VHS > FCP – most sensible workflow for digitizing old family movies!

[Michael Gissing]

I presume you mean DVD recorder as there is no way to loop through a play only machine. I assume this extra signal path is to stabilise the VHS video timebase. Best would be to pass the VHS signal through a timebase corrector which will do a much better job of stabilising the signal.

I also presume you are going composite video and analog audio into the Decklink. If Component video is available, that would be cleaner than composite. Try going straight into the Decklink from the VHS to see if it is neccesary to loop through the DVD recorder. It may look better so I would trouble myself to test it. Don’t record the VHS to DVD just loop through, otherwise you are transcoding to mpeg2 and that will cost quality.

In FCP capture the footage as SD ProRes to get the best quality to file size. Also it is an editing codec.

[Larry Asbell]

Yea, good idea to first try feeding the VHS out right into the capture card. Capture a minute from a variety of tapes and look at the stability of the frame. If any breakup was introduced then you need timebase correction.

Feeding through a DVD recorder is an excellent way to timebase correct, as is passing the video through a DV camera that has an analog input. Either method should be every bit as good as a dedicated TBC, and better than some poorer quality TBCs of yesteryear. If you’re using a DVD recorder, use the component outputs for best quality.

ProRes is great, but DV resolution is pretty good and for home movies you may like the significant space savings.

A good way to go is to capture whole tapes, then break down the events/shooting sessions with markers and extended markers. Read about these if you don’t know. Once you’ve marked all the sections, you can make subclips of all of them at one go then media manage the subclips so every event becomes a separate file.

Good Luck

[Michael Gissing]

[Larry Asbell] “ProRes is great, but DV resolution is pretty good and for home movies you may like the significant space savings.”

Cheap fast external drives means that there is no real reason to go DV. As a codec, I think it is a poor intermediary before going to mpeg2 for DVD. It is particularly blocky on titles and graphics which then translate poorly to mpeg2.

I also avoid DV because working in PAL, I hate the fact that it swaps field dominance to lower. It is less of an issue in NTSC but the days of going to DV to save a bit of space are over.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve done this for an archive that had a hundred plus VHS tapes shot between 1983-1993 or so.

I transferred all the tapes to DV using a Sony camcorder. Some of these small camcorders have a good ‘frame synchroniser’ at their analog input. I experimented with a ForA TBC also, but found the camcorder to work just as well.

After transferring to DV, I captured to FCP over Firwwire and then did the entire thing of ‘chapterising’ it and making DVDs.

This was in 2002. The transfer to another tape was as a safety measure. The hard drives I had used then were small 60-120 Gb drives, most of them long gone. The DV tapes should be good for capture for another 10 years at least. Provided there is a DV player available in 2020.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Larry Asbell]

[Michael Gissing] “but the days of going to DV to save a bit of space are over.”

HELL-LLO? Aren’t we’re talking home movies from VHS here?

[Michael Gissing]

[Larry Asbell] “HELL-LLO? Aren’t we’re talking home movies from VHS here?”

Yes, silly me wanting to pre-empt the next round of panic posts about funny wavy interlacy sort of lines on movement and blocking on lovely red titles. All yours to deal with Larry.

[Greg Barringer]

I connect my old VHS player to my Sony digital handy cam using the cable that came with the camera. Set the camera for AV IN/DV OUT and connect the camera to the computer using FW. Capture in FCP or Vegas. It works great I’ve been doing this for the last several years.

[Rafael Amador]

The output of your VHS is a full Broadcast Video signal that should be treated with the same respect (or more) than if coming from a high end system.
That if you intend to re-process the picture. If you just want to make it watchable, the DV way should work.
Best,
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Mark Suszko]

Just another alternative: using a stand-alone DVD recorder, burn the VHS to DVD’s in 2-hour mode, import the DVD into FCP using free MPEG Streamclip, which on my quad-core unit takes barely 5 minutes, work in whatever resolution you want at that point.

[Bob Flood]

Sean

Many threads on this forum about just such a situation. look for responses by Bob Zelin. We had a similar sit. (high school football games) and wound up using a stock samsung consumer VCR with an outboard frame synchronizer to stabilize the signal.

I would rather have used a Pro VHS deck with built in tbc, but thats just the broadcast guy in me. A built in TBC adds a level of correction to the signal you dont get with framestores or synchronizers.

the downside of a pro vhs deck is it can only play VHS at SP, so if your tapes are EP or LP, you need to go consumer!

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.