-
VHS Capture and Archive Questions
Hello all,
First I’d like to thank everyone for their knowledge and time making these Forums so great! I’ve learned so much over the last few months.
I’d like to capture, edit and archive my VHS home movies.
My capture setup is JVC HR-S4800U SVHS player > Canon ZR65mc DV cam > firewire to custom editing PC using Vegas pro 8.
I capture to a separate internal SATA Seagate 500GB drive that was just defragged.
I just captured my 19 year old wedding video that is just over 2 hours and it looks pretty good in the preview window.
That is as far as I’ve got.Capture Questions:
1) Will the AV to firewire capture quality vary from camcorder to camcorder? I’m looking on craigslist for an inexpensive DV cam to use as a deck. I borrowed the canon.
2) Is there a big difference between using composite yellow or s-video cable from the VCR to the camera or is it trial and error?
3) What capture settings do I need so the video will stay the same size.
Vegas is trying to make it 720 x 480 at 1536kbps which is putting too much video beyond the safe zones.4) I dropped 6 frames on this 2 hour capture. Is that good?
I turned off DV control, etc. The PC was only used for capture.
2 frames dropped during the 1st 5 seconds btw.
I drop no frames when capturing DV footage.5) What render settings will make this look good on larger TV’s? I have a 53″ projestion set.
5) Has anyone made some kind of a picture frame border in photoshop so the video plays just in the middle?
Is this something Vegas can do or is the border frame unnecessary?
I was thinking of this for my 8mm film home movies as well.Archive Questions:
1) Is making a DV copy of any real value?
My thinking is at least it’s digital and physically smaller to store. It still has all the drawbacks of tape however.2) What should I render as if I want to have files to edit from in the future on data DVD’s?
I will make a regular mpeg2 DVD so I can enjoy my footage now.3) Did I miss anything?
Sorry this is so long but as you can read I need some help.
Is there an award for the longest post?Thanks,
Chuck -
2 Replies
-
[Chuck Manly] “Will the AV to firewire capture quality vary from camcorder to camcorder?”
Most likely.
[Chuck Manly] “Is there a big difference between using composite yellow or s-video cable from the VCR to the camera”
Yes, the S-Video gives a better quality picture.
[Chuck Manly] “What capture settings do I need so the video will stay the same size.
Vegas is trying to make it 720 x 480 at 1536kbps which is putting too much video beyond the safe zones.”Safe zone markers in the preview window are used to tell you if your graphic titles are safe. Your picture itself should extend well beyond title safe.
[Chuck Manly] “I dropped 6 frames on this 2 hour capture. Is that good?”
That’s fine. Most likely dropped those frames due to a glitch on your video tape. When you consider that 30 frames equals 1 second of video, you dropped less than half a second for two hrs of capture. That’s pretty good.
[Chuck Manly] “Is making a DV copy of any real value?”
You bet. DVD’s are easy to damage and may become unplayable after just a few years. DV tapes are small and higher picture quality than standard def DVD’s.
As far as render settings, I will let someone else field that one.
Regards, Rick.
Rick Mac
Director of Audio Production
TCT Network – Directv 377 -
[Chuck Manly] “5) What render settings will make this look good on larger TV’s? I have a 53″ projestion set.”
You can encode it with the default settings for DVDA video stream to mpeg2 (PAL or NTSC, as you’d like).
You won’t see any difference going higher bitrate. In fact you can go lower, but but be careful not to get compression artifacts.No matter what projection set do you have, the VHS footage will look blurry. Especially such an old one you mentioned.
[Chuck Manly] “5) Has anyone made some kind of a picture frame border in photoshop so the video plays just in the middle?”
If the head switching noise disturbs you (that 8-10 lines on the bottom of the screen) you can hide it by properly adjusting pan/crop.
Stretch to fill frame has to be switched off – otherwise your video will be resized.Regards
K.L.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up