VHS Archiving - How do I do it right for a reasonable price?

[Judge Dredd]

Yeah it seems that pulling them from YT is honestly your best bet until archive.org gets the full collection, I apologize if I got your hopes up.

No. It's a bit of a weight off if anything. It's good to know it's not on me to preserve these episodes.

How many do you have? You can send them to some 3rd party service I think the average now is around £7 per tape but you could probably negotiate a bulk price

I didn't know that was a service. I don't have an exact number, but my guess is somewhere between 100 and 300 tapes. However, I predict a non-zero amount of "junk", and I want to be sure it's done right for the tapes I do want to keep.

 

[George Orson Welles]

No. It's a bit of a weight off if anything. It's good to know it's not on me to preserve these episodes.

Yeah I can totally understand that outlook, if I ever find anything on TV Burp and this thread isn't locked, I'll hit you with a mention, Cheers.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Thread update.

After more than a year, I've finally got around to making a start on this.

The capture card device I currently have is a generic device I got from Amazon. From what I can tell appears to the OS as a 30fps 640x480 webcam and mic. It de-interlaces itself, but the colours seem fine at first glance. I didn't install the provided software as it appears to be VirtualDub for boomers.

Speaking of which, when it comes to VirtualDub, @Kosher Dill recommended version 1.9.4, I also have the 1.10.4, and "VirtualDub 2", which is VirtualDub with ffmpeg/h264 support (I thought VirtualDub was avi based anyway?). I'm not sure what the difference is.

Then there's my VHS player. It's a bog standard one my dad gave me. No S-video or other fancy features. Works great so far.

While I'm concerned about some loss due to the de-interlace and FPS cap, so far the quality is surprisingly good. I'm thinking of buying another capture card after Christmas (I couldn't find the exact one everybody recommended) but so far this is off to a good start.

If anyone is interested, I can keep the thread updated on my progress.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Speaking of which, when it comes to VirtualDub, @Kosher Dill recommended version 1.9.4, I also have the 1.10.4, and "VirtualDub 2", which is VirtualDub with ffmpeg/h264 support (I thought VirtualDub was avi based anyway?). I'm not sure what the difference is.

According to forum folklore, 1.10.4 "has bugs" that the 1.9.x versions don't. I haven't been able to find out what the supposed bugs are, but better safe than sorry I suppose. At any rate the 1.10.x versions don't have any new features relevant to video capture.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Here's the results of my first test using two stock VHS tapes.

As I said, I'm happy with the quality so far, with the 30fps deinterlaced cap being my only real problem, and that's just for keeping 50fps content. While that could just be my test videos, I doubt it.

First the raw.
Sometimes I think the colours look washed out, but other times (like the screenshot) it looks good. I'm going to say I'm happy with the colour and any washed out scenes are the content itself.

Another minor nitpick is some serious jpeg artefacts around some text. I don't know if it would be noticeable in casual viewing, as right now I'm at my computer looking for artefacts.

Finally, there's the blocks instead of the VHS grain. Again, this is how the input appears, so there's not a lot I can do without a capture card, but in motion it doesn't look bad and is certainly watchable.

Next is the compression.
Some surprising results. Raw video wasn't as big as I was expecting, only 3-4gb for one hour of tape. I'm sure virtual dub is set to capture at lossless raw, but maybe there's a setting I missed. Compressed video came out at 1.2gb and 1.5gb for the same videos, which is larger than I was expecting, but there's no noticeable difference in visual quality from the raw even at my PC. For those wondering, I was using CRF 15.

I was also surprised more advanced codecs x265 and VP9 were only 10mb smaller despite taking much longer to encode. I know they're intended for HD, and x265 shines at low bitrates, but it was still a surprise.
I'll take the file size hit for archive reasons, and lower the quality for shows I know are available elsewhere. eg. Much of Harry Hill's TV Burp appeared on Archive.org.

Edit: Forgot to mention. Audio is fine. For compression, I started with 70% quality, but that's overkill if the internet is to be believed. 192kbs is supposedly CD quality, and my current settings resulting in files around 290kbs average. I think the default settings of 50% quality or 256kbs will be good enough for archiving.

 

[Judge Dredd]

First real run today, and I ran into that age old VirtualDub problem. The audio and video going out of sync over the course of a long video. The same problem talked about here.

I had issues with VirtualDub in the past.

As usual, Google gives me a bunch of forum posts a decade old, and they're mostly screaming about needing to buy this VCR or that capture card. While only showing newer results brings up click bait for boomers.

I can fix it somewhat. If I turn off all audio-video syncing, and then use Virtualdub to match the framerate to the audio, it gets close enough to be watchable, and the times where it does feel off might be placebo. It also adds another layer on encoding, but it's workable.


I'm going to get into the gritty details. In short, I've not found a pal standard for this capture card. For those wondering, what I have is apparently "DIGITNOW USB Digital Video Adaptor". That name means little to me. As said, I'd like to get something better after Christmas. I'm tempted to spend for the elgato video capture or the Dazzle DVD Recorder instead of rolling the dice on various generic cheap devices.

I installed a couple of Virtualdub alternatives, all really old, but I haven't had a chance to test them fully. AmaRecTV was interesting as it showed my capture device as being capable of 50fps in it's settings. It's also a Japanese program with Engrish menus. I assume it's what tehpope talked about here.

I used some japanese software for capturing in the past. It has english menusand works great.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't accept any codecs I could throw at it and won't let me capture raw.

Virtual VCR was another I installed, but didn't try it fully. Very similar to VirtualDub's capture mode from what I did see.

Finally, there's OBS, which I've not tried recording with, but the preview audio is out of sync by a fixed amount. That should be an easy fix once I have it dialled in since OBS has a "delay video" filter built in. If it's the audio that's ahead, that can be fixed in editing. The only annoyance will be having to change all the output settings if I want to stream or record games. But if it works, it works.

OBS also shows a 50fps input from my device, but so far I don't have any video I know to be high framerate to test it.

 

[tehpope]

I've used VirtualDub2 recently and had no issue with a-v sync. FFmpeg only gave me issues when I tried to force a framerate on the capture.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I'm sure virtual dub is set to capture at lossless raw

If you want to capture lossless, use the Huffyuv codec rather than an uncompressed raw capture.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I've used VirtualDub2 recently and had no issue with a-v sync. FFmpeg only gave me issues when I tried to force a framerate on the capture.

What do you mean by force a framerate?

If you want to capture lossless, use the Huffyuv codec rather than an uncompressed raw capture.

I assumed that was outdated. I'm hoping for lossless capture simply to have the best possible video for editing and compression. There isn't much urgency right now due to the limitations of the capture device (US resolution and apparent 30fps cap) doing way more for the video quality than anything I'd do to it. It's watchable at least.

I've been watching/reading a guide on lossless video in OBS, with h264 and NVENC having lossless modes. Though as always when it comes to video, there are people claiming it's not true lossless because it could theoretically introduce compression artefacts.

 

[tehpope]

Huffyuv is a good lossless codec. Doesn't use a lot of cpu overhead and compresses decently. Lagarith is better and very similar in cpu overhead. FFV1 is compariable to Lagarith but uses more cpu. FFmpeg doesn't support encoding to lagarith.

What do you mean by force a framerate?

You can tell ffmpeg what the framerate is supposed to be. -r. It'll ignore whatever the capture card is telling ffmpeg the framerate is.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Saw this in my recommendations. What's interesting to me is the hardware portion. Of course the only product mentioned availible in the UK is the Dazzle, which the description says doesn't have sound.


I think at some point I'm going to have to import something if I want VHS capture that's reliable.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Necro, and with a double post too.

It's hard to think it's been THREE YEARS of this. It doesn't feel like it. I don't know if anyone still cares, but I feel the need to document this process somewhere both for the advice, and so that the only source is not decades old threads with missing posts.

A quick recap/update. Cheap second hand Dazzle's seem to be gone. My dad has one, but it's been three years so I don't hold much hope of him finding it.

I'm tempted to bite the bullet and spend the £65-£80 for an elgato video capture. It's over priced, but it's actually available in my region and I'll at least know any problems are with software, not hardware.

 

[Corbax]

Pro tip: conventional capturing is dead. You either use the cheap methods and get shit, or you invest in some serious hardware for thousands of dollars.

What you need instead is vhs-decode.

Basically, you can copy the tape's RF signal to your PC and decode it in software. Doing so gives you the best quality possible. It can be done on the cheap too, the hardware required is a $20 capture card that you can buy off of AliExpress and any old VCR. Now, there is some technical knowledge required, because you'll have to physically modify your VCR and then use Linux on the software end. It takes a lot of time and storage space, but if you care about quality captures, then this is by far the cheapest way to do so. It's honestly not that complicated of a process once you get the hang of it.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

it's a mix of a lot of stuff, how you taped it initially, how the tape has held up over the quarter-century since it was recorded, and how you config your gizmo is a lot of that particular battle
but you do hit diminishing returns pretty quickly

I remember one of the stuff I tried capturing from an old tape (pre-1991) was just crap. Jagged lines everywhere, and near-ruined sound. I could try re-balancing the sound but the tape was just trash.

 

[skykiii]

I've backed up a few VHS tapes in the past, when I used to have a VHS/DVD Combo player that also had a direct dubbing function.

I'm sure most would not consider it the optimal route but I dunno, I was fine with the results and it was better than losing the tapes forever.

 

[eatler]

Are you still attempting to digitize vhs recordings or has this already happened. I had to buy an elgato recently and it was cheaper than a couple of years ago, now that covids over and everyone’s working again.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Are you still attempting to digitize vhs recordings or has this already happened.

Not done it yet.

I had to buy an elgato recently and it was cheaper than a couple of years ago

How is it?

 

[eatler]

How is it?

So I have experience with a 15 buck (this was 2018 so things were cheaper) Asian Jakem digitizer and it was awful. It would download it into a made up file type so only my computer could view the file and it saved videos in the 5 gigabyte range. Not even full movies keep in mind.

So I broke down and bought a elgato, and the think makes 1 gigabyte files for an actual movie and I can actually view them on my tv (I have a Roku so I put them on a flash drive and watch them on there). It also gives you a few more options to mess around with. The only other thing I haven’t attempted, but I think would also help if you use a digitizer, is to put it through a online video compressor. It still crashes on me plenty but I find as long as you aren’t downloading more than 2 hours at a time and you shut down the program after downloading one movie it works ok. But this is really the only digitizer on the market that works (that I found).

But for me it was worth spending the 60 bucks because I like collecting vhs and digitizing them because it’s cheaper in the long run then buying streaming services. Also I’m planning on uploading a lot of the videos to archive.com (forgive me null) so they aren’t lost to time.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Initially I had no interest in this but apparently the sound mixes from Hi-Fi VHS tapes of old movies (e.g. Casablanca) are often still superior than what you'll get on blu-ray. So, a concentrated effort for loseless VHS digitizing would actually be quite beneficial for cinephiles, beyond just the usual archiving purposes.

 

[Judge Dredd]

a concentrated effort for loseless VHS digitizing would actually be quite beneficial for cinephiles

I didn't know that about audio, but for video this has been a thing for a while. In another thread, we talked about how various "definitive" editions are complete hack jobs. I know this has been the case for Disney animation for a while since they keep messing with things like brightness and contrast, while noise removal filters destroy fine lines. It's for this reason certain VHS releases used to fetch good money.