*There’s a few extra things to note in this comment, so you might perhaps want to read this* First, links to the devices shown are in the description. Right up near the top. Just waiting for your click. You may have noticed that this video was uploaded in 1080p 60fps. That’s so you can get the full effect of the captured video, as much of it is 60i. You might also notice that the frame rate is all over the place for the rest of the video. Yeah, I set my camera to 24fps for a test and didn’t realize I hadn’t changed it back until I was about half way through shooting B-roll. So for those of you who are sensitive to frame rate changes - good luck! I’m stealing some feedback from a patron when I say that while there are certainly better options out there, you’ll run into diminishing returns quickly. For my money and eyes, this capture method is _fine_ and trying to squeeze any more out of an analog signal is dangerously close to a fool’s errand. That said, I have no idea how well this works to capture things like retro game consoles. This endeavor is mainly for video, so if you’re looking to capture some NES footage or whatever, you should probably look for videos on how to do specifically that. And one final thing--one of the main reasons I like this is precisely because it’s NOT part of my PC. While great, high-quality PCI capture cards exist (though they often cost far more than my solution) I don’t want to have to bring a VCR or other device to my computer. Having the capture device live amongst my A/V stuff means that it’s always ready and I don’t need to reconfigure anything. Plus, if I want to record something different like a Hi-8 tape from a camcorder, I can just plug it into either the VCR’s front input or my receiver’s front input. So, while some of you might still start telling me why I’m wrong for liking this solution - as in life, to each their own. The cost spent for the quality produced, along with how this can be incorporated in both my workflow _and_ my A/V setup, makes this the absolute best capture solution for my needs. And I truly think for the average person, this is a 4.5 star, great-to-excellent method.
I have been watching your videos for a couple months now and i must say that I very much enjoy the content you bring. Thank you for your hard work and I hope you continue to put out such high quality content.
@Dec B. www.redbubble.com/people/fuzzclone/works/36782468-cromaclear-slot-mask-crt-pattern?cat_context=all-departments&grid_pos=1&p=t-shirt&rbs=c6e5091d-1fab-493c-a760-5e218d48326a&ref=shop_grid&style=mens&searchTerm=CRT%20pattern
One explanation for the deinterlacing hiccup is that the video captured is saved as 30fps but the source is 29.97fps, that would cause a hiccup every 8-16 minutes.
Interesting hypothesis -- that hadn't occurred to me. Although additionally I think a certain amount of these artifacts are present in the source material where movement is so rapid that the image varies a lot between fields. Persistence, etc. would pretty much hide them while watching in real time, but they'd likely be visible if you paused at just the right point.
There is no such thing as a perfect deinterlacer if you are dealing with true interlaced content short of throwing away half the fields and scaling the other ones back up to size. If there is any sort of motion the fields will not match up because they are taken at different points in time. That said. It does seem you are correct. mistaking 30000/10001 for 30fps is the sort I'd thing that would cause this issue
GRBTutorials The 29.97Hz thing was presumably part of the older US black and white standard. I think the similar non-US standard was straight 25Hz with studio techs expected to synchronize equipment to avoid whatever ill effect the US was trying to avoid by running at 99% mains frequency.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 30Hz was the US black and white standard. It was lowered to 29.97Hz due to some trickery to allow colour broadcasting to occupy the same frequencies they were already broadcasting channels on.
One problem: You should use an s-video to HDMI converter and make sure you use a VCR with s-video output. Remember: The video recorded on to the tape is not recorded in composite. The luminance and chroma are recorded separately, and anytime you use a composite output, you are worsening the signal by mixing the chroma and luma together unnecessarily, only to have it split out again in the converter afterward. If you want keep-forever archival quality, use S-video, not composite, for VHS and Betamax at least.
@@black11189 RYW. Composite is called composite, because it composes luma and chroma into single cable. The 5 color one is called component, because it separates video into three components (2 chroma and 1 luma or in some cases RGB). S-Video is something in the middle, it has separate contacts for luma and chroma, but both chromas are combined, still better then everything in a single cable.
@@hikkamorii thank for those really technical information. What should be the input then ? I have a lot of VHS that I never take the time to go in digital. Still need to find the hardware too
Made me genuinely laugh out loud. Hanging out around me has caused people who previously couldn't tell whether a video was stretched start noticing it. Just from my pointing out things like clocks etc that should really be circles in the frame.
There's a burger chain here that plays music videos in the customer section. Every store I've been to has the video stretched. Originally it looked like 4:3 stretched to 16:9 but more recently it looks like it is still doing the stretching but after taking a 16:9 source and chopping off the sides. It annoys me but no-one else seems to notice. It must be happening upstream because it's happening everywhere, not just one misconfigured TV
@@GerardMenvussa For whatever reason the faces were the thing they couldn't tell. Like if you switched back and forth they could obviously but just on its own, nah. Guess what stands out is different for everyone.
@@GerardMenvussa You know I wonder if there's a correlation between the era of film ppl grew up with and how much face stretching they can tolerate. Because in some older movies certain camera angles look stretched or squished, because of the inherent variability in optical transfer. You don't want to suddenly have the aspect ratio change with the angles to account for it. So maybe people build up a certain tolerance to that variability, much like different mirrors will make you look fatter or thinner, but you still recognise yourself. Plus TV in the UK mixed and matched between film and video until the 90s, which could have similar optical variability. Even today different scans of the same film will sometimes be subtly different to each other even with the modern optical distortion correction techniques. Both will end up being 16:9 at the end but it can be hard to tell which is "correct" in that case.
Kyle Belouin Except most people saying "technical debt" are management looking for an excuse to do bad things like lower quality or force people to buy new accessories.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 really? I keep using it to point out to management and the rest of the team that we need to spend some time on things to improve the project even though they don't solve an immediate demand from the users
@@JoshuaHillerup Yeah, usually it's the actual devs who need to explain the importance of paying off technical debt when times are quiet so that it doesn't blow up in your face when they get rough again.
One of the best presentation factors in these videos isn't just the insane detailed information, but also the accurate B-Roll and stock shots displayed to enhance explanations or to show actual examples. It's not just a video of something simple like a CRT showing a fancy picture, it's a photo of a CRT doing fancy things and how it's different than modern displays
Your videos have gotten so much better over time. Not that they were bad before, but your latest videos are just awesome. Great production level, great writing, great sense of humor. Good job, and thanks for your videos.
So true this guy covers it all and in such an easy-to-understand way. I've learned so much from watching his videos and by reading the comments from others who are educated in these areas. The production value in his videos is the reason why I find myself just watching TH-cam all the time now along with other fine TH-cam content creators. A+ content!
While HIGH up on 'Sliver' (my Virtual and Loyal Steed) glancing down I thought I knew all the answers, at the worst all I had to do was Google. Then this "Dare I say 'Gentleman' shows up" like a freaking Irish Spring® soap commercial all refreshingly refined and with an invigorating level of intellectual honesty. Darn near knocked me down off Sliver. Look at him just sitting there all like professional, spit polished and shined, smiling... I bet he smells good too.
He upped his production quality a whole lot and seems more confortable in front of the camera. I agree he was still good before but now he's really having one of the best edutainment channel
I was thinking--hey this must be what geeky kids are watching these days instead of Whicker's World or The Secret Life of Machines. Or, is this guy auditioning to be on the Science channel or some offshoot like that? The next Bill Nye!
I got this equipment and I’m very happy with the results so thank you Alec. Out of curiosity I went to check FFMPEG and I found it very useful. I used it to correct the aspect ratio, fix the audio to mono, because it was just on left channel and rise volume. All on one single command per video: ffmpeg -i Video.MP4 -crf 18 -filter:a "volume=2", -vf "scale=1440:1080,setdar=4/3" -ac 1 Video_corrected.MP4 To use it on Windows; search and download ffmpeg, copy ffmpeg.exe inside the folder where the videos are (or add it to the windows path variables). Then with Shift pressed right click on an empty space in the folder and select “Open powershell window here”. On a notepad copy the code and replace Video.mp4 by the name of your videos. Then just go changing the correlative number. Enjoy!
Aspect ratios are life. I just wish someone would tell Sky TV this, their set top boxes and my TVs don't seem to understand each other when it comes to "implement the correct aspect ratio over HDMI" signals, my Bush TV gets this over SCART... but Sky Q boxes don't have SCART. In short, Sky TV need to add an "insert bars down the sides of 4:3 content" option for shitty TVs branded Bush (AKA Argos own brand) and ummm... Samsung.
Worse are the channels that currently stretch 4:3 to 14:9 to minimize side bars, but few TVs have the ability to convert 14:9 to 4:3 where almost all can convert 16:9 to 4:3.
If I go to a restaurant and they're showing a stretched picture, they don't get a tip. Most of the time they're even showing a standard-def letterboxed feed of an HD cable channel, so they've got black bars on the top and bottom with everything stretched out.
"For my money and eyes, this capture method is fine and trying to squeeze any more out of an analog signal is dangerously close to a fool’s errand. That said, I have no idea how well this works to capture things like retro game consoles. This endeavor is mainly for video, so if you’re looking to capture some NES footage or whatever, you should probably look for videos on how to do specifically that." -Technology Connections
@@ZoomerNostalgia How to choose a good upscaler for an analogue signal from an old game console is quite the rabbit hole. The biggest issue that you wouldn't normally care about that much for other upscalers (if at all) is how much latency the upscaler adds. Many good gaming upscalers add less than 1/10th of a millisecond of latency, but less than 5 milliseconds would still be considered excellent by most users. One major issue is that some of the best upscalers for video game consoles are often out of stock or even out of production. Another issue is that many retro game consoles require a cable with a proprietary connector, OR some kind of physical modification to the internal workings of the console itself, in order to get the best signal out of them. Not all systems use the same types of signals, so a good upscaler won't necessarily work well for all consoles.
Wonder if he should revisit this and use a external USB hard drive (possibly a powered one) that's formatted to NTFS ... if the device will use a storage device that's formatted to NTFS and see if that makes any difference.
@@john_thorpe Probably it wont work with NTFS, because of the implementation of FAT32 is easily available, while NTFS support is well under Microsoft's control, so even Linux support is limited. It reminds me of all the Transflash devices that in reality have MicroSD support without paying the royalties required for the SD logo.
@@EduardoEscarez What I mean is that when the card is formatted FAT32 then of course it will have to split the files. But perhaps if it's formatted exFAT it won't split them.
I laughed so hard. I couldn't agree more. I would also add, if you are still buying DVDs because you don't see a difference between 480p and 1080p, we can't be friends.
well im an eye surgeon, and we were looking for the best method to capture composite video digitally out of our microscopes. we tried alot of game captures, converters; you name it we, probably tried it. in my experience and you might find this weird, the best knock out pictures we found out was using DVRs for cctv cameras. the picture is so clear, sharp and vivid. ofc our dvr doesn't record audio as we dont need it. but you can buy one that does. you should give it a try and tell us your thoughts.
As an ex-analog broadcast engineer I was amused and entertained by the also accurate descriptions of how analog works. Kudos! NTSC lives! be glad it's not SECAM.
What I did back in the day was to connect the output of the VHS to a digital camera and connect its firewire output to my computer. I just pressed play on the VCR and capture on my computer, it worked pretty nice
@@irisfailsafe It's a lazy solution and not great because the colors space of DV is only 4:1:1 vs 4:2:2 for VHS. It's pretty horrid color space and when you're capturing VHS, you want the most amount of information possible due to it being a poor storage format.
Speaking of which, it's bad enough we have all these technophobes who don't know how to set up the TV right, but sometimes even the studios don't get it right on their home video releases (or especially streaming services)! How many home video issues of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World" got the aspect ratio wrong? For a long time it made me "mad, mad, mad, mad" to see everything from complete pan-and-scan (which is REALLY horrible for a movie like that) to half-assed letterboxing in maybe 1.66 or 2.35 ratio at best. NO, it's supposed to be 2.76, as it was shot for Cinerama, and long live Criterion, they definitely got it right when they released the blu-ray a few years ago. Criterion's the ONLY distributor that can release a movie RIGHT, IMO. Special features galore, too - ALWAYS. I don't care if their blu-rays typically go in the $30-$35 range, they're worth every penny.
@@ebinrock preach brotha. i worked for 10 years as a video editor for local advertising, not glorious but i took pride in it, namely things like color correction of footage etc... which ultimately gave me an endless source of rage at what TVs do to films whose cinematographer and editors labored to perfection, only to be "SMART ENHANCED" with blue saturation and frame interpolation ARRRGGGGGGGG
I thoroughly enjoyed this! I’m just a grandma trying to learn how to convert all of these videos for my kids and I just really enjoyed this. Thank you for so much detail and it was just nice that you had real life examples!
I've recently started a project that uses old VHS tapes, so this is extremely useful and well-timed, thanks! Also, I am enjoying your EPCOT footage - my childhood wasn't great, but my most cherished and happiest memories are from family holidays to Florida, and EPCOT was by far my favourite theme park. Seeing the Communicore pavilion brought back a whole flood of memories.
If you are capturing analog video to DVD-RAM, you're using MPEG-2 compression. A lot of analog capture cards do the same thing. That might explain some of the softness and detail loss. There are USB3 and PCI-E capture devices that output uncompressed video. One of the best ways to capture analog has always been to connect it to a DV camcorder or deck, then connect the DV source via Firewire.
For those interested, you can use FFmpeg to combine video clips of the same format losslessly. It's also very fast since it doesn't need to reencode like Premiere.
@@Δημήτρης-θ7θ ffmpeg because it doesn't have a GUI. That's really handy when you have a project to convert a whole moving box full of camcorder tapes as I'm planning to.
Holy shit, you just destroyed the wall I was banging my head against for the past week! The video hadn't even finished and I had already ordered the converter and the capture devices from the store. I just now noticed how many caveats you've given and I'm deeply impressed by your thoroughness! You're a lifesaver!!!
Finally someone that doesn’t like 4:3 stretched to 16:9 - I actually won’t sign up to the biggest pay tv service in the UK as they stretch the footage which really annoys me - I use the 2nd biggest service as they show 4:3 as 4:3 :-)
@@LukasFink1 yes but you have to do it manually which means 16:9 content gets squashed unless you change it back. the reality is that most people don't seem to care. my friend watches judge judy and her head is shaped like a rugby ball! really annoying
@@dgpsf I get SO pissed about that, when I'm watching classic shows like WKRP and they've got it 'letterboxed' by cropping top and bottom, even cutting the top of people's heads off and making it look like the photographer was an idiot who wanted all close-ups. That show is my favorite sitcom ever and I stopped watching the reruns when they cut 1/3 of the image out of it.
@@dgpsf It's like the opposite of how movies converted to 4:3 by pan-n-scan often had the credits sequences squashed instead to avoid cropping the text. When I was little and didn't understand how any of this worked, I always wondered why, in the openings of old Westerns on VHS, Clint Eastwood always looks like he's 17 feet tall and weighs 94 pounds. I assumed it was like that in the original and was some bizarre artistic choice by the director. :)
S-Video will get you even better color results. If you use a TBC then you can use a full fledged capture card on the computer in 4:2:2 uncompressed video.
A tip for the capture card splitting the file into part. I don't know about the capture card you're using but the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket also records to USB stick. If you are using a USB formatted as FAT32, the video capture will be split into sections if the file gets bigger than 4GB. To avoid the splitting, you need to format the USB stick as NTFS.
Or, if you don't like proprietary microsoft formats, or whatever device you're using doesn't support them, with the latter being more likely, you could use exFAT. Older devices won't accept anything besides FAT16 or FAT32, with some being very stubborn with only FAT16 support, but if it's semi-recent then it will likely support all 3, and exFAT is the superior option between it and something like NTFS. EDIT: Btw, if it doesn't support exFAT, it most certainly won't support NTFS, just to clarify. Mostly just posing exFAT as the format you should actually use due to compatibility, while still leaving the disclaimer about older devices not supporting it. exFAT and NTFS are for two very different use cases and aren't really "rivals" if that makes any sense.
@@reyariass Ya, Captain D's persona annoys me to no end, to the point where I basically refuse to watch him. This kinda sucks tbh, because the topics he covers are pretty interesting (if I could stand him enough to watch them)
Thank you for posting this. I edit videos as a hobby and I been struggling with analog to digital interlaced transfers for over a decade. Just this year I finally bought a similar composite to HDMI converter and a separate Gamer HDMi video capture device. Like you mentioned the ability to change from different sources analog or digital makes this the best setup.
Thank you so much for this!!! I have been jacking around with a capture card in my computer with constant glitches with software compatibility, computer shunting down in the middle of a capture for various reasons, crashes, etc. Trying to archive old home videos off and on for over a year now. Taking the computer out of the equation makes this so much simpler!
I use old Hauppauge HDPVR units (can be found cheap on bay - $40 -$50). These were $200 brand new back in the day. The key to digitizing (and especially compression to MP4) is hardware compression. Most of the dinky little $15 units you find all over the web rely on your computer's processing to do the compression on the fly and they basically suck at it. The Hauppauge units (these were also aimed at gamers) do all of the work and I just use only Windows 7 dual core PCs to save the files. I have about 10 of these things all over my shop and they come in handy for digitizing video from whatever analog source I send to them as well as the output from my film transfer telecines.
Don't forget that it can also be caused by resolution being stretched poorly and use of aliasing to get an image in the screen resolution. 480p video looks best on a 480p display.
It's a combination of factors. It's also highly contextual. Take for instance an old console, like a SNES. These are interesting because the output includes both Composite, S-video (Luma and Chroma on seperate channels) and RGB output (SCART) intended for Europe where that was a common feature of TV's... A further point of interest is that older consoles and home computers tended to output progressive scan signals even though officially TV's didn't support this. They did it simply by omitting the signal that tells the TV to switch to the alternate frame. Old TV's happily comply with this even though it's out of spec, and simply draw the same field at twice the framerate, (leaving the alternate field blank), rather than outputting interlaced video. So what's the result of all this weirdness? Well, even here it's still contextual. The progressive scan method being out of spec means that sometimes modern devices incorrectly interpret a video signal like this as interlaced footage, even though it isn't. Unsurprisingly, deinterlacing something that wasn't interlaced to begin with doesn't end up looking good. Then there's the 3 output methods. Typically a modern TV does a bad job with composite, a mediocre one with S-video, and usually a fairly decent one with SCART. (and yet, scart is now rare on modern TV's even in places where in the past most TV's had it. - plus SCART or even just analogue RGB capture devices are almost non-existent.) What's more bizarre here is that the consequences vary by game. Take an early game like Super Mario World and it looks mediocre on a modern TV with RGB output. However, a late era game (~1995) from Japan, such as Seiken Densetsu 3 arguably looks better on a modern display using RGB as input than it does on a period correct CRT using composite. Seems game design changed as the typical output type used did. And then there's a million different ways that a capture device can interpret video levels. Again, a device like a SNES is out of spec; It's gamma ramp doesn't follow conventional NTSC or PAL standards respectively. Older devices didn't care. (you just tweak the image settings a little at worst) Modern TV's largely still don't care. (same thing. Tweak image settings.) But capture devices can do weird things with it because of this. And while some of them technically have adjustable settings, often the results of changing the settings are not what you expect...
Composite video is always going to look terrible on modern TV’s and using composite from VHS is really going be bad. It’s surprising just how much better VHS looks (especially first generation camera tapes or tapes copied by S-Video look) when you are using a S-VHS VCR and S-Video, as VHS actually Records it’s Video in 2 streams. Composite just ads noise.
I guess they want their TV to display full screen picture no matter what. Makes them feel their money was well spent on that large TV. But in fact it makes everyone look fat and sometimes it lowers the SD resolution even more by trimming the top and bottom parts of the picture, making less than 480 lines visible.
Well said, and well done. I'm an ex -TV and -VCR R&D engineer and worldwide service-shop trainer and I must say this video is both necessary and useful. Thank you again.
Interesting method for capturing, i use a VHS player hooked up to a mini-dv camera that brings the video in over firewire. Yes i have an older computer to do this with. The quality is really good.
Be careful of chroma subsampling issues. If you do this (especially if you record it to miniDV and then import, for whatever reason, or import native miniDV content), if the color looks strangely washed out, it may be due to miniDV's particular chroma subsampling interacting poorly with default 4:2:0 subsampling used in most places by most software nowadays. I had to figure out how to resample the chroma with ffmpeg to get good results from native miniDV footage.
8:56 THIS!! I remember when everyone got a widescreen TV, and they watched 4:3 stretched to 16:9, and it looked horrible. Apparently I was the only one who saw that there was a problem, and no one else cared. I even argued with my uncle about it, and his response was that it's a widescreen TV so you should watch it in widescreen. He said he couldn't stand watching it with pillar boxing
I have a friend who can't stand pillarboxing or letterboxing, but he also dislikes chocolate. I don't mind black bars, except for vertical video within a horizontal video, or 4:3 video within a 13:9 video converted to 4:3.
Your timing could not be better. I just found my wife's 1986 kindergarten vhs tape and was pondering what to buy to capture the video with as my previous capture card is buried somewhere in the closet.... Thank you for posting this "one weird trick" that makes all the conversion shops "hate you."
Thanks for sharing. That's an amazing alternative to my current setup. I'll have to try it and compare. Here's a quicker way to stitch up segmented clips in Premiere, and applying a single RESIZE for the entire set (or any processing for that matter) 1) Create [TimeLine1] 2) Drop all your clips on [TimeTime1], unprocessed. 3) Create [TimeLine2] 4) Drop [TimeLine2] on [TimeLine1] 5) Apply processing on the [TimeLine1] clip on [TimeLine2] 6) Render [TimeLine2] Et voilà. Alternatively, you could create an adjustment layer on a higher track on [TimeLine1] and apply your processing to that layer. This approach does not require [TimeLine2]. But some people find the 2nd timeline method to be more intuitive. Both methods allow applying processing only once for the whole set. A big time saver whenever you have a lot of clips and reduces the risks of disparity in the processing.
Your comment about "these exist because gamers" couldn't be more true. I literally already have nearly this exact setup- albeit my capture device is an ElGato HDMI passthru device- specifically for capturing older game consoles. I also have an 'upscaler' that accepts component video as well, as the ElGato is HDMI-only. The biggest difference is that i'm using an external program to capture the video files (OBS) as opposed to natively recording them using the capture device. It never occurred to me to use this setup to capture analog video from VHS. Might be worth a shot at some point, I've got a lot of time-capsule-like VHS cassettes that would be awesome to upload to the internet.
I’m waiting on a SVHS broadcast deck for a project I’m working on, but I’m using a leitch DPS575 for the Time Base Correcting, LUMA/Colour compensation and analogue to digital conversation. This is then recorded via SDI into an Atamos Samurai as prores 422 HQ. I’m then playing around with bob and yadif 2x for whichever works best on the clip. This will be for broadcast re-release. My biggest issue has been some of the tapes are disintegrating. Here is the current import: th-cam.com/video/0tQ-be4uZwk/w-d-xo.html
Depending on the content either of those deinterlacers may look blocky. If you don't have a lot of time it can be okay quality. If you do have time, QTGMC through VapourSynth works wonders (can't be done in real-time) but you have to make sure the audio stays synced.
i only heard you saying "audio synchronisation issues" looking at a cord i am practicing knots with and scrolled back to watch you making the joke i exactly knew you'd have to make. thank you!! :)
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For archiving and watching with correct aspect ratio, it's also possible to remux the file (eg. with mkvtoolnix or mp4box), and override the display aspect ratio (DAR) or pixel aspect ratio (PAR) in the metadata, so the player knows how to stretch the image in playback time. This way you don't have to transcode and lose quality, also it takes a lot more time than simply remuxing. Of course in your case, because you're incorporating this to another video, it doesn't matter. But people who only use this for archiving, it is.
I like how you recorded yourself at 24fps while the rest of the video showcase VHS at 60fps. I got mad respect for you for the 3:2 pulldown of all frame rate. It's like old NTSC but in HD... well I guess it how broadcasters still do it now for over the air television.
Nobody's suggested pointing a digital cam at an analogue CRT TV screen! Yeah, of course I'm kidding, BUT as late as the 1970s in the UK the BBC were making 'telerecordings' for export by pointing a 16mm movie camera at a monitor screen, and in the 1960s the MasterVision cable network added 625-line BBC2 to their 405-line system by pointing a 405-line camera at off-air programme on a TV.
As I recall, they did that for the Apollo landing footage, too, only rather than for archiving, it was as a means of frame-rate conversion between the camera on the lander and the various TV systems on Earth.
The method is also still used for film today (depending on your definition of "today"). The movie "9 Songs" from 2004 was filmed on digital cameras, and then transferred to analog film by means of projecting the movie onto a white wall and filming it. Sure, it was 15 years ago, but that counts as recent.
That's what I did to make a record from video CD to VHS tape, but I didn't have CD player any but PC with VGA CRT monitor. I set VGA to 100Hz and recorded it with VHS camera. Of course, sound was recorded directly via audio input. This was over 20 years ago :-) That screen copy was looking not so bad except dark bar that slowly moved on screen due to non-perfect sync of camera and CRT VGA monitor.
It depends on your needs, but if you intend to digitize your VHS tapes "once and for all" it is best to do as little postprocesing as possible. Ie no deinterlacing (that can be done at any time later with better alghoritms coming every day), no upscaling (same thing - smart upscalers are getting better and better), no aspect ratio conversion (you can do this without changing the resolution and reencoding - just change pixel aspect ratio from 1:1 to anything else) etc. If you only want to show some clip on youtube, then your double-blackbox approach with some light postprocessing is really OK. But remember that the image is better probably mostly because one of those black boxes use image enhancing filters (enhance colors and sharpness, denoise) and those filters are lossy and irreversible. You gain some perceptual quality and you loose information that could be used in future to gain even better picture out of VHS mess.
Firstly, thank you for starting with "it depends on your needs". Far too many people around these parts like to project their needs onto others and judge you for accepting quality loss for the sake of convenience. With that said, there comes a time where one wants to cut their losses and stop fretting about making it perfect for down the road. I'm well past the point of worrying about "is this the absolutely best method for preserving this material" and have moved onto "does this look as I remember it?" combined with "is this easy to manipulate/use with modern hardware" and with *that* goal in mind, I cannot fathom a better solution aside from perhaps marginally increasingly image quality, but at that point I think we've firmly settled into the diminishing returns category. My point here is mainly that I'm tired of worrying about optimizing for quality to the point where I'm potentially creating more work for myself down the road. Using these two boxes and a few minutes' time in Premiere, I can produce a capture that's almost exactly as I see it on my TV, and I think trying to get beyond that is a waste of time. That's my opinion, of course, but there comes a time where "good enough" is good enough.
@@TechnologyConnections I would just like to add to this. All we're trying to do (at least I am) is point people in the right direction to make great quality transfers, mitigating the number of absolute trash transfers that exists, with a blurry image, JPEG artifacts, and worst of all, the interlacing artifacts. This especially counts if someone is trying to transfer a very rare movie only on VHS. PS: If you don't want to deal with the video split. I've discovered you can update the firmware on certain model devices. Mainly with the EZCAP 280H/285 (Yellow Board) where upon updating it will now read drives formatted in NTFS which will eliminate all the splitting nonsense. Just search for update files for your model.
@@TechnologyConnections I will admit there's a lot of technical information to cover and pixel peeping that could be done when dealing with analog conversions.. and I have definitely gotten caught up in it to the point that I never completed my last SD capture project. I do feel like I created a good workflow for the process however for the next time I resume it. That is an interesting take by Petr K though, to capture it as is. I wonder though what codec he decides on or if he keeps it as raw as possible (I just can't imagine him storing massive video files for every hours worth of footage.). I think that is what hangs me up - I do not want to store a massive RAW footage files, but I also don't want to convert it into a modern codec like h.264 without processing it some and de-interlacing - simply because I do not KNOW for sure what type of device or player will be playing it back later. Like with jpg files we should recognize that it is not a good idea to process a file into a lossy format multiple times. I think we're taking a lot of granted if we're going to just assume that 4K, 8K TVs and future mobile devices will all know how to handle interlaced footage well into the future - if all of them even do today.
@@benreaves3113 i think AVI is the way to go. If you wanna do it correctly, as Petr hints, you will need to have a decent amount of hard disc space or whatever storage medium you prefer. But then again is the work input / result output ratio probably not to everyone's liking ;)
Well after a long time, I finally decided to buy an upscaler. Composite into it then hdmi back to my capture device.......brilliant!!!! The colours are better and transfer looks great. Thank you for your wonderful advice. Love your channel.
@@TechnologyConnections I do. Regularly. 4:3 is my jam. But also, native scaling of aspect ratios is incredibly important. 16:10, 18:9/2:1 phones. If you're baking into a 16:9 frame and then uploading natively, the viewing experience is incredibly frustrating on anything but a 16:9 screen. 16:10 was incredibly frustrating, as you got pillarboxing AND letterboxing so it was a small view. Even worse on native 4:3. The same is said of baking in letterboxing in 16:9 videos for "cinematic effect." Now the video is just obnoxious on ultrawides, 2:1 phones, DCI 4K screens, as well as the older formats.
Excuse my naivete here, but unless you're watching the video vertically on a phone (which I suppose you might be but in *that* case we can't be friends, either) then a wider AR screen just makes the side bars wider. I've watched plenty of 16:9 content on my 19:9 phone, and it still fills in all the vertical space. There's just more void to the side. I see your point, and if I could go back in time I would explain that my mindset is framed around producing content for TH-cam so there's little point in cropping the sides off for what will be shown full screen in a 16:9 video. I will admit that having baked in pillarboxing would be annoying if, for instance, watching the raw video in a window on a PC, or when you have a taller aspect ratio like 16:10. I just think of everything in terms of 16:9 because that's the realm I live and work in!
Well you said it yourself about the engineers in the 40s at 4:15 At the time interlacing was a good idea but now it’s it’s a problem, and one day things may change and a forced black bar may have serious regrets.
"If you don't want to, we can't be friends." I felt this! So many arguments with my family, ex partners, etc because they actually preferred the stretched out picture to having black bars on the sides.
Great suggestion, although I would assume that the HDMI capture device applies some level of lossy compression on the video file. When re-encoding in your preferred format, you'd be applying another round of lossy compression. Also, any noise in the outer edges will eat up the bitrate and reduce the overall quality. That just doesn't do it for me, which is why I capture lossless 576p (PAL) directly from the analogue capture device and then deinterlace / crop / denoise and encode as H264 in one pass. But that's just my OCD eating away at my sanity 24/7, so please don't take this as me thinking I know better.
Those boxes capture x264 at a high bitrate (mine captures 2GB in 15min = 20Mbps), so yes, it's lossy, but by so little it doesn't matter, certainly since the source material is from VHS tape.
you would be fascinated by the competitive super smash bros melee community and the ridiculous hoops its had to jump through to stream its gameplay at high quality while still using CRTs at tournaments for low-latency reasons. the current method involves running the game simultaneously on a wii hooked up to a CRT (or two) and also an emulator running at high resolution. the players' inputs are captured and piped over to the computer running the emulator and that is the video that is captured and streamed for the public to watch. this method is called project slippi and making sure both instances of the game do not desync is a tremenous problem lol. but it works great somehow!
@@nickwallette6201 there are certain non-tourney-legal stages that do cause desyncs. although a few of the legal stages have minor random events; the shy guys on yoshi's and the moving platforms on fountain come to mind. they must have found a way to sync the RNG seed between the two somehow. edit: perhaps the random events are tied to the timer and the player's inputs somehow...?
@@IvanDSM The big thing is that the emulator can run in HD, which the original Wii can't. Also, project slippi streams/captures all game data, not just player inputs, so it can be used for displaying stats in real time. This video is a good overview: th-cam.com/video/IDJiMES-dn4/w-d-xo.html
I use a Sony Digital-8 camcorder and run the RCA cables into the input and output through firewire. The resulting files need to be de-interlaced, but the color render seems just fine by me.
This is so true, I actually never even thought of using my game capture card for VHS but that is great news for all our old familly footage videos haha
im noticing the same thing from my end, of the video capture world, non gamer. all the new product thats available, all the tutorials and stuff that im finding available for them, are all gamers trying to capture random console resolutions. its pretty cool. Now i can finally get good product, and a decent vhs capture. :-) Although i feel this hdmi option is too much contrast and alot of detail is lost, and you can sharpen in virtual dub, i capture rgb24 for now, through an extron 7sc, getting great results. I too saw that frame pop up now and then, until i turned on the pulldown setting in the scaler. I hadnt realized it was interlacing issue, i thought maybe chroma shift and or scan line timing, something of those sorts. Maybe I can look into this a different way. Thanks for the vid, it was all the extra info that was helpful.
I find that one of the most common things video ADCs get wrong is the black levels. My Denon Receiver (AVR-790, aka AVR-1210) gets this wrong. For most inputs on my TV, including digital inputs thru the AVR's HDMI ports, I set my TV's brightness around 50 and get proper black levels. Viewing composite video through the AVR, I have to set my TV Brightness to 10.
Thank you SO much!! I needed to find the best way, cheaply, to convert my family vhs vids over to digital with a good outcome. My kids are grown, my son is the oldest at 22, married. That is how old my oldest VHS is. So, I know these tapes will not last forever. I am going to try your method. Thanks again.
@@tormaid42 Eh. Satellite HD is still far less compressed than the "HD" presented by internet services. While the pixel resolution may be less, the quality of broadcast TV (in the UK at least) is much higher.
@@tormaid42 It's not cable companies, it's because ATSC for OTA broadcast set 1080i as the standard. Revisions to ATSC fix this, but ATSC 2.0 was never deployed since it was outdated before it could be launched, and ATSC 3.0 is completely optional in the US, meaning TVs aren't required to support it. The hope is for gradual shift, but so far it's pretty slow adoption. Since ATSC is the broadcast standard, everyone produces content compliant with it. So while cable companies are stuck with 1080i signals from local affiliates, they could theoretically delivery 1080p cable channels, but all the cable channels are 1080i to work with any cable company that can't handle 1080p yet. It's basically the lowest common denominator. Plus, with the deinterlacing capabilities of new TVs and such, it's not really that big of a deal for most customers.
8:30 "You might also be happy to know that macrovision doesn't bother this thing" That's good, most consumer capture programs and hardware occasionally confuse weak signal strength as copyrighted sources.
I got back to this video now because there has been a development... Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI is a video upscaling software which uses artificial intelligence to guess the details back into low-res SD video, clean it up from compression artifacts and so on. I used the trial version to upscale all my old VHS and digital SD videos to 1080p or even 4K and it works wonders (I was not sponsored). So under these circumstances, I would not recommend using those analog-to-digital capture devices to upscale the captured video to 1080p, but output it without any upscale in 480p if that is a possibility. Then you can use Video Enhance AI or similar products in the future to properly upscale the captured video into HD or UHD by utilizing its neural network AI to finally get those details in the hair or foliage!! I actually did that to a documentary I ripped from a VHS in 2005. It was properly deinterlaced back then to 50p, but I downsized it to 512x384 for space saving purposes. So lately I have used Video Enhance AI to do its magic. It took 12 hours on i9-9900K with GeForce 2080 SUPER to convert this 90 minute clip into FullHD, but the results are amazing. It greatly cleaned up the footage from all the compression artifacts old DivX 5 codec introduced back in 2005. And the details in hair, faces, foliage and textures were brought back by AI (opinions may vary how accurately).
I fucking love this dude! I love his fits, I love his humour, and he nails every single video. He can explain anything since he's so well spoken and goddamn interesting. Anyway, I hope he sees my comment so he feels the appreciation.
You should try that using svideo instead of composite some of the drawbacks you mention are no there in a pure s video signal but be aware that some converters take a shortcut where they wire a svideo input into a composite video
If you want to try something a little bit better, maybe try the RetroTink2x, it does a very nice bob deinterlace that very much approximates how 480i footage would've appeared on a real TV back in the day.
Doesnt bob halve your vertical resolution? I converted a few interlaced 📀 and it was really noticable. I changed to w3fdif (developed for the BBC iirc) and never went back. Excellent temporal and vertical resolution and a big step up from bob, weave or yadif.
yeah was going to mention that too. Mike posted a video demonstrating VHS capture with the Tink. He doesn't think its the best for this purpose since he didn't design it with that idea specifically in mind, but it does work if you have a Tink lying around to begin with. th-cam.com/video/D_uYu5XKo0U/w-d-xo.html
The Retrotink 2x will convert 480i to digital no problem, but the onboard ADC can't tolerate unstable video from VHS and the like (it will drop frames!). What it does get right is that it keeps 480i video as....... 480i (or 576i if you are in PAL land). No needless upscaling or stretching of video to 16:9!
GiggleSkull I second this motion! (I have a VHS/DVDRW combo unit that isn’t working at the moment, and I want to make DVD backups of my original Star Wars tapes)
@@300DBenz I have two machines like that. If your original tapes have Macrovision (anti-copying) it will not let you record them. (I've actually tried it with a Star Wars VHS tape.)
So to add on to the capture side of this equation, can you go into the playback side? I've been researching what kind of VCR to get for playing old tapes with the best quality, and most seem to say you need to use a Super-VHS player with a built in Time Base Corrector (TBC). And then there are different types of TBCs (line, full frame, etc). Some also suggest adding an external TBC or frame synchronizer. This is all to avoid tearing and warping of the picture, and create a "clean" signal for whatever you're using to do the digital recording.
The method you see in this video can't do magic, it is just about contrast/sharpness and beating the shit out of your video. If you have tearing, unstable signal, etc, this BS you see in this video won't help. You will need a TBC/TBC-ish combo. FFS, he is so incentive to quality loss and he keeps re-encoding the files, I bet non-losslessly... :facepalm There is nothing that screams quality in this method. It is just much brighter for your eye and definitely one of the easiest methods. But not the best.
You might want to check out the ClonerAlliance Box Pro, it's slightly more expensive but it can record at 1024x768 at 60fps, and 1080x1920 at 30fps with both ratio 16:9 and 4:8 options and video tape results look really good, and it comes with all the HDMI cables to hook to composite, and for output to TV, and a USB drive to record to flashdrive
This might be a dumb question, but if the analog to digital converter does such a good job, why aren't there products around $100 or less that use the same technology as these two devices combined?
Probably no market for it. The easy way was a DVD/VCR recorder. It's still interlaced on DVD, but the playback device will de-interlace it and it was simple. I never used that method, but I think most people have already converted their VHS tapes by this point. I know for videophile guys like me... I'd rather capture VHS on DV and use software to output the file in any format for whatever I needed it for. It's just as simple and complicated as the hardware method shown in the video. So we already have all the equipment do capture VHS and de-interlace the video, and we don't need the hardware. In fact... we would rather de-interlace it ourselves and not use hardware that still has de-interlace bugs.
looking for some advice. I have tried a number of methods; few of which seemed to have worked well. Years ago, a Dazzle Hollywood DV bridge. Kind of crappy results. Have used my Panasonic DMR-EZ28 recorder to convert from composite video to DVD, then rip and import into Premier. Just ok. Latest device is a Diamond VC500 (composite to USB dongle). Seems the best so far.Then tonight, after watching this, I hit on the idea of just using my Panasonic DMR as the upscaler to HDMI and then maybe get the HDMI capture device mentioned in this video.Any thoughts on the quality difference between the DMR and a dedicated USB device like the Diamond?My initial thoughts were that the old Panasonic should have been the best since it was designed primarily with composite video in mind. But I can't say the video output on HDMI is anything to brag about.My main concern is final quality (within a reasonable budget).
Since HDMI is digital, the bulk of a HDMI capturer is probably in the digital video encoding chip (of which there a many qualities and prices). Fusing this in the AD converter would then not save much.
You were looking at a device for upscaling composite video? Were the devices perhaps a Framemeister or an OSSC? They are more popular in the video game world, where not just upscaling but also zero delay output are important (because you aren't just watching) A small time ago I stepped into the world of recording and streaming my SNES, and ran into a few weird issues there. Just bought a VCR capture device and ran with it (August VGB 100 off the top of my head). It suffered from a problem that took me a while to identify- the composite out of a SNES is 240i, and the capture outputs 480i with no real upscaling, so while the image was accurate, it was ugly AF. But s-video fixed that. Since then I've also used it with my old N64 to great success. Now, if I were to suddenly have a gun pointed to my head and have to capture old VCR to a PC for storage, I'd have a fairly good idea of how to do so for cheap and quality that makes me feel good about it. I'd have to use software upscaling to get anything of the quality in this video, though. As for the sound boosting and noise issue, I'd totally take that into Audacity and use a white noise removal by sampling filter. I get that that might not be totally true to the original video, but personally I'd take a "better than VCR ever was" digitally made sound.
Thank you! I have 100's of home video tapes I've needed to transfer for decades, looks like you've come up with an easy and inexpensive method while still achieving decent quality. Now I have no reason to procrastinate....
A little weird? Not weird at all. Well, not for me anyway. I've been using a similar setup for capturing VHS and Betamax tapes for months now : a cheap upscaler bought on Amazon years ago with HDMI, RCA and S-Video inputs that output 1080p or 720p through HDMI (it's a HDCP stripper as well, haven't tested Macrovision) plugged into my Elgato GameCapture HD60 Pro. I capture using OBS, scaling the 1920x1080 signal to 1440x1080, at 59.94 fps (should I go with 60 fps?). No split file sizes. No hassle. I can even color correct my signal using Elgato settings through OBS. In my case, no black bars (might be thanks to my upscaler). I can even set my preferred bitrate (I go with 30 Mbit/s, but that's a bit overkill). I don't understand why you chose 74% width for rescalling your video back to their 4:3 look; shouldn't it be 75%? On a sidenote, I absolutely love your channel. Been watching for months now (yeah, ever since I starting getting interested in capturing analog video). Keep up the good work.
By the way can you help me something reguarding OBS's audio skipping? You see I recentally tried to rip Escape from New York and Star Wars on VHS via the Dazzel DVC 100 through OBS. So I'm recording at 1024x768 at 30fps via composite video. The problem Is that after 20 minutes, OBS locks up for 5 seconds and then contiues recording like normal, and it starts skipping audio every 3 minutes. Then it starts dropping frames for 10 seconds and then goes back to normal.
My Mom just bought a VHS->DVD converter which skips the whole cable issue and just transfers the video signal directly to the disc. Transferred VHSes look a whole heck of a lot sharper than they did on our old CRT TVs. Same device can also just play tapes, and has native HDMI output when I borrow it to feed directly in to my Elgato. It was also about a hundred bucks.
Ok though.... I was LITERALLY saving some old vhs tapes this exact way last night. And I can confirm this is the best way. 1440x1080 sequence settings in premiere is 👌
*There’s a few extra things to note in this comment, so you might perhaps want to read this*
First, links to the devices shown are in the description. Right up near the top. Just waiting for your click.
You may have noticed that this video was uploaded in 1080p 60fps. That’s so you can get the full effect of the captured video, as much of it is 60i. You might also notice that the frame rate is all over the place for the rest of the video. Yeah, I set my camera to 24fps for a test and didn’t realize I hadn’t changed it back until I was about half way through shooting B-roll. So for those of you who are sensitive to frame rate changes - good luck!
I’m stealing some feedback from a patron when I say that while there are certainly better options out there, you’ll run into diminishing returns quickly. For my money and eyes, this capture method is _fine_ and trying to squeeze any more out of an analog signal is dangerously close to a fool’s errand. That said, I have no idea how well this works to capture things like retro game consoles. This endeavor is mainly for video, so if you’re looking to capture some NES footage or whatever, you should probably look for videos on how to do specifically that.
And one final thing--one of the main reasons I like this is precisely because it’s NOT part of my PC. While great, high-quality PCI capture cards exist (though they often cost far more than my solution) I don’t want to have to bring a VCR or other device to my computer. Having the capture device live amongst my A/V stuff means that it’s always ready and I don’t need to reconfigure anything. Plus, if I want to record something different like a Hi-8 tape from a camcorder, I can just plug it into either the VCR’s front input or my receiver’s front input.
So, while some of you might still start telling me why I’m wrong for liking this solution - as in life, to each their own. The cost spent for the quality produced, along with how this can be incorporated in both my workflow _and_ my A/V setup, makes this the absolute best capture solution for my needs. And I truly think for the average person, this is a 4.5 star, great-to-excellent method.
You should perhaps pin this comment :)
2nd I’m done
I have been watching your videos for a couple months now and i must say that I very much enjoy the content you bring. Thank you for your hard work and I hope you continue to put out such high quality content.
Where did you get that CRT shirt? It looks so good.
@Dec B. www.redbubble.com/people/fuzzclone/works/36782468-cromaclear-slot-mask-crt-pattern?cat_context=all-departments&grid_pos=1&p=t-shirt&rbs=c6e5091d-1fab-493c-a760-5e218d48326a&ref=shop_grid&style=mens&searchTerm=CRT%20pattern
One explanation for the deinterlacing hiccup is that the video captured is saved as 30fps but the source is 29.97fps, that would cause a hiccup every 8-16 minutes.
Ah, yet another disadvantage of Never The Same Color!
Interesting hypothesis -- that hadn't occurred to me. Although additionally I think a certain amount of these artifacts are present in the source material where movement is so rapid that the image varies a lot between fields. Persistence, etc. would pretty much hide them while watching in real time, but they'd likely be visible if you paused at just the right point.
There is no such thing as a perfect deinterlacer if you are dealing with true interlaced content short of throwing away half the fields and scaling the other ones back up to size. If there is any sort of motion the fields will not match up because they are taken at different points in time.
That said. It does seem you are correct. mistaking 30000/10001 for 30fps is the sort I'd thing that would cause this issue
GRBTutorials The 29.97Hz thing was presumably part of the older US black and white standard. I think the similar non-US standard was straight 25Hz with studio techs expected to synchronize equipment to avoid whatever ill effect the US was trying to avoid by running at 99% mains frequency.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 30Hz was the US black and white standard. It was lowered to 29.97Hz due to some trickery to allow colour broadcasting to occupy the same frequencies they were already broadcasting channels on.
Loved the audio synchronization joke! a disjointed track tell more than thousand words.
His style of Comedy is funny lol
@@NigkonuN
Especially when the subject is heard, not seen
"Then i went to my favourite neigbourhood Amazon"
It confused me lol
I both loved it and cringed at the same time. So the effect he was going for was spot on.
One problem: You should use an s-video to HDMI converter and make sure you use a VCR with s-video output. Remember: The video recorded on to the tape is not recorded in composite. The luminance and chroma are recorded separately, and anytime you use a composite output, you are worsening the signal by mixing the chroma and luma together unnecessarily, only to have it split out again in the converter afterward. If you want keep-forever archival quality, use S-video, not composite, for VHS and Betamax at least.
By composite you mean the 5 color cable or the three "classic" RYW cable ?
@@black11189 RYW. Composite is called composite, because it composes luma and chroma into single cable. The 5 color one is called component, because it separates video into three components (2 chroma and 1 luma or in some cases RGB). S-Video is something in the middle, it has separate contacts for luma and chroma, but both chromas are combined, still better then everything in a single cable.
@@hikkamorii thank for those really technical information.
What should be the input then ? I have a lot of VHS that I never take the time to go in digital.
Still need to find the hardware too
@@hikkamorii My entire life not knowing what the hell the difference between these were and you just summed it in a paragraph. 🤯 lol - thanks!
isn't vhs just a composite signal anyways?
"If you don't want to, we can't be friends." I just loved this remark.
Made me genuinely laugh out loud. Hanging out around me has caused people who previously couldn't tell whether a video was stretched start noticing it. Just from my pointing out things like clocks etc that should really be circles in the frame.
There's a burger chain here that plays music videos in the customer section. Every store I've been to has the video stretched. Originally it looked like 4:3 stretched to 16:9 but more recently it looks like it is still doing the stretching but after taking a 16:9 source and chopping off the sides. It annoys me but no-one else seems to notice. It must be happening upstream because it's happening everywhere, not just one misconfigured TV
@@GerardMenvussa For whatever reason the faces were the thing they couldn't tell. Like if you switched back and forth they could obviously but just on its own, nah. Guess what stands out is different for everyone.
@@GerardMenvussa You know I wonder if there's a correlation between the era of film ppl grew up with and how much face stretching they can tolerate. Because in some older movies certain camera angles look stretched or squished, because of the inherent variability in optical transfer. You don't want to suddenly have the aspect ratio change with the angles to account for it.
So maybe people build up a certain tolerance to that variability, much like different mirrors will make you look fatter or thinner, but you still recognise yourself.
Plus TV in the UK mixed and matched between film and video until the 90s, which could have similar optical variability.
Even today different scans of the same film will sometimes be subtly different to each other even with the modern optical distortion correction techniques. Both will end up being 16:9 at the end but it can be hard to tell which is "correct" in that case.
I wanted to post this quote but I knew someone must've done it before me.
Engineers (and programmers) don't say "that will never cause a problem", they say "we'll have to deal with it later otherwise it won't work now".
Joshua Hillerup truer words have never been said my guy. This applies to software engineering too lol
@@dannydk6 Good ol' technical debt :)
Kyle Belouin Except most people saying "technical debt" are management looking for an excuse to do bad things like lower quality or force people to buy new accessories.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 really? I keep using it to point out to management and the rest of the team that we need to spend some time on things to improve the project even though they don't solve an immediate demand from the users
@@JoshuaHillerup Yeah, usually it's the actual devs who need to explain the importance of paying off technical debt when times are quiet so that it doesn't blow up in your face when they get rough again.
One of the best presentation factors in these videos isn't just the insane detailed information, but also the accurate B-Roll and stock shots displayed to enhance explanations or to show actual examples. It's not just a video of something simple like a CRT showing a fancy picture, it's a photo of a CRT doing fancy things and how it's different than modern displays
Your videos have gotten so much better over time. Not that they were bad before, but your latest videos are just awesome. Great production level, great writing, great sense of humor. Good job, and thanks for your videos.
So true this guy covers it all and in such an easy-to-understand way. I've learned so much from watching his videos and by reading the comments from others who are educated in these areas. The production value in his videos is the reason why I find myself just watching TH-cam all the time now along with other fine TH-cam content creators. A+ content!
While HIGH up on 'Sliver' (my Virtual and Loyal Steed) glancing down I thought I knew all the answers, at the worst all I had to do was Google. Then this "Dare I say 'Gentleman' shows up" like a freaking Irish Spring® soap commercial all refreshingly refined and with an invigorating level of intellectual honesty. Darn near knocked me down off Sliver. Look at him just sitting there all like professional, spit polished and shined, smiling... I bet he smells good too.
He upped his production quality a whole lot and seems more confortable in front of the camera. I agree he was still good before but now he's really having one of the best edutainment channel
I was thinking--hey this must be what geeky kids are watching these days instead of Whicker's World or The Secret Life of Machines. Or, is this guy auditioning to be on the Science channel or some offshoot like that? The next Bill Nye!
I got this equipment and I’m very happy with the results so thank you Alec. Out of curiosity I went to check FFMPEG and I found it very useful. I used it to correct the aspect ratio, fix the audio to mono, because it was just on left channel and rise volume. All on one single command per video:
ffmpeg -i Video.MP4 -crf 18 -filter:a "volume=2", -vf "scale=1440:1080,setdar=4/3" -ac 1 Video_corrected.MP4
To use it on Windows; search and download ffmpeg, copy ffmpeg.exe inside the folder where the videos are (or add it to the windows path variables). Then with Shift pressed right click on an empty space in the folder and select “Open powershell window here”. On a notepad copy the code and replace Video.mp4 by the name of your videos. Then just go changing the correlative number. Enjoy!
@MellophoneMan902id use it for the same reason i would try linux, its cool and all but i wouldnt use it dayto day
"If you don't want to, we can't be friends" - you sir, are amazing ;)
Sven beat me to it, but I loved and 100% agree with this statement! Stretched 4:3 is awful and I cringe whenever I see it!
I want that RGB shirt LOL
Friends don't let friends watch awful stretched video.
Aspect ratios are life. I just wish someone would tell Sky TV this, their set top boxes and my TVs don't seem to understand each other when it comes to "implement the correct aspect ratio over HDMI" signals, my Bush TV gets this over SCART... but Sky Q boxes don't have SCART.
In short, Sky TV need to add an "insert bars down the sides of 4:3 content" option for shitty TVs branded Bush (AKA Argos own brand) and ummm... Samsung.
I used to hate black verticals enough to prefer stretching. Then a few months later I wondered what else I had done wrong in my life.
I never understood people who can watch 4:3 video that's stretched to 16:9. I always assumed they were secret psychopaths.
Worse are the channels that currently stretch 4:3 to 14:9 to minimize side bars, but few TVs have the ability to convert 14:9 to 4:3 where almost all can convert 16:9 to 4:3.
And I swear half of them are restaurant managers.
If I go to a restaurant and they're showing a stretched picture, they don't get a tip. Most of the time they're even showing a standard-def letterboxed feed of an HD cable channel, so they've got black bars on the top and bottom with everything stretched out.
I don’t hate my Uncle Jerry, I just hate that he does this.
@@KaBoomStock Well, I hate him. ;)
Crazy how he explains how to record for Nintendo 64 better than most speedruners. Big thanks
"For my money and eyes, this capture method is fine and trying to squeeze any more out of an analog signal is dangerously close to a fool’s errand. That said, I have no idea how well this works to capture things like retro game consoles. This endeavor is mainly for video, so if you’re looking to capture some NES footage or whatever, you should probably look for videos on how to do specifically that." -Technology Connections
@@ZoomerNostalgia How to choose a good upscaler for an analogue signal from an old game console is quite the rabbit hole. The biggest issue that you wouldn't normally care about that much for other upscalers (if at all) is how much latency the upscaler adds. Many good gaming upscalers add less than 1/10th of a millisecond of latency, but less than 5 milliseconds would still be considered excellent by most users.
One major issue is that some of the best upscalers for video game consoles are often out of stock or even out of production. Another issue is that many retro game consoles require a cable with a proprietary connector, OR some kind of physical modification to the internal workings of the console itself, in order to get the best signal out of them. Not all systems use the same types of signals, so a good upscaler won't necessarily work well for all consoles.
The file splitting probably happens because of FAT32 file size limitation
Wonder if he should revisit this and use a external USB hard drive (possibly a powered one) that's formatted to NTFS ... if the device will use a storage device that's formatted to NTFS and see if that makes any difference.
@@john_thorpe Probably it wont work with NTFS, because of the implementation of FAT32 is easily available, while NTFS support is well under Microsoft's control, so even Linux support is limited.
It reminds me of all the Transflash devices that in reality have MicroSD support without paying the royalties required for the SD logo.
@@EduardoEscarez Perhaps it supports exFAT?
@@Ni5ei Maybe if it can support more than 32GB per unit, but then there must be another reason for the file splitting.
@@EduardoEscarez What I mean is that when the card is formatted FAT32 then of course it will have to split the files. But perhaps if it's formatted exFAT it won't split them.
Haha.. “we cant be friends” I so agree circles should always be circles... great video
The worst is when people do a mix of horizontal scaling and zooming to end up with a 16:9 image that is slightly stretched and slightly cropped.
Unsquash all that is oval!
Aspect that ratio proportionate to its original format!
Or there will be trouble!!!
I laughed so hard. I couldn't agree more. I would also add, if you are still buying DVDs because you don't see a difference between 480p and 1080p, we can't be friends.
@@QuantumBraced Ohh... Well, what if my CRT don't allow me to see 1080p anyway? What then, huh??
well im an eye surgeon, and we were looking for the best method to capture composite video digitally out of our microscopes. we tried alot of game captures, converters; you name it we, probably tried it. in my experience and you might find this weird, the best knock out pictures we found out was using DVRs for cctv cameras. the picture is so clear, sharp and vivid. ofc our dvr doesn't record audio as we dont need it. but you can buy one that does.
you should give it a try and tell us your thoughts.
wow, could you you more about it? so you get a converter from RCA composite to BNC and that's it?
Do you mind PMing me / replying about this process specifically? Wanting to give it a shot
@@paulhan9843 THAT IS THE WAY AROUND THAT CLOSED SHOP LAW
THE UK POLICE USE THIS METHOD ALL THE TIME TO IMPROVE FOOTAGE
which DVR???
Cool beans!
As an ex-analog broadcast engineer I was amused and entertained by the also accurate descriptions of how analog works. Kudos! NTSC lives! be glad it's not SECAM.
frick you and never the same colour
@@obiwac Yes! I was about to make the "never the same colour" joke my old Video Production teacher loved to make. XD
@@ChaddicusRex We called it Never Twice the Same Color but the points the same. :-)
What I did back in the day was to connect the output of the VHS to a digital camera and connect its firewire output to my computer. I just pressed play on the VCR and capture on my computer, it worked pretty nice
@@irisfailsafe It's a lazy solution and not great because the colors space of DV is only 4:1:1 vs 4:2:2 for VHS. It's pretty horrid color space and when you're capturing VHS, you want the most amount of information possible due to it being a poor storage format.
I lose sleep over people neglecting to get aspect ratios correct so thank you for "not being a friend" of them
Speaking of which, it's bad enough we have all these technophobes who don't know how to set up the TV right, but sometimes even the studios don't get it right on their home video releases (or especially streaming services)! How many home video issues of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World" got the aspect ratio wrong? For a long time it made me "mad, mad, mad, mad" to see everything from complete pan-and-scan (which is REALLY horrible for a movie like that) to half-assed letterboxing in maybe 1.66 or 2.35 ratio at best. NO, it's supposed to be 2.76, as it was shot for Cinerama, and long live Criterion, they definitely got it right when they released the blu-ray a few years ago. Criterion's the ONLY distributor that can release a movie RIGHT, IMO. Special features galore, too - ALWAYS. I don't care if their blu-rays typically go in the $30-$35 range, they're worth every penny.
@@ebinrock preach brotha. i worked for 10 years as a video editor for local advertising, not glorious but i took pride in it, namely things like color correction of footage etc... which ultimately gave me an endless source of rage at what TVs do to films whose cinematographer and editors labored to perfection, only to be "SMART ENHANCED" with blue saturation and frame interpolation ARRRGGGGGGGG
@@ebinrock yep, at one point Die Hard 3 was on netflix, totally wrong aspect ratio.
@@CUBOSH frame interploration should be illegal
@@jcardboard WTF NETFLIX>:(
Your information, humor, and production quality are all above and beyond. Thank you so much.
2 AM me: I got to sleep.
Also 2 AM me: Why yes, Technology Connections, do tell me how to capture analog video.
Haha literally me, just got home from work and just gone 2am here.
@@yellowpete79 Well, now it's 3 AM and "I must be lonely"!
HAH
-Why yes-
Just bacause*
Un detallito en el inglish compa ;v
Boy Graffity 2/10 shitty bait
I'M NOT CRAZY
Your analog stuff isn't centered! What a relief.
I thoroughly enjoyed this! I’m just a grandma trying to learn how to convert all of these videos for my kids and I just really enjoyed this. Thank you for so much detail and it was just nice that you had real life examples!
The techmoan video in question is his dolby atmos setup video
Cute PFP!
thanks king
I've recently started a project that uses old VHS tapes, so this is extremely useful and well-timed, thanks! Also, I am enjoying your EPCOT footage - my childhood wasn't great, but my most cherished and happiest memories are from family holidays to Florida, and EPCOT was by far my favourite theme park. Seeing the Communicore pavilion brought back a whole flood of memories.
There are much cheaper options. Have not compared quality, but I'm perfectly happy with the $12 I spent.
If you are capturing analog video to DVD-RAM, you're using MPEG-2 compression. A lot of analog capture cards do the same thing. That might explain some of the softness and detail loss. There are USB3 and PCI-E capture devices that output uncompressed video.
One of the best ways to capture analog has always been to connect it to a DV camcorder or deck, then connect the DV source via Firewire.
For those interested, you can use FFmpeg to combine video clips of the same format losslessly. It's also very fast since it doesn't need to reencode like Premiere.
you can also use mkvmerge as well, since it has a fairly easy to use gui that won't trip people up
Avidemux because I can select "copy" on both audio and video, and has a GUI. Not much of a GUI, but better than ffmpeg
@@Δημήτρης-θ7θ ffmpeg because it doesn't have a GUI. That's really handy when you have a project to convert a whole moving box full of camcorder tapes as I'm planning to.
Ralf Baechle But that doesn’t make the process easy to most typical consumers, now does it?
ive always had problems with ffmpeg, avidemux works better in my experience
9:06 Dude, thank you for hating on improperly scaled video. It seems like nobody cares.
Be sure manybody cares
It's right up there with recording vertically on a phone
HECCING NETFLIX DOES THIS TO STAR TREK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
@@Mike_Rogge it does with some smart tvs or apple tvs i dont remember, but i switched from one to the other and it was normal again
Holy shit, you just destroyed the wall I was banging my head against for the past week! The video hadn't even finished and I had already ordered the converter and the capture devices from the store. I just now noticed how many caveats you've given and I'm deeply impressed by your thoroughness! You're a lifesaver!!!
Finally someone that doesn’t like 4:3 stretched to 16:9 - I actually won’t sign up to the biggest pay tv service in the UK as they stretch the footage which really annoys me - I use the 2nd biggest service as they show 4:3 as 4:3 :-)
Most tvs can unstretch it anyway.
@@LukasFink1 yes but you have to do it manually which means 16:9 content gets squashed unless you change it back. the reality is that most people don't seem to care. my friend watches judge judy and her head is shaped like a rugby ball! really annoying
I get triggered all the time. Especially if they crop the video to make it look non stretch.
@@dgpsf I get SO pissed about that, when I'm watching classic shows like WKRP and they've got it 'letterboxed' by cropping top and bottom, even cutting the top of people's heads off and making it look like the photographer was an idiot who wanted all close-ups. That show is my favorite sitcom ever and I stopped watching the reruns when they cut 1/3 of the image out of it.
@@dgpsf It's like the opposite of how movies converted to 4:3 by pan-n-scan often had the credits sequences squashed instead to avoid cropping the text. When I was little and didn't understand how any of this worked, I always wondered why, in the openings of old Westerns on VHS, Clint Eastwood always looks like he's 17 feet tall and weighs 94 pounds. I assumed it was like that in the original and was some bizarre artistic choice by the director. :)
Much of it appears to be better pedestal/ black/ gamma retention, which is usually mucked up beyond repair by lazy conversion software/ hardware.
S-Video will get you even better color results. If you use a TBC then you can use a full fledged capture card on the computer in 4:2:2 uncompressed video.
A tip for the capture card splitting the file into part. I don't know about the capture card you're using but the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket also records to USB stick. If you are using a USB formatted as FAT32, the video capture will be split into sections if the file gets bigger than 4GB. To avoid the splitting, you need to format the USB stick as NTFS.
Or, if you don't like proprietary microsoft formats, or whatever device you're using doesn't support them, with the latter being more likely, you could use exFAT. Older devices won't accept anything besides FAT16 or FAT32, with some being very stubborn with only FAT16 support, but if it's semi-recent then it will likely support all 3, and exFAT is the superior option between it and something like NTFS.
EDIT: Btw, if it doesn't support exFAT, it most certainly won't support NTFS, just to clarify. Mostly just posing exFAT as the format you should actually use due to compatibility, while still leaving the disclaimer about older devices not supporting it. exFAT and NTFS are for two very different use cases and aren't really "rivals" if that makes any sense.
Woo a CaptainD shoutout, tbh though his CD/ videos on basic video stuff is a great starting point and his presentation and comedy are the best ^^
Mel Arky I never thought he would mention the almighty captain
I don't know what it is, because he has info I'm interested in, but Captain D's character annoys me to high heaven.
@@BrokenMonocle Interesting... Must be the Monocle.
@@reyariass Ya, Captain D's persona annoys me to no end, to the point where I basically refuse to watch him. This kinda sucks tbh, because the topics he covers are pretty interesting (if I could stand him enough to watch them)
ROFL at all the technical terms. Capture Thingy, Digital Spitter Outer Thing. Love it.
This channel is brilliant and endlessly fascinating! I love all the subtle jokes strewn throughout. The audio synchronization bit got me good
1:41 "Dealing with audio synchronization issues." Nice touch.
Wow that is a seriously incredible, albiet completely unnecessary detail
The audio-synchronization joke was awesome!!!
Thank you for posting this. I edit videos as a hobby and I been struggling with analog to digital interlaced transfers for over a decade. Just this year I finally bought a similar composite to HDMI converter and a separate Gamer HDMi video capture device. Like you mentioned the ability to change from different sources analog or digital makes this the best setup.
which products did you buy? Do you have links? Are you happy with the results? Thanks!
“These exist because gamers” is a wonderful phrase that I did not expect to come out of this channel.
I suspect he is a bit of a gamer too. 🤔
@@JDManring He did mention that he uses it for his PS2.
@@markvolpe2305 WTF doesn't this man know the PS2 has component cables
I'm loving the "Day at Epcot Center" video captures
"Digital Spitter-Outer Thing" - Woah.. Calm down... I'm not sure i'm ready for all these advanced technical terms!
Must be complicated for whatever actually stands for DSOT.
Love how the audio got out of sync for a second when you talked about audio syncing 😊
you have a timestamp?
@@tatyboy1337 about 1:40
TH-cam app does that every few minutes, so i did not notice these anymore
@@vadnegru it's on purpose actually, it's a gag
@@sethseth6ify Yeah i thought so too; either as a gag or as a way to illustrate his point.
Thank you so much for this!!! I have been jacking around with a capture card in my computer with constant glitches with software compatibility, computer shunting down in the middle of a capture for various reasons, crashes, etc. Trying to archive old home videos off and on for over a year now. Taking the computer out of the equation makes this so much simpler!
I use old Hauppauge HDPVR units (can be found cheap on bay - $40 -$50). These were $200 brand new back in the day. The key to digitizing (and especially compression to MP4) is hardware compression. Most of the dinky little $15 units you find all over the web rely on your computer's processing to do the compression on the fly and they basically suck at it. The Hauppauge units (these were also aimed at gamers) do all of the work and I just use only Windows 7 dual core PCs to save the files. I have about 10 of these things all over my shop and they come in handy for digitizing video from whatever analog source I send to them as well as the output from my film transfer telecines.
I always wondered why old video looked so bad on modern displays.
Don't forget that it can also be caused by resolution being stretched poorly and use of aliasing to get an image in the screen resolution. 480p video looks best on a 480p display.
Old stuff looks bad on modern displays simply because it's not made for them.
It's a combination of factors. It's also highly contextual.
Take for instance an old console, like a SNES.
These are interesting because the output includes both Composite, S-video (Luma and Chroma on seperate channels) and RGB output (SCART) intended for Europe where that was a common feature of TV's...
A further point of interest is that older consoles and home computers tended to output progressive scan signals even though officially TV's didn't support this. They did it simply by omitting the signal that tells the TV to switch to the alternate frame. Old TV's happily comply with this even though it's out of spec, and simply draw the same field at twice the framerate, (leaving the alternate field blank), rather than outputting interlaced video.
So what's the result of all this weirdness?
Well, even here it's still contextual.
The progressive scan method being out of spec means that sometimes modern devices incorrectly interpret a video signal like this as interlaced footage, even though it isn't.
Unsurprisingly, deinterlacing something that wasn't interlaced to begin with doesn't end up looking good.
Then there's the 3 output methods. Typically a modern TV does a bad job with composite, a mediocre one with S-video, and usually a fairly decent one with SCART. (and yet, scart is now rare on modern TV's even in places where in the past most TV's had it. - plus SCART or even just analogue RGB capture devices are almost non-existent.)
What's more bizarre here is that the consequences vary by game.
Take an early game like Super Mario World and it looks mediocre on a modern TV with RGB output.
However, a late era game (~1995) from Japan, such as Seiken Densetsu 3 arguably looks better on a modern display using RGB as input than it does on a period correct CRT using composite.
Seems game design changed as the typical output type used did.
And then there's a million different ways that a capture device can interpret video levels.
Again, a device like a SNES is out of spec; It's gamma ramp doesn't follow conventional NTSC or PAL standards respectively. Older devices didn't care. (you just tweak the image settings a little at worst)
Modern TV's largely still don't care. (same thing. Tweak image settings.)
But capture devices can do weird things with it because of this. And while some of them technically have adjustable settings, often the results of changing the settings are not what you expect...
Composite video is always going to look terrible on modern TV’s and using composite from VHS is really going be bad. It’s surprising just how much better VHS looks (especially first generation camera tapes or tapes copied by S-Video look) when you are using a S-VHS VCR and S-Video, as VHS actually Records it’s Video in 2 streams. Composite just ads noise.
"If you don't want to, we can't be friends." Amen Brother!!! Its called aspect ratio people!!! How do they not see it?
They're the same people that are happy with video recorded in portrait......
@@beefcakeandgravy Now THAT is not only funny but also SO true! I get tired of looking at such videos sideways to see what they really are about!
I guess they want their TV to display full screen picture no matter what. Makes them feel their money was well spent on that large TV. But in fact it makes everyone look fat and sometimes it lowers the SD resolution even more by trimming the top and bottom parts of the picture, making less than 480 lines visible.
André Lange I agreed, 4:3 should be left as 4:3, while 16:9 should be left as 16:9. Aspect ratio and quality matters.
Well said, and well done. I'm an ex -TV and -VCR R&D engineer and worldwide service-shop trainer and I must say this video is both necessary and useful. Thank you again.
Interesting method for capturing, i use a VHS player hooked up to a mini-dv camera that brings the video in over firewire. Yes i have an older computer to do this with. The quality is really good.
My dad did it this way, too. Easy as pie.
This is by far the best. The AVI file can then be loaded into VirtualDub where you can clean up the image drastically and convert it to 60p.
Be careful of chroma subsampling issues. If you do this (especially if you record it to miniDV and then import, for whatever reason, or import native miniDV content), if the color looks strangely washed out, it may be due to miniDV's particular chroma subsampling interacting poorly with default 4:2:0 subsampling used in most places by most software nowadays. I had to figure out how to resample the chroma with ffmpeg to get good results from native miniDV footage.
I did that, but the firewire captured video was interlaced, just as the original source.
That's why it's a great idea to keep an old Mac around.
8:56 THIS!! I remember when everyone got a widescreen TV, and they watched 4:3 stretched to 16:9, and it looked horrible. Apparently I was the only one who saw that there was a problem, and no one else cared. I even argued with my uncle about it, and his response was that it's a widescreen TV so you should watch it in widescreen. He said he couldn't stand watching it with pillar boxing
I have a friend who can't stand pillarboxing or letterboxing, but he also dislikes chocolate. I don't mind black bars, except for vertical video within a horizontal video, or 4:3 video within a 13:9 video converted to 4:3.
@@buddyclem7328 People that don't like chocolate are evil.
I don't care for the bars on the side.
Yep. My family are like this too. I hate it so much, and even own a 4:3 display to watch old stuff properly.
I like chocolate bars on the side.
Your timing could not be better.
I just found my wife's 1986 kindergarten vhs tape and was pondering what to buy to capture the video with as my previous capture card is buried somewhere in the closet....
Thank you for posting this "one weird trick" that makes all the conversion shops "hate you."
Audacity audio recording: It bugged me that you hit play BEFORE hitting record ;)
Well, cassette tapes usually have a blank lead-in part...
@@PanduPoluan Fun fact that tape also is a head cleaner. Not a great one but still helps.
@@PanduPoluan But that one didn't!!?! :(
Your VHS digitization is better than PewDiePie's video quality.
Well his content is much better than anything Felix has done in his life.
low bar
What's a PewDiePie?
@@matrixate It is an annoying sound that children make on the internet.
TheChosenOne It’s racism disguised as gaming
Thanks for sharing. That's an amazing alternative to my current setup. I'll have to try it and compare.
Here's a quicker way to stitch up segmented clips in Premiere, and applying a single RESIZE for the entire set (or any processing for that matter)
1) Create [TimeLine1]
2) Drop all your clips on [TimeTime1], unprocessed.
3) Create [TimeLine2]
4) Drop [TimeLine2] on [TimeLine1]
5) Apply processing on the [TimeLine1] clip on [TimeLine2]
6) Render [TimeLine2]
Et voilà.
Alternatively, you could create an adjustment layer on a higher track on [TimeLine1] and apply your processing to that layer. This approach does not require [TimeLine2]. But some people find the 2nd timeline method to be more intuitive. Both methods allow applying processing only once for the whole set. A big time saver whenever you have a lot of clips and reduces the risks of disparity in the processing.
Your comment about "these exist because gamers" couldn't be more true. I literally already have nearly this exact setup- albeit my capture device is an ElGato HDMI passthru device- specifically for capturing older game consoles. I also have an 'upscaler' that accepts component video as well, as the ElGato is HDMI-only. The biggest difference is that i'm using an external program to capture the video files (OBS) as opposed to natively recording them using the capture device.
It never occurred to me to use this setup to capture analog video from VHS. Might be worth a shot at some point, I've got a lot of time-capsule-like VHS cassettes that would be awesome to upload to the internet.
I use a specific model of a JVC VCR which has its own TBC, a colour corrector, a TBC, and a Magewell capture card.
Inquiring minds want to know that model . . .
HR-S9900U
@@Tatsh2DX Those are nice, but the dynamic drum-system is a time bomb. I've had those plastic gears fail on some units. :(
I’m waiting on a SVHS broadcast deck for a project I’m working on, but I’m using a leitch DPS575 for the Time Base Correcting, LUMA/Colour compensation and analogue to digital conversation. This is then recorded via SDI into an Atamos Samurai as prores 422 HQ.
I’m then playing around with bob and yadif 2x for whichever works best on the clip.
This will be for broadcast re-release.
My biggest issue has been some of the tapes are disintegrating.
Here is the current import:
th-cam.com/video/0tQ-be4uZwk/w-d-xo.html
Depending on the content either of those deinterlacers may look blocky. If you don't have a lot of time it can be okay quality. If you do have time, QTGMC through VapourSynth works wonders (can't be done in real-time) but you have to make sure the audio stays synced.
i only heard you saying "audio synchronisation issues" looking at a cord i am practicing knots with and scrolled back to watch you making the joke i exactly knew you'd have to make. thank you!! :)
For archiving and watching with correct aspect ratio, it's also possible to remux the file (eg. with mkvtoolnix or mp4box), and override the display aspect ratio (DAR) or pixel aspect ratio (PAR) in the metadata, so the player knows how to stretch the image in playback time. This way you don't have to transcode and lose quality, also it takes a lot more time than simply remuxing. Of course in your case, because you're incorporating this to another video, it doesn't matter. But people who only use this for archiving, it is.
I loved that EPCOT parade. Still have the music in my head like two decades later lol.
I like how you recorded yourself at 24fps while the rest of the video showcase VHS at 60fps. I got mad respect for you for the 3:2 pulldown of all frame rate.
It's like old NTSC but in HD... well I guess it how broadcasters still do it now for over the air television.
Nobody's suggested pointing a digital cam at an analogue CRT TV screen! Yeah, of course I'm kidding, BUT as late as the 1970s in the UK the BBC were making 'telerecordings' for export by pointing a 16mm movie camera at a monitor screen, and in the 1960s the MasterVision cable network added 625-line BBC2 to their 405-line system by pointing a 405-line camera at off-air programme on a TV.
As I recall, they did that for the Apollo landing footage, too, only rather than for archiving, it was as a means of frame-rate conversion between the camera on the lander and the various TV systems on Earth.
The method is also still used for film today (depending on your definition of "today"). The movie "9 Songs" from 2004 was filmed on digital cameras, and then transferred to analog film by means of projecting the movie onto a white wall and filming it. Sure, it was 15 years ago, but that counts as recent.
That's how I made gameplays in 2012... those were some good times.
That's what I did to make a record from video CD to VHS tape, but I didn't have CD player any but PC with VGA CRT monitor. I set VGA to 100Hz and recorded it with VHS camera. Of course, sound was recorded directly via audio input.
This was over 20 years ago :-)
That screen copy was looking not so bad except dark bar that slowly moved on screen due to non-perfect sync of camera and CRT VGA monitor.
It depends on your needs, but if you intend to digitize your VHS tapes "once and for all" it is best to do as little postprocesing as possible. Ie no deinterlacing (that can be done at any time later with better alghoritms coming every day), no upscaling (same thing - smart upscalers are getting better and better), no aspect ratio conversion (you can do this without changing the resolution and reencoding - just change pixel aspect ratio from 1:1 to anything else) etc.
If you only want to show some clip on youtube, then your double-blackbox approach with some light postprocessing is really OK. But remember that the image is better probably mostly because one of those black boxes use image enhancing filters (enhance colors and sharpness, denoise) and those filters are lossy and irreversible. You gain some perceptual quality and you loose information that could be used in future to gain even better picture out of VHS mess.
Firstly, thank you for starting with "it depends on your needs". Far too many people around these parts like to project their needs onto others and judge you for accepting quality loss for the sake of convenience.
With that said, there comes a time where one wants to cut their losses and stop fretting about making it perfect for down the road. I'm well past the point of worrying about "is this the absolutely best method for preserving this material" and have moved onto "does this look as I remember it?" combined with "is this easy to manipulate/use with modern hardware" and with *that* goal in mind, I cannot fathom a better solution aside from perhaps marginally increasingly image quality, but at that point I think we've firmly settled into the diminishing returns category.
My point here is mainly that I'm tired of worrying about optimizing for quality to the point where I'm potentially creating more work for myself down the road. Using these two boxes and a few minutes' time in Premiere, I can produce a capture that's almost exactly as I see it on my TV, and I think trying to get beyond that is a waste of time. That's my opinion, of course, but there comes a time where "good enough" is good enough.
@@TechnologyConnections
I would just like to add to this. All we're trying to do (at least I am) is point people in the right direction to make great quality transfers, mitigating the number of absolute trash transfers that exists, with a blurry image, JPEG artifacts, and worst of all, the interlacing artifacts. This especially counts if someone is trying to transfer a very rare movie only on VHS.
PS: If you don't want to deal with the video split. I've discovered you can update the firmware on certain model devices. Mainly with the EZCAP 280H/285 (Yellow Board) where upon updating it will now read drives formatted in NTFS which will eliminate all the splitting nonsense. Just search for update files for your model.
@@TechnologyConnections I will admit there's a lot of technical information to cover and pixel peeping that could be done when dealing with analog conversions.. and I have definitely gotten caught up in it to the point that I never completed my last SD capture project. I do feel like I created a good workflow for the process however for the next time I resume it.
That is an interesting take by Petr K though, to capture it as is. I wonder though what codec he decides on or if he keeps it as raw as possible (I just can't imagine him storing massive video files for every hours worth of footage.). I think that is what hangs me up - I do not want to store a massive RAW footage files, but I also don't want to convert it into a modern codec like h.264 without processing it some and de-interlacing - simply because I do not KNOW for sure what type of device or player will be playing it back later. Like with jpg files we should recognize that it is not a good idea to process a file into a lossy format multiple times.
I think we're taking a lot of granted if we're going to just assume that 4K, 8K TVs and future mobile devices will all know how to handle interlaced footage well into the future - if all of them even do today.
@@benreaves3113 i think AVI is the way to go. If you wanna do it correctly, as Petr hints, you will need to have a decent amount of hard disc space or whatever storage medium you prefer. But then again is the work input / result output ratio probably not to everyone's liking ;)
Well after a long time, I finally decided to buy an upscaler. Composite into it then hdmi back to my capture device.......brilliant!!!! The colours are better and transfer looks great. Thank you for your wonderful advice. Love your channel.
My DV camera has a video in (anlog) and it outputs DV over firewire, what can be captured. That's what I used for all kinds of alalog video signals.
Sorry, but if you're okay rendering to a widescreen video frame with baked-in pillarboxing, WE can't be friends. :P
Let me know the next time you're watching a display narrower than 16:9 :-P
@@TechnologyConnections I do. Regularly. 4:3 is my jam. But also, native scaling of aspect ratios is incredibly important. 16:10, 18:9/2:1 phones. If you're baking into a 16:9 frame and then uploading natively, the viewing experience is incredibly frustrating on anything but a 16:9 screen.
16:10 was incredibly frustrating, as you got pillarboxing AND letterboxing so it was a small view. Even worse on native 4:3.
The same is said of baking in letterboxing in 16:9 videos for "cinematic effect." Now the video is just obnoxious on ultrawides, 2:1 phones, DCI 4K screens, as well as the older formats.
Excuse my naivete here, but unless you're watching the video vertically on a phone (which I suppose you might be but in *that* case we can't be friends, either) then a wider AR screen just makes the side bars wider. I've watched plenty of 16:9 content on my 19:9 phone, and it still fills in all the vertical space. There's just more void to the side.
I see your point, and if I could go back in time I would explain that my mindset is framed around producing content for TH-cam so there's little point in cropping the sides off for what will be shown full screen in a 16:9 video. I will admit that having baked in pillarboxing would be annoying if, for instance, watching the raw video in a window on a PC, or when you have a taller aspect ratio like 16:10. I just think of everything in terms of 16:9 because that's the realm I live and work in!
Well you said it yourself about the engineers in the 40s at 4:15
At the time interlacing was a good idea but now it’s it’s a problem, and one day things may change and a forced black bar may have serious regrets.
@@TechnologyConnections I also primarily use a 16:10 monitor, which is 1440x900, so I'm really annoyed when a video is windowboxed.
"If you don't want to, we can't be friends." I felt this! So many arguments with my family, ex partners, etc because they actually preferred the stretched out picture to having black bars on the sides.
Wait, people do this for other reasons than just not caring enough to invest even the minimal effort required to fix the aspect ratio...??
Great suggestion, although I would assume that the HDMI capture device applies some level of lossy compression on the video file. When re-encoding in your preferred format, you'd be applying another round of lossy compression. Also, any noise in the outer edges will eat up the bitrate and reduce the overall quality. That just doesn't do it for me, which is why I capture lossless 576p (PAL) directly from the analogue capture device and then deinterlace / crop / denoise and encode as H264 in one pass. But that's just my OCD eating away at my sanity 24/7, so please don't take this as me thinking I know better.
Those boxes capture x264 at a high bitrate (mine captures 2GB in 15min = 20Mbps), so yes, it's lossy, but by so little it doesn't matter, certainly since the source material is from VHS tape.
you would be fascinated by the competitive super smash bros melee community and the ridiculous hoops its had to jump through to stream its gameplay at high quality while still using CRTs at tournaments for low-latency reasons.
the current method involves running the game simultaneously on a wii hooked up to a CRT (or two) and also an emulator running at high resolution. the players' inputs are captured and piped over to the computer running the emulator and that is the video that is captured and streamed for the public to watch. this method is called project slippi and making sure both instances of the game do not desync is a tremenous problem lol. but it works great somehow!
Wow. I would have figured that random events in the game code would make the two veer away from each other.
@@nickwallette6201 there are certain non-tourney-legal stages that do cause desyncs. although a few of the legal stages have minor random events; the shy guys on yoshi's and the moving platforms on fountain come to mind. they must have found a way to sync the RNG seed between the two somehow.
edit: perhaps the random events are tied to the timer and the player's inputs somehow...?
@@nothankyou4859 I'm pretty sure they just sync the RNG seed value.
Why don't they just stream from the CRT's AV out?
@@IvanDSM The big thing is that the emulator can run in HD, which the original Wii can't. Also, project slippi streams/captures all game data, not just player inputs, so it can be used for displaying stats in real time. This video is a good overview: th-cam.com/video/IDJiMES-dn4/w-d-xo.html
I use a Sony Digital-8 camcorder and run the RCA cables into the input and output through firewire. The resulting files need to be de-interlaced, but the color render seems just fine by me.
"These exist because gamers"
Funny that, as I already have the necessary hardware to try this method for this exact reason! 😅
This is so true, I actually never even thought of using my game capture card for VHS but that is great news for all our old familly footage videos haha
im noticing the same thing from my end, of the video capture world, non gamer. all the new product thats available, all the tutorials and stuff that im finding available for them, are all gamers trying to capture random console resolutions. its pretty cool. Now i can finally get good product, and a decent vhs capture. :-) Although i feel this hdmi option is too much contrast and alot of detail is lost, and you can sharpen in virtual dub, i capture rgb24 for now, through an extron 7sc, getting great results. I too saw that frame pop up now and then, until i turned on the pulldown setting in the scaler. I hadnt realized it was interlacing issue, i thought maybe chroma shift and or scan line timing, something of those sorts. Maybe I can look into this a different way. Thanks for the vid, it was all the extra info that was helpful.
Lmao; loved the audio sync bit.
I remember buying a specific video capture card in the early 2000's, the Radeon All-In-One! I loved that thing.
All-in-Wonder™ ;)
I find that one of the most common things video ADCs get wrong is the black levels.
My Denon Receiver (AVR-790, aka AVR-1210) gets this wrong. For most inputs on my TV, including digital inputs thru the AVR's HDMI ports, I set my TV's brightness around 50 and get proper black levels. Viewing composite video through the AVR, I have to set my TV Brightness to 10.
Oh boy, i sure do love using my phone with its (FUTURE) display
0:21 From now on, every time I come across an audiophool, I will redirect them to the intro of this video. Great content by the way! 😎👍
Great video! usually I shy away from videos longer than 10 minutes. Well spoken, right to the point! Thank you!
Thank you SO much!! I needed to find the best way, cheaply, to convert my family vhs vids over to digital with a good outcome. My kids are grown, my son is the oldest at 22, married. That is how old my oldest VHS is. So, I know these tapes will not last forever. I am going to try your method. Thanks again.
Say what you want about interlaced video but most terrestrial broadcast is still 1080i or only 720p.
nothanxx Yeah, because cable companies suck. Nobody even has interlaced displays anymore. Thank God streaming is finally killing them off.
One of the many reasons I don't have more tv channels than I am forced to...
@@tormaid42 Eh. Satellite HD is still far less compressed than the "HD" presented by internet services. While the pixel resolution may be less, the quality of broadcast TV (in the UK at least) is much higher.
Which gets deinterlaced anyways by your TV or A/V receiver before it's ever displayed.
@@tormaid42 It's not cable companies, it's because ATSC for OTA broadcast set 1080i as the standard. Revisions to ATSC fix this, but ATSC 2.0 was never deployed since it was outdated before it could be launched, and ATSC 3.0 is completely optional in the US, meaning TVs aren't required to support it. The hope is for gradual shift, but so far it's pretty slow adoption.
Since ATSC is the broadcast standard, everyone produces content compliant with it. So while cable companies are stuck with 1080i signals from local affiliates, they could theoretically delivery 1080p cable channels, but all the cable channels are 1080i to work with any cable company that can't handle 1080p yet. It's basically the lowest common denominator. Plus, with the deinterlacing capabilities of new TVs and such, it's not really that big of a deal for most customers.
Linus sent me here. :) I was already a subscriber, so I was happy to see the shoutout on their video. Good work sir!!
In case you were still interested in finding it. That video with Techmoan was his Dolby Atmos setup video.
8:30 "You might also be happy to know that macrovision doesn't bother this thing"
That's good, most consumer capture programs and hardware occasionally confuse weak signal strength as copyrighted sources.
i was looking for a conclusive guide to capturing analog video for a VERY long time and I think this is the one I was looking for. Thank you. SO MUCH.
I got back to this video now because there has been a development... Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI is a video upscaling software which uses artificial intelligence to guess the details back into low-res SD video, clean it up from compression artifacts and so on. I used the trial version to upscale all my old VHS and digital SD videos to 1080p or even 4K and it works wonders (I was not sponsored). So under these circumstances, I would not recommend using those analog-to-digital capture devices to upscale the captured video to 1080p, but output it without any upscale in 480p if that is a possibility. Then you can use Video Enhance AI or similar products in the future to properly upscale the captured video into HD or UHD by utilizing its neural network AI to finally get those details in the hair or foliage!!
I actually did that to a documentary I ripped from a VHS in 2005. It was properly deinterlaced back then to 50p, but I downsized it to 512x384 for space saving purposes. So lately I have used Video Enhance AI to do its magic. It took 12 hours on i9-9900K with GeForce 2080 SUPER to convert this 90 minute clip into FullHD, but the results are amazing. It greatly cleaned up the footage from all the compression artifacts old DivX 5 codec introduced back in 2005. And the details in hair, faces, foliage and textures were brought back by AI (opinions may vary how accurately).
I have never seen AI-upscaled SD video that doesn’t look unnatural and disgusting
Yay! Saturday afternoon, coffee time, aaaaand... a video!
I fucking love this dude! I love his fits, I love his humour, and he nails every single video. He can explain anything since he's so well spoken and goddamn interesting. Anyway, I hope he sees my comment so he feels the appreciation.
You should try that using svideo instead of composite some of the drawbacks you mention are no there in a pure s video signal but be aware that some converters take a shortcut where they wire a svideo input into a composite video
mucholocodawg doesn’t S video not pick up sound
@@angelop.3803 no
If you want to try something a little bit better, maybe try the RetroTink2x, it does a very nice bob deinterlace that very much approximates how 480i footage would've appeared on a real TV back in the day.
Doesnt bob halve your vertical resolution? I converted a few interlaced 📀 and it was really noticable. I changed to w3fdif (developed for the BBC iirc) and never went back. Excellent temporal and vertical resolution and a big step up from bob, weave or yadif.
yeah was going to mention that too. Mike posted a video demonstrating VHS capture with the Tink. He doesn't think its the best for this purpose since he didn't design it with that idea specifically in mind, but it does work if you have a Tink lying around to begin with. th-cam.com/video/D_uYu5XKo0U/w-d-xo.html
The Retrotink 2x will convert 480i to digital no problem, but the onboard ADC can't tolerate unstable video from VHS and the like (it will drop frames!). What it does get right is that it keeps 480i video as....... 480i (or 576i if you are in PAL land). No needless upscaling or stretching of video to 16:9!
@@marselle6926 I use EEDI2 and get great results. More smart than yadif, and can keep the original framerate, too.
Yet Another Technically Impressive Video, complete with shout outs, sources, examples... You're much more than an Unboxing Tech channel! TYVM!
The reason music sounds better on vinyl is that better music was put *on* vinyl.
Have you ever thought of doing a video about DVD Recorders? I own 2 of them. I would like to hear your insight on the history of that technology
GiggleSkull I second this motion! (I have a VHS/DVDRW combo unit that isn’t working at the moment, and I want to make DVD backups of my original Star Wars tapes)
@@300DBenz I have a PANASONIC VHS/DVD unit. It takes 30 SECONDS to 'boot up' !
@@300DBenz I have two machines like that. If your original tapes have Macrovision (anti-copying) it will not let you record them. (I've actually tried it with a Star Wars VHS tape.)
"If you don't want to, we can't be friends." THANK YOU!
Love the "these are not pixels" T-shirt!
So to add on to the capture side of this equation, can you go into the playback side? I've been researching what kind of VCR to get for playing old tapes with the best quality, and most seem to say you need to use a Super-VHS player with a built in Time Base Corrector (TBC). And then there are different types of TBCs (line, full frame, etc). Some also suggest adding an external TBC or frame synchronizer. This is all to avoid tearing and warping of the picture, and create a "clean" signal for whatever you're using to do the digital recording.
The method you see in this video can't do magic, it is just about contrast/sharpness and beating the shit out of your video. If you have tearing, unstable signal, etc, this BS you see in this video won't help. You will need a TBC/TBC-ish combo.
FFS, he is so incentive to quality loss and he keeps re-encoding the files, I bet non-losslessly... :facepalm
There is nothing that screams quality in this method. It is just much brighter for your eye and definitely one of the easiest methods. But not the best.
Dude, this was a very entertaining and informative video! Thank you. Also thanks for the "Techmoan" shout out. I enjoy his videos, too.
You might want to check out the ClonerAlliance Box Pro, it's slightly more expensive but it can record at 1024x768 at 60fps, and 1080x1920 at 30fps with both ratio 16:9 and 4:8 options and video tape results look really good, and it comes with all the HDMI cables to hook to composite, and for output to TV, and a USB drive to record to flashdrive
This might be a dumb question, but if the analog to digital converter does such a good job, why aren't there products around $100 or less that use the same technology as these two devices combined?
Probably no market for it. The easy way was a DVD/VCR recorder. It's still interlaced on DVD, but the playback device will de-interlace it and it was simple. I never used that method, but I think most people have already converted their VHS tapes by this point. I know for videophile guys like me... I'd rather capture VHS on DV and use software to output the file in any format for whatever I needed it for. It's just as simple and complicated as the hardware method shown in the video. So we already have all the equipment do capture VHS and de-interlace the video, and we don't need the hardware. In fact... we would rather de-interlace it ourselves and not use hardware that still has de-interlace bugs.
looking for some advice. I have tried a number of methods; few of which seemed to have worked well. Years ago, a Dazzle Hollywood DV bridge. Kind of crappy results. Have used my Panasonic DMR-EZ28 recorder to convert from composite video to DVD, then rip and import into Premier. Just ok. Latest device is a Diamond VC500 (composite to USB dongle). Seems the best so far.Then tonight, after watching this, I hit on the idea of just using my Panasonic DMR as the upscaler to HDMI and then maybe get the HDMI capture device mentioned in this video.Any thoughts on the quality difference between the DMR and a dedicated USB device like the Diamond?My initial thoughts were that the old Panasonic should have been the best since it was designed primarily with composite video in mind. But I can't say the video output on HDMI is anything to brag about.My main concern is final quality (within a reasonable budget).
Since HDMI is digital, the bulk of a HDMI capturer is probably in the digital video encoding chip (of which there a many qualities and prices).
Fusing this in the AD converter would then not save much.
@Zcooger Second Channel let me know how that turns out, the doomsday device seems to popular atm for digitizing laserdiscs
I watched this year's ago & I still think you have the best video on how to do this.
Definitely a better method than hogging up a computer's CPU - using a stand-alone capture device
You were looking at a device for upscaling composite video? Were the devices perhaps a Framemeister or an OSSC? They are more popular in the video game world, where not just upscaling but also zero delay output are important (because you aren't just watching)
A small time ago I stepped into the world of recording and streaming my SNES, and ran into a few weird issues there. Just bought a VCR capture device and ran with it (August VGB 100 off the top of my head). It suffered from a problem that took me a while to identify- the composite out of a SNES is 240i, and the capture outputs 480i with no real upscaling, so while the image was accurate, it was ugly AF. But s-video fixed that. Since then I've also used it with my old N64 to great success. Now, if I were to suddenly have a gun pointed to my head and have to capture old VCR to a PC for storage, I'd have a fairly good idea of how to do so for cheap and quality that makes me feel good about it. I'd have to use software upscaling to get anything of the quality in this video, though.
As for the sound boosting and noise issue, I'd totally take that into Audacity and use a white noise removal by sampling filter. I get that that might not be totally true to the original video, but personally I'd take a "better than VCR ever was" digitally made sound.
I'm curious if anyone has given this a go, and what their results were if they did. 🤔
Thank you! I have 100's of home video tapes I've needed to transfer for decades, looks like you've come up with an easy and inexpensive method while still achieving decent quality. Now I have no reason to procrastinate....
A little weird? Not weird at all. Well, not for me anyway. I've been using a similar setup for capturing VHS and Betamax tapes for months now : a cheap upscaler bought on Amazon years ago with HDMI, RCA and S-Video inputs that output 1080p or 720p through HDMI (it's a HDCP stripper as well, haven't tested Macrovision) plugged into my Elgato GameCapture HD60 Pro.
I capture using OBS, scaling the 1920x1080 signal to 1440x1080, at 59.94 fps (should I go with 60 fps?). No split file sizes. No hassle. I can even color correct my signal using Elgato settings through OBS.
In my case, no black bars (might be thanks to my upscaler). I can even set my preferred bitrate (I go with 30 Mbit/s, but that's a bit overkill). I don't understand why you chose 74% width for rescalling your video back to their 4:3 look; shouldn't it be 75%?
On a sidenote, I absolutely love your channel. Been watching for months now (yeah, ever since I starting getting interested in capturing analog video). Keep up the good work.
By the way can you help me something reguarding OBS's audio skipping? You see I recentally tried to rip Escape from New York and Star Wars on VHS via the Dazzel DVC 100 through OBS. So I'm recording at 1024x768 at 30fps via composite video. The problem Is that after 20 minutes, OBS locks up for 5 seconds and then contiues recording like normal, and it starts skipping audio every 3 minutes. Then it starts dropping frames for 10 seconds and then goes back to normal.
which type of VCR do you use? Does your VCR have S-Video? Do you use S-Video for captures, or do you use composite?
If you stand far enough away from your T-shirt, is there a visible image on there? That would be cool
No, because every triad is identical.
Old News thanks for not being a jerk while giving a decent answer. Well done.
My Mom just bought a VHS->DVD converter which skips the whole cable issue and just transfers the video signal directly to the disc. Transferred VHSes look a whole heck of a lot sharper than they did on our old CRT TVs. Same device can also just play tapes, and has native HDMI output when I borrow it to feed directly in to my Elgato. It was also about a hundred bucks.
Ok though.... I was LITERALLY saving some old vhs tapes this exact way last night. And I can confirm this is the best way. 1440x1080 sequence settings in premiere is 👌
So you buy a cheap capture device and yet pay for Premiere? Hmm...
Your source tapes are NTSC?
@@Empika
If you know enough to do that then why bother when there's open source?