I have a VHS tape I need converted into an MKV for archival purposes. What would be the very best, & clearest way to do this?
Anyone here ever tried?
I used to do that by copying them on a DVD then importing the DVD. I don't remember what they're called but it's like a dvd player that also has a VHS slot and can copy from VHS to DVD.
>>52188124
I suppose I could default to that, but these are old fairly videos so I need them to be as clear as possible. Looking back, I really should have recorded these on Beta, but there's nothing I can do about that.
>>52188091
find a s-vhs player and capture card.
The s-vhs player will have and s-video output to the capture card.
>>52188161
Any particular model of S-VHS player? Do S-VHS players even play regular VHS? I could head off to a flea amrket or goodwill this weekend to find one if you think that would work.
>>52188182
No.
Yes.
s-vhs are hard to find, you're best bet would be to call local "event videographers" and ask if they have one. The one I worked with would have to duplicate 20 - 30 wedding videos every day and he would have about 8 - 12 s-vhs players on a rack.
should be no difference, s-video output from my experience offers less blur than av output and is sharper
>>52188233
Couldn't I just order an S-VHS player off eBay & do it myself? That seems like the route I want to take. Is S-Video the best I can hope for as far as output goes? There weren't any RGB or VHS VHS players right?
>>52188257
No i meant ask the even videographer to sell you a svhs player. They don't use them anymore since everyone wants DVD's now. He probably has some in a junk bin or something.
>>52188288
That's a good idea. That's similar to how I got my sony PVM. My dentist was going to throw it away.
>>52188091
Get old VHS player, take out the magnetic head and hook it onto an microcontroller. Collect the Data stream and then convert it to whatever you want.
>>52188124
>>52188159
I used a DVD Recorder to do mine.
You'd be surprised about how much better it is compared to a cheapo capture card.
Analogue video tape is quite unstable, so it can have timing issues with digital capture. The way to fix these is to use a Time Base Corrector which re-times the tape to a stable source. Good TBCs cost a fair bit, but it's a little known fact that many brands of DVD Recorder actually have one (albeit without mentioning).
Here is a sample from an old 1995 video copied to DVD with a Panasonic recorder:
https://u.pomf.is/yrzfcf.mkv
Note: I've compressed it for posting online (it looks better on disc), and it's interlaced --it's bad practice to deinterlace until you need to (you might need to play it on a properly configured player to get back the full 50fps).
If you look carefully at the video, it's stable and the head switching noise is slightly suppressed by the TBC (something that even some pro TBCs don't do).
>>52188161
>>52188182
It really depends on the S-VHS deck. The video on the tape is stored in composite video, so the seperation of chrominance and luminance is done by on-deck circuitry. It may be better to leave that up to what you use to capture the video (which is more likely to be newer).
>>52188849
What model? Any specific one you recommend?
>>52189035
I use a DMR-EX77 that I got for free.
As for model, I wouldn't be the person to ask. I'd look around forums and the like.
I know that a few Japanese brands (JVC, Panasonic) were pretty good in their day.
Even if you don't manage to find one that does a good job with a stable image, it does simplify the process of converting the video by a lot.
>>52188849
>It really depends on the S-VHS deck.
Anon, you sound quite knowledgeable about this topic.
I plan to convert some old tapes (family stuff). Back in the day my father purchased a stupidly high end S-VHS deck (Panasonic NV-HS1000, was apparently £1000 new). It has a built in TBC function.
Do you recommend going down the capture card route, or using a DVD recorder (in this case, a 11 year old Philips deck)
>>52189664
It depends on the TBC in the deck. If it's any good (I recall that a a few of the high end panasonic decks were decent) then you should be able to capture the video with whatever you like (capture card, DVD recorder, whatever). I'm not sure if a Philips DVD Recorder was very good or not, I have no experience with them.
If you already have the DVD recorder, it's worth a try. A quality capture card will work better (and will provide you with an uncompressed output), but it will require some research to get good results, whether a DVD recorder already provides something that is properly set up (correct interlacing, resolution and sample rates) if you use the highest quality setting.
The biggest downside if you do use the DVD recorder is that a disc will only hold 1hr of high quality video. Mine has a HDD in it, which I could remove to extract 4hr High Quality recordings from.
But anyway, there is a sprinkle of unpredictability with a lot of this (unless you fork out each step of the way), so give it a few tries until you get what you are happy with.
>>52189870
>>52189870
>>52189882
I certainly hope it doesn't contain anything, considering I uploaded it.
I'm giving you my promise that it doesn't into virus, but you don't need to open it if you don't trust me. The picture sums it up okayish.
>>52189838
>quality capture card will work better
Any suggestions?
Looking back at the reviews for the Philips unit, seems pretty average. I might just stock up on a ton of disks and give it a shot at the highest quality setting.
I hope the internal TBC of the SVHS will be good enough.
>>52189925
Nah I already opened it anyways, just thought I'd let you know this site is blocked by Firefox's web forgery thing.
I'm also not one of the guys you originally uploaded it for.
>>52189942
Well what I was saying was that the video will already be corrected before it hits either the capture card or DVD recorder, so neither will have any correcting to do.
I wouldn't know specific capture card brands to look out for (I lucked out and never really had to use much analogue video beyond personal family stuff), but I've heard good things about that Blackmagic one (which also does HD if you ever get into 'muh vidya videos') and I remember using a Grassvalley box some years ago that did it directly to 'dv' format pretty well. It was terrible on unstable sources but if you are cleaning the footage with a TBC it won't matter.
>>52189958
Some asshole posted malware to pomf.io, and now Google's reporting it as an "attack site".
>>52190013
Thanks for all of your help anon.
It's a journey reading through all the info out there on the best way to do VHS conversions. I've just read that ATI All in Wonder AGP cards on a XP box is the best way to roll, but I really doubt I want to go that far.
>>52190072
That's okay!
Anything to help!
I also looked up the ATI card you mention.
It's essentially on the same tier as the ones I mentioned although the others are more modern and have more sane connectors than AGP (the Blackmagic is USB3/PCI-E and the Grassvalley is Firewire).
>>52190141
I've decided to go down the route of using a USB ATI Wonder 600 (or 750, depending on how cheap it is to get it over to the UK).
I'll probably end up asking the guys over at digitalfaq to see if my setup it good to go. I'm worried about the state of the VHS deck though, it's been in storage for the last 7-8 years with no use.
I'll open it up and run some sacrificial tapes through before anything valuable.
Today my faith in /g/ was restored, it's nice to see knowledgeable people on here once in a while instead of seeing shitposting about phones and operating systems.
Go to the nearest photography store and have them transfer it for you
>>52190201
Good luck anon! I hope everything works well.
Just make sure you get your software side right as well. I've seen all too many videos ruined by incorrectly configured interlacing and stuff like that.
It certainly is a good idea to read and understand the basic video formats (from the analogue PAL/SÉCAM to the destination formats) and decide on the right codecs for the job. In that respect, I use the raw 1:1 mpeg2 that comes from my DVD recorder for archival as it is the best quality. If you don't use something lossless you'll want to stick to mpeg2 or h.264, as other formats don't get interlacing right (vp8/vp9 don't handle it at all).
At least once you've finished you'll be a video pro and you'll notice every single mistake that everyone makes which will cause you to lose your hair.
>shitposting about phones and operating systems
Well, now you are speaking my language :^)
debian or plebian
iphone a shit
android a shit
windows a shit
