Live encoding for digitizing VHS

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Doug,

The more info you can provide, the better quality of responses you’ll get. Mac or PC, and what “hardware” do you currently have for capturing from VHS?

There are low-cost (consumer) capture units that will go direct to H.264. I use the Matrox MXO2 Mini Max that can capture SD or HD direct to H.264 files using hardware encoding in the box. Even does hardware scaling – I’ll capture DV via S-video and convert to “H.264 Blu-ray” in a 1080i format.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Doug Burnett]

Hi Jeff. Thanks for the response. I’m on a Mac 10.7 using a simple component-to-USB converter (https://goo.gl/zD0YRE). Was trying to do it cheap. Is there software that can convert live?

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Doug,

Cheap is right, looks like your capture device of choice is $8.86?!

Appears that it perhaps captures direct to MPEG-2 for writing to DVDs. But you want to capture straight to H.264? Not a Mac user, but even on the PC I don’t know what software would encode straight to H.264 from a cheapo input device, sorry

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Doug Burnett]

Yah, it was a dud 🙂 That’s what I get for being cheap. I did find this one which does go straight to H264, is made for Mac, and has good reviews.
https://www.elgato.com/video/video-capture

Thanks for the advice.

[Eric Balboa]

Hi Jeff,

I’m capturing vhs via the Canopus advc 300 in the dv codec. Each 2-3 hour tape needs to go on it’s own blue ray disc. Would you recommend transcoding to Mpeg2 blu ray or h264 blu ray in 1080i?

I’ve done a couple with the Mpeg2 setting at “high quality” and the file size is rather small as the default bitrate is only at about 5.

Should I stick with Mpeg2 and manually bump the bitrate up to 10 or even 15, or should I just use h264 1080i?

Thanks for your help.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Eric,

Though I’ve never actually done it, you’re supposed to be able to put DVD material on a Blu-ray disc. I would not bother with upconverting the material to 1080i first – the Blu-ray player will do the upconvert for you upon playback using quality hardware methods, and this should work better than doing it in software.

Just encode for “MPEG-2 DVD” with a CBR 8.0 bitrate setting.

Hope this works out for, I’ve not tested it but have seen many forum posts about putting DVD files on Blu-ray.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers