thought Windows XP Home Edition was the most arcane OS it had ever run across.

Drivers were out of date, support was non-existant. Software conflicted with my current proggies.

Very bad experience. I paid about $100US for the card.

[I have heard that the 'Happuage' card is a better choice but I have no experience with.]

I am also converting my VHS collection to digital format, and I am very impressed with the Liteon brand of DVDR.

As I have a VCR, I bought the base model at Costco for $100US. I can record from the VCR or record broadcast TV directly from Cable or satellite [if I had it.].

It can record in several different time lengths from 1 hour [Hi-Quality] to 6 hours [VCR w/an iffy signal connectin quality.] Then it can "Finalize" the DVD media, and that makes it compatible with *all* dvd players.

In addition to playing regular DVDs, it has the DivX codec inside and will offically play DivX source material, although I've noticed it seems to also play any MPG4 material and a lot of AVI files.

I could connect it to my PC, but I worry about things getting "mucked-up", so I keep them seperate, and do sneaker-net to transfer data via the DVD disk only.

"For example, the head switching noise from the VCR will be very visible at the bottom of the capture. With a 'classic' TV you would not notice it because of the overscan, but on a computer screen or anything else that displays the full image they can be irritating."

Yup, this is true...but that's why we have cropping filters and settings.

HTH - Wayne

o-btw here is a tinyurl link to the LITEON page.
http://tinyurl.com/zspao

[wiak]

Originally Posted by WayneRocks

I was very disappointed with the ATI capture card. I think I had a different model tho...It was the "All in Wonder".

It complained about everything on my system...bad timing latency...not DMA drives...not enough memory...everything to preclude the fact it thought Windows XP Home Edition was the most arcane OS it had ever run across.

Drivers were out of date, support was non-existant. Software conflicted with my current proggies.

Very bad experience. I paid about $100US for the card.

[I have heard that the 'Happuage' card is a better choice but I have no experience with.]

I am also converting my VHS collection to digital format, and I am very impressed with the Liteon brand of DVDR.

As I have a VCR, I bought the base model at Costco for $100US. I can record from the VCR or record broadcast TV directly from Cable or satellite [if I had it.].

It can record in several different time lengths from 1 hour [Hi-Quality] to 6 hours [VCR w/an iffy signal connectin quality.] Then it can "Finalize" the DVD media, and that makes it compatible with *all* dvd players.

In addition to playing regular DVDs, it has the DivX codec inside and will offically play DivX source material, although I've noticed it seems to also play any MPG4 material and a lot of AVI files.

I could connect it to my PC, but I worry about things getting "mucked-up", so I keep them seperate, and do sneaker-net to transfer data via the DVD disk only.

"For example, the head switching noise from the VCR will be very visible at the bottom of the capture. With a 'classic' TV you would not notice it because of the overscan, but on a computer screen or anything else that displays the full image they can be irritating."

Yup, this is true...but that's why we have cropping filters and settings.

HTH - Wayne

o-btw here is a tinyurl link to the LITEON page.
http://tinyurl.com/zspao

AIW is a graphic card with video in & video out
that uses theater 200 that is ages old and has NO hardware filters, and yes everybody gets the noise at the botton when capture

[wopster]

Originally Posted by Arachnotron

Using a device that captures straight to MPEG2 can be a great time saver, especially when you need to do a lot of captures. The disadvantage is that you are pretty much stuck with the result. If you intend to do a lot of editing and filtering, capping to another intermediate format like mjpeg, huffyuv or even DV might be better.

For example, the head switching noise from the VCR will be very visible at the bottom of the capture. With a 'classic' TV you would not notice it because of the overscan, but on a computer screen or anything else that displays the full image they can be irritating. With overscan slowly disappearing in this digital age, masking that (and the often ugly vertical edges) can make for a better DVD.

3D combfilters are only of use when you capture composite. Wether or not capping s-vid is worth it for VHS is a matter of debate. It does not matter a great deal for VHS *but* VCR's that can do s-vid generally are of a higher quality in other area's too. And if you do happen to own one, capping s-vid will certainly not hurt . Having a good VCR with TBC can be a help with old tapes. (and cleaning the heads after playing a very old one )

At my work ( I work at a university ICT department) we also do VHS conversions for the teachers. The bulk work is done with a DVD recorder, but when any additional editing or filtering is needed, we use a capture device. Editing more than 1 chapter using a remote is hell.

A final observation: don't go overboard on the filtering. The source is VHS, which pretty much limits the maximum quality you can get. You can spend days tweaking filters, only to find out your family never notices the difference......

Thanks much for all this great info. I plan on doing a TON of VHS to DVD conversions. Not all at the same time, but over a period of months/years. I don't want to use a stand alone VHS/DVD recorder, so nix that. I am interested in straight mpeg2 capturing, but my card doesn't support it. I might try that later if my current setup takes forever.

Filters... here is where I am very lost. I tried using Avisynth a while ago and I was confused as all hell. First, what filters do you suggest I use? I did notice the "tracking" at the bottom of the video. I thought it was the VCR, but it sounds like every VHS tape has that. What crop filter should I use? What filters do you recommend for helping the picture quality? I understand that not TOO much can be done, but I am getting paid, so I want this to look as good as possible (S-VHS VCR, filters, etc).

I am going to capture with VirtualVCR. Should I use VirtualDub to apply filters? Then use TMPGEnc to convert to mpeg2?


Thanks much for all the advice.

[LocalH]

Originally Posted by wopster

Filters... here is where I am very lost. I tried using Avisynth a while ago and I was confused as all hell. First, what filters do you suggest I use? I did notice the "tracking" at the bottom of the video. I thought it was the VCR, but it sounds like every VHS tape has that. What crop filter should I use? What filters do you recommend for helping the picture quality? I understand that not TOO much can be done, but I am getting paid, so I want this to look as good as possible (S-VHS VCR, filters, etc).

Yeah, the tracking lines are an artifact of VHS itself - even on a professionally dubbed tape that is fed through a professional TBC, you will see some skewing at the bottom of the frame. I would recommend using the combo of AviSynth's inbuilt Crop and AddBorders filter, that way you can crop the desired number of lines from the bottom, and then either replace them with black or redistribute that space to the top and bottom (if you do this, you must make sure that you have an even number of black lines on the top, or you'll foul up the field dominance).

If your VHS tapes exhibit horizontal jitter, you might consider using the DeJitter filter to correct for some of it (see here and here for examples of extremely bad jitter and their correction), although DeJitter does not function that well with video that has black areas on the left of the actual video (such as you can see here), although you can raise the black level before using DeJitter and drop it back down afterwards, which can improve results on such video (doing this tends to give me worse results, however, on video that has a defined non-black left edge, such as the first two images I posted). Of course, these images represent an extreme case (they came from a tape that was several generations from the original, and they also exhibit heavy vertical jitter), and as long as your source has less jitter (and a defined non-black left edge), then DeJitter should perform acceptably.

I am going to capture with VirtualVCR. Should I use VirtualDub to apply filters? Then use TMPGEnc to convert to mpeg2?

I would personally recommend using AviSynth to handle your cropping, filtering, and any other processing, and feeding that directly into TMPGEnc for MPEG-2 encoding. AviSynth can support external VDub filters as well, in case you find a filter that you wish to use but is only available as a VDub filter.