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S-VHS to FCP – workflow help needed
Hi all. I have three S-VHS tapes from 1997 that I now need digitized for use with Final Cut Pro. Two of them are 1st gen stuff, the raw footage from the camera, and one is 2nd gen, the final edit compiled from the two raw tapes. All should be in good condition.
After some googling, I found positive reviews of the ADVC series devices from Canopus. The ADVC55 looks inexpensive enough, and could be used directly with FCP, which apparently sees it as a basic DV deck.
I’ve only ever worked with digital source material before, so I’m a newbie when it comes to getting stuff into FCP from the analog domain. Further investigation has turned up a lot of viewpoints from people who know this stuff way better than I do, and some potential problems with the conversion process.
First off, TBC. I’ve seen conflicting opinions about its relevance (seems to depend on the source material), although the general consensus seems to be that it’s A Good Thing. Line TBC is deemed useless, frame TBC is apparently where the action is at. The ADVC55 doesn’t have TBC, and I have no idea how big a problem that is with my S-VHS tapes. I don’t presently own an S-VHS deck, I’d have to borrow one to digitize the stuff.
Also, the ADVC55 does DV conversion. I found an interesting forum post that said this (in Finnish originally, here’s a rough translation):
“It’s crucial to capture uncompressed data, since S-VHS tapes contain some amounts of fine-grained/high frequency noise that comes with the luminance. This noise confuses most lossy compression codecs (like DV) enough for the image to develop varying amounts of unwanted artifacts; vertical objects might get cut into pieces etc.”
Later from the same post:
“Don’t use the DV format at all when working with S-VHS. You’ll ruin the end result, but in such a sneaky way that you won’t even notice it until the final product (e.g. a DVD) is produced. The first, and maybe even the second generation may look OK, but then the artifacts multiply immensely…”
Whether these comments are true or relevant to my situation, I’m not sure. The simplicity and low cost of the S-VHS -> ADVC55 -> FCP workflow is very attractive, but I don’t want to invest in a solution that may prove to be inadequate. I want to capture these tapes right the first time, and the captured footage must be good enough to be worked on with FCP and later exported to DVD. Is this feasible? Other device recommendations are welcome, too.
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There’s an alternative workflow, one that involves Windows. There are some semi-professional (S-)VHS digitizing companies around where I live, but none seem to produce QT-compatible stuff, being Windows-focused. Some even advertise using TBC, which might be nice. I might be able to arrange capture to some other format than the usual DV AVI or WMV, but I’ve yet to find a Windows capture codec (compressed or uncompressed, lossy or lossless) that FCP could use. Does such a thing exist?
Maybe if the capture is done to an image sequence; thousands and thousands of TIFF files or something like that. It’s clunky, though. Windows has the advantage of VirtualDub, which seems to be able to do neat stuff that even FCP won’t achieve. It might be a nice pre-processor tool, but the problem of getting an FCP-compatible format out of Windows remains. Any ideas on this?
Of course, there’s the third possible workflow: capture the S-VHS to the Mac without the intermediate DV conversion. I have no idea how this could be achieved.
To summarize: the ideal workflow would be S-VHS -> digital format (an image sequence, or some uncompressed/lossless codec that the Mac can read), but I don’t know what type of hardware I need. If that’s impossible, then S-VHS -> DV -> FCP, for which a solution already exists, but I’m afraid of possibly significant quality tradeoffs. To top it all off, I’m budget-limited, so it’s basically either the Canopus device or some inexpensive digitizing service.
Any insights on this hairy topic are most welcome.
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3 Replies
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While the Canopus box will capture the video I can’t attest to its quality. We use an AJA I/O to capture analog video. It acts as a frame sync which is very good for capturing VHS. If you want virtually no loss of quality, you should capture 8-bit uncompressed. DVCPro 50 would also do well. A possible codec option for capture on a Windows platform that would be compatible with FCP on the Mac is Photo JPEG at 75%.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)
Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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This is an inexpensive time bas corrector which works very well with any FireWire camera or deck. Set your capture control to non-controlable device.
Have a wonderful day.
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[John Fishback] ” We use an AJA I/O to capture analog video. It acts as a frame sync which is very good for capturing VHS. If you want virtually no loss of quality, you should capture 8-bit uncompressed. DVCPro 50 would also do well.”
This is what we do also. AJA i/o’s are around quite cheap on the used market and worth having around for all they can do for the price. DVCPRO 50 makes much nicer DVD’s than DV does.
From there you need to find a decent deck IN GOOD CONDITION and use good cables.
“thou can not stir a flower without crumbling a star” ……Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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