Dieselviulu
23rd January 2008, 15:41
Hello!
I'm seeking advice on archiving VHS recordings on a digital format. I have searched the forum, but not found the particular answers I'm looking for. A small introduction: I work for a small library and my job is to digitise old media that is under threat of degrading. Mostly this means sound recordings, but there are also a bit over 100 VHS tapes that would need to be digitised also. This is a music library, so we are more focused on audio than video.
With differrent formats we are always trying to use the equipment that we already own if it suits the needs. This has been quite a succesfull approach, because generally the equipment here is of quite a good quality. For VHS we have have a few normal VCR:s and two Panasonic DMR-ES35V's, which are VHS-DVD-combo machines.
Our plan for VHS's is to use the combo machine to copy the videos to DVD and then capture the DVD to a hard drive and from there to 200GB data tapes (which is our primary archive storage). For those tapes that will propably be popular among library users we are going to use DVD+R and the rest will be copied to DVD+RW which will be rewritten after the video is on the hard drive.
I know I would have a lot more options if I captured the video straight to the computer and then make a DVD if required, but the primary reason for using the combo machine is that we have only one digitising workstation and that will be busy with the audio materials. Using the combo machine will create a second "production line" for the digitising project.
The actual questions for which I'm seeking answers are:
1) Which program would you recommend for capturing the video from DVD+R? I'm hoping to have a single .mpg file for each DVD. Because these are from VHS, there will be no menus, subtitles or alternative sound tracks, just the video and stereo audio. I know the full version of Roxio's software can do this very quickly, but I though that there probably are a lot of better shareware programs out there. I would like to capture the video without conversions (if that is possible with a transport stream), so that the quality would not degrade any further. The DVD's will probably be recorded with a quality that fits two hours on a single layer DVD. Oh, and this is in PAL (the VHS tapes and all equipment).
2) Do you think the plan here is a good-enough strategy? I have my doubts, because I think the technology in video is about where audio was 10 years ago. Currenly all audio archiving is done without compression, but uncompressed video seems to be only available to dedicated organisations with a big budget. If I was doing audio archiving in the 90's I would have been tempted to use compressed formats, and later regreted that deeply. So when I have to compress these videos I'd like to either do it well enough so that the tapes may then rot into their casings or then do it inexpensively and very fast so that the losses are not so great if it has to be redone in ten years :).
I'm seeking advice on archiving VHS recordings on a digital format. I have searched the forum, but not found the particular answers I'm looking for. A small introduction: I work for a small library and my job is to digitise old media that is under threat of degrading. Mostly this means sound recordings, but there are also a bit over 100 VHS tapes that would need to be digitised also. This is a music library, so we are more focused on audio than video.
With differrent formats we are always trying to use the equipment that we already own if it suits the needs. This has been quite a succesfull approach, because generally the equipment here is of quite a good quality. For VHS we have have a few normal VCR:s and two Panasonic DMR-ES35V's, which are VHS-DVD-combo machines.
Our plan for VHS's is to use the combo machine to copy the videos to DVD and then capture the DVD to a hard drive and from there to 200GB data tapes (which is our primary archive storage). For those tapes that will propably be popular among library users we are going to use DVD+R and the rest will be copied to DVD+RW which will be rewritten after the video is on the hard drive.
I know I would have a lot more options if I captured the video straight to the computer and then make a DVD if required, but the primary reason for using the combo machine is that we have only one digitising workstation and that will be busy with the audio materials. Using the combo machine will create a second "production line" for the digitising project.
The actual questions for which I'm seeking answers are:
1) Which program would you recommend for capturing the video from DVD+R? I'm hoping to have a single .mpg file for each DVD. Because these are from VHS, there will be no menus, subtitles or alternative sound tracks, just the video and stereo audio. I know the full version of Roxio's software can do this very quickly, but I though that there probably are a lot of better shareware programs out there. I would like to capture the video without conversions (if that is possible with a transport stream), so that the quality would not degrade any further. The DVD's will probably be recorded with a quality that fits two hours on a single layer DVD. Oh, and this is in PAL (the VHS tapes and all equipment).
2) Do you think the plan here is a good-enough strategy? I have my doubts, because I think the technology in video is about where audio was 10 years ago. Currenly all audio archiving is done without compression, but uncompressed video seems to be only available to dedicated organisations with a big budget. If I was doing audio archiving in the 90's I would have been tempted to use compressed formats, and later regreted that deeply. So when I have to compress these videos I'd like to either do it well enough so that the tapes may then rot into their casings or then do it inexpensively and very fast so that the losses are not so great if it has to be redone in ten years :).