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VHS Capture to PP CS6 – Hardware Advice Needed
Hello everyone,
I’m looking for some purchasing advice. I have 50+ VHS tapes that I would like to convert to digital using Premiere Pro CS6 on my i7 / GTX 470 / 12GB / Windows 7 x64 system.
I’m a pretty proficient CS6 user and have been in video production for several years. However, I haven’t touched VHS in many years, and even then years ago the whole prosumer-level analog to digital process required special hardware, and tons of expensive disk space and memory. I didn’t have the hardware or budget years ago, but I do now.
I don’t even have a VHS player at home anymore, so I’ll have to buy something. My source tapes are a mix of VHS and some SVHS, so ideally the VHS device will be capable of also playing SVHS.
Many of these VHS tapes have been digitized already with ~$50 consumer USB (“so easy to use, one click and go!”) based devices from about 8 years ago. The resulting quality was atrocious and thus, I want to redo them. Therefore I don’t want to use “home user” hardware/software that most likely uses inferior codecs and poor compression algorithms. I’m looking for something that interfaces directly with PP’s capture features.
I don’t need any special interface to jog / set capture points / control the VCR with PP, I figure I’ll end up doing a raw capture of the entire tape and editing it down from there (hooray for cheap TB drives!).
Can anyone offer any advice as to what VCR or specific capture device I should be looking at?
Thanks in advance!
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4 Replies
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Grass Valley ADVC-110 has been doing a lot of these conversions in the past decade. Captures into a DV stream.
Alternately, you could capture into H.264 at variable bit-rates, giving you more control over quality, with something like Video Recorder, or H.264 Pro Recorder.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
I’d recommend using any of the pro JVC series 22 SVHS decks. The BR-S822DXU provides excellent playback quality and features a built in time base corrector and digital noise reducer. Use the component analog out and run the signal through a Matrox MXO2 Mini Max as it includes Component, Composite, S-Video and HDMI inputs. Capture either uncompressed or directly to H.264 for archival purposes. You can use the free productivity app: Direct H.264 capture. https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2_mini_max/productivity_apps/
Remember to use high quality cables and make sure the deck heads are clean.
I’ve experimented with many different setups and this one seems to provide the best results.
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The VHS tapes I need to digitize were for the most part, not professionally shot – they’re tapes from schools, old instructional videos, some home movies, things of that nature.
I don’t want to spend too much money on equipment to digitize what in the end is crappy footage. However I do want to digitize crappy footage in the highest possible quality, if that makes sense.
Thank you both for your advice. I think I’m going to start small and spend $200ish on a digitizing box and see what kind of quality I can get with it using a consumer VCR. Not sure how I’ll handle the SVHS tapes yet though.
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In that case, the canopus advc 110 is the best bang for the buck. You can find them on eBay for $100-$150. If you can find a cheap external TBC to throw in between the deck and the canopus, your results will be pretty decent.
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