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Archiving Vhs tapes
I have taken on a project to archive my cousins tape collection consisting of Vhs, 8mm, and mini-dv tapes of his daughter from birth to 8 years old.
He wants them captured and stored for future editing, as well as burned to DVD for easy viewing. He has about forty hours of footage. (BTW, I am capturing into my G5 with an ADVC-110.)
I am going to give him a 750gb External HD with QT movies of all his tapes, DVD copies of each, and possibly even DVCam copies as well.
I imported the first Vhs tape, and the footage looked pretty sharp, with no visible signs of degradation. The frames are solid, and details crisp. The only negatives is in many scenes the whites are yellow, due mostly to poor white balance, and some dark footage, probably due to backlit, auto exposure. So, it needed some levels adjustment, which made it look great, on the computer anyway.
However, when I burned the video, I thought it looked terrible. The sharp details are gone, and the color is clearly faded. I know I am going to lose detail when burning to DVD, but it was worse than I expected.
So, I did some tests. First, I burned a short test, Video-TS, of the footage without the color correction, to see if that was the cause. It still looked lousy, so my next test was to export from my timeline right back to my DVCam, and that looked a little better, but had lost a lot of definition too. So, finally I made a straight dub from the crisp Vhs tape directly to my DVCam, and watching that on my TV, I was horrified at how much definition was lost.
I know I could use a TBC, (though I do not presently have one), but since the frames look great on the TV straight off the Vhs, I wouldn’t guess that would help much.
My question: Is there anything I can do to capture/dub the footage from the Vhs at the same quality that it has when I play it directly?
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8 Replies
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What you get from a VHS is a full video composite signal. With more or less quality but a composite video signal. If you want to digitalize with a certain quality, (appart of using a TBC so you can adjust levels), you should capture it with a better codec than DV. i.e. DV 50.
VHS is a color-under format whee the color has been highly compressed. If you record it as DV your throwing the 75% of the color your getting from your tape. With DV50 (422) your keeping the 50% of the color. The files are double size, but the quality is much better. The DVDs will look completly different. In a 750Gbs HD you can fit 40 hours footage.
Cheers,
Rafael -
Thanks for that advice Rafael,
Just so I’m clear.
Capture the Vhs footage with DV50 preset, thereby saving more of the color information.
Use Compressor to convert to MPEG2 for DVD burning.Also, in your opinion…
If I export the DV50 as DV, will it then retain the color info?And, would capturing as DV50 and then printing to tape, say to DVCam, provide a better copy than going straight with component and s-video cables, from Vhs to DVCam?
Regards,
Richard -
[Richisgame] “Capture the Vhs footage with DV50 preset, thereby saving more of the color information.Use Compressor to convert to MPEG2 for DVD burning.
“
Yes. Try to make the DVD from the best source possible. Think about the Holiwood movies. They are DVDs but are made out of a film that has been digitalized keeping the most possible quality.[Richisgame] “And, would capturing as DV50 and then printing to tape, say to DVCam, provide a better copy than going straight with component and s-video cables, from Vhs to DVCam?” In the moment that you go to DVCam (DV) you compress again the picture and you go from a 422(DV50) to 411 (DVCam NTSC), so you loos the half of the color you had.
I have few things to do but I’ll post you in a few minutes to explain you how I work with my DVCam footage to try to get the best on DVDs.
One moment.
Rafael -
Thanks Rafael,
Any extra info you have for me, whenever you have a chance is greatly appreciated.
As to preparing M2v’s in Compressor.
Does bitrate affect quality? And if so, how much?The original two hour tapes captured in DVNTSC were 25GB.
In order to get them to fit on a 4.7GB DVD, I had to encode them at a 4.7 bit rate. And make the audio AC3.if the DV50 capture is going to be 50GB per two hour tape, will I have to encode at an even lower bitrate?
Will two one hour DVD’s at 7.0 bitrate have a visible difference in quality, to one two hour DVD at 4.7 bitrate?
Regards,
Richard -
One of your problems is your capture device. The ADVC-110 has an on board dv codec chip so everything gets converted into dv enroute to the computer. Because of that there is no sense going to dvcpro 50 after that. You would need a higher end digitizer like an AJA IO to get away from the dv format. This would help archiving to a higher quality format. Good quality vhs footage (which it sounds like you have) encodes best going straight to dvd through a hardware encoder or one of the vcr type dvd recorders that are out there. This avoids digitizing it twice. Most vcr type dvd recorders give you :
dv picture quality @ up to 1hr per disc ;
s-video picture quality @ up to 2hr per disc;
vhs picture quality @ up to 4hr.per disc.
after you go over the 2hr limit the encode drops to 250 lines from 500 lines as well as the bit rate reduction. You will see a huge difference according to the time you squeeze on a disc/bitrate. -
One of your problems is your capture device. The ADVC-110 has an on board dv codec chip so everything gets converted into dv enroute to the computer. Because of that there is no sense going to dvcpro 50 after that. You would need a higher end digitizer like an AJA IO to get away from the dv format. This would help archiving to a higher quality format. Good quality vhs footage (which it sounds like you have) encodes best going straight to dvd through a hardware encoder or one of the vcr type dvd recorders that are out there. This avoids digitizing it twice. Most vcr type dvd recorders give you :
dv picture quality @ up to 1hr per disc ;
s-video picture quality @ up to 2hr per disc;
vhs picture quality @ up to 4hr.per disc.
after you go over the 2hr limit the encode drops to 250 lines from 500 lines as well as the bit rate reduction. You will see a huge difference according to the time you squeeze on a disc/bitrate. -
Sorry Richard I couldn’t come back til now.
Yesterday I gave you some information that can confuse you.
I was wrong about the device you are using to capture. I had a look in Google, and as Rennie says in his post, you can only capture DV with the ADVC-110. So is the same that you use this machine or you digitalize the VHS through your DVCam. Thy use two different DV codec but the compression will be the same. You should make a test and compare if there is any difference.
As Rennie says, ther is not point to record a DV signal (the one passing by your FireWire) as DV50. You would get bigger files but no more quality. To capture real DV50 you would need a DVCPro camera or desk.
So with your equipment you can only capture DV. But you can try to improve the look of the DV footage in FC. I film DVCam and normally I end-up handing a DVD to my clients.
Normally I edit in a DV sequence and when the editing is finished I chage the sequence to 8b Uncompress and I apply the “Chroma Sharpening” filter of Nattress. The image change absolutley. All the red color that spread around the red objects go back to the place, and all the blockiness deapear from around the borders. Is magic.
About the DVDs compression, if you go to put one hour per disk, you can set higer data-rate than 4.7Mbps. Just use the presets of Compressor (Best quality). And as long as you will set only the original audio, you can use AIFF instead of AC3. AIFF will keep the original quality without any compression.
Make some tests and good luck.
Cheers,
Rafael -
Rennie and Rafael, thanks for your help.
Unfortunately, the straight Vhs to DVD dub won’t work this time, because I have already shown a split screen test with color correction on one side, the original on the other, and was praised for the work.
So I can’t get away from digitizing it twice without having some serious egg on my face. I have to plod along. But, I will pick up one of those set-top Vhs-DVD boxes, for when all I need is a straight dub.
As to these set-top boxes, I know I can spend a lot or a little. Do you have a recommendation? Is there any brand I should avoid? No worries if nothing comes to mind as I will do an internet search, and try to find some reviews. I just figured if either of you have one and are thrilled with it, you might mention it.
And, thanks for the clarity regarding the DVCPro50 codec.
But, for the future, would any digital footage, that I can directly import with firewire into FCP, benefit from this? DVCam? MiniDV, etc. That sounds like a great trick to use if it could work.I need a little clarity regarding amount of time recorded on a DVD.
Until this project, I have been under the impression that you could burn 2-hours of nearly DV quality footage onto DVD. Apparently, I have been completely wrong on this.So if I want to make the highest quality DVD, I can have no more than one hour of footage on it? Is this based on the format I am starting with? Does it matter that I am only starting with Vhs, as opposed to DV?
Rennie, you noted you can fit 1 hour of DV quality, or 2 hours of S-Video quality footage on one 4.7GB DVD.
To fit 2 hours of Vhs footage on one DVD, as I mentioned, I have to encode with Compressor at 4.7 bitrate. How much of the original Vhs picture quality am I losing by doing this?
Does two-pass, vs. one-pass VBR affect quality? (I’m sorry I am asking such inane questions.)
I know, Rafael mentioned, I can encode 1 hour instead at 7.0, (with original audio), and double up the amount of discs. But will there be a marked, (naked eye), improvement in quality?
I am roped into this thing, and have over 40 hours to do, (no deadline thank God), and though I have to get on with it, I just want to make sure I am doing it right. And, learn my lessons for the future.
Thanks again for all your help.
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