Capture from S-VHS or DVCAM?

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Eckhardt Stassens] “Should we have captured the footage directly from the original VHS, S-VHS, etc. rather than from the copy on DVCAM?”

Yes although in most cases the difference is negligible: DVCAM is much higher quality vs. VHS and the quality loss is insignificant if any. With S-VHS it may be more pronounced so you’re right in doing QC tests.

— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Jeff Pulera]

Once you’ve transferred an analog tape to DV or DVCAM, there should be no further loss when going from DVCAM to the computer, assuming a Firewire transfer, which is simply moving the digital data to another medium (tape to HDD) and there is no conversion taking place. It’s the same data as was on the tape, simply put into an .mov container.

Same for the DV to DVCAM to computer, just moving data, the .mov should be identical to the original miniDV cassette.

Back to the analog workflow, the VHS > DVCAM > mov file should look no different than capturing the VHS direct into the Mac via Firewire using an analog-digital converter such as a Grass Valley ADVC unit.

It was a good idea to convert VHS to digital years ago. The DVCAM tapes are digital, so as long as the tape can be read, the ones and zeros on the tape will always look the same, unlike an analog tape that loses magnetism and plays back a progressively weaker analog signal over the years.

As an aside, many years ago I had a DVCAM camera and since the tapes were $45 each, I liked to re-use them. I had a cheap Sony Digital8 HandyCam that basically recorded a DV signal onto Hi8 tape media. I could make digital copies from DVCAM to Digital8 via Firewire, camera to camera, so that the DVCAM tapes could then be used over. SAME quality on the Hi8 tape (Digital8 mode) as the original DVCAM from a much higher-end camera and tape media, since it’s just data it makes no difference about the value of the gear. Think of having a jpeg photo or mp3 song and moving it from computer to thumb drive to email to iPod, the data is always the same regardless of the medium, it doesn’t degrade when copying it.

The only way to possibly make the VHS tapes look better might be to use a capture card that will capture to an uncompressed or 4:2:2 format (DVCAM is 4:1:1 at 5:1 compression), but as the VHS tapes are now 12 years further degraded, the DVCAM versions have got to be the best bet at this time.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Swami Narayan]

Thank you so much for taking some of your valuable time to respond to my question.

[Swami Narayan]

I thank you very much for your elaborate response. I know your time is valuable and still you dedicate some of it to share your experience and knowledge. I appreciate it. Thank you all.