Today's Good Tuner Cards - Capturing VHS

[mike1961]

I'm looking to convert a lot of my VHS tapes to mpg2 (and then mp4 for some). I'm looking to do this on a separate computer (not my Sage server). What is a really good tuner card that will capture VHS tapes? Also, what is the best format to capture in? I'm thinking DVD Standard but I'm not sure. It seems like the NVidia Dual Tuner card captures better than the Hauppauge 150 but I'm not sure if there are some newer cards on the market.

Almost forgot - how much does it matter how good the VHS player is? Obviously the VHS will be providing the signal to the tuner card but I'm not sure if the VHS player/recorders are pretty much all the same. Finally, I'm not sure if it's going to make that much of a difference capturing via SVideo or Composite. Has anyone done a good job of capturing? A lot of the time when I capture, it just doesn't seem as sharp as when playing the tape. I realize it won't be quite as good, but I would like to get it as close as possible.

Thanks,
Mike

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by mike1961

I'm looking to convert a lot of my VHS tapes to mpg2 (and then mp4 for some). I'm looking to do this on a separate computer (not my Sage server). What is a really good tuner card that will capture VHS tapes? Also, what is the best format to capture in? I'm thinking DVD Standard but I'm not sure. It seems like the NVidia Dual Tuner card captures better than the Hauppauge 150 but I'm not sure if there are some newer cards on the market.

Almost forgot - how much does it matter how good the VHS player is? Obviously the VHS will be providing the signal to the tuner card but I'm not sure if the VHS player/recorders are pretty much all the same. Finally, I'm not sure if it's going to make that much of a difference capturing via SVideo or Composite. Has anyone done a good job of capturing? A lot of the time when I capture, it just doesn't seem as sharp as when playing the tape. I realize it won't be quite as good, but I would like to get it as close as possible.

Thanks,
Mike

I think the best results would come from uncompressed avi then use something like TMPGEnc to convert to mpeg and author the DVD afterwards.

VHS players aren't pretty much all the same. As a general theme with analogue technologies, good ones money. Having said that, I haven't owned a VCR in years so can't really recomend one.

Is this S-VHS we're talking about or VHS. If it's S-VHS, then you will see a big difference between using the S-Video and composite leads but if it's VHS, then in theory there should be no difference provided you have a good quality lead.

[PhillJones]

Oh, and I forgot a couple of things to note:

VCRs are a contact format so clean the heads before you start.

The tracking on old VCRs can sometimes wander so far that the tapes are unplayable on a different VCR no matter how much you fiddle with tracking so depending on the VCR that was used, you may be limited.

[mike1961]

What about a good tuner card? I still find the quality to be much better when playing directly through the VHS to the TV than when I go through a Hauppauge 150 card. I'm thinking there are better ones out there. The Nvidia dual tuner is great but I think I would have to order it and it is not available at too many places. Just wondering it that is the best SD tuner out there.

Thanks,
Mike

[mayamaniac]

I would do it through a DV camcorder as an analog to digital converter. Most DV camcorder has S-video or composite input where you can connect a VCR to it. And connect the DV camcorder via Firewire to the PC. Then use something like Windows Movie Maker (WMM) to capture the video to DV AVI files. You can also use WMM to edit the video.

If you don't have a DV camcorder, then I suggest the nVidia dual TV since it has a better MPEG2 encoder. But I would test the PVR-150 recording at the maximum bit rate or 8Mbit/sec to see if the quality improves. As for the VCR, just make sure the head is clean as PhillJones mentioned. I think any brand name ones are fine.

[mike1961]

Which do you think is a better way to go - a DV camcorder or nVidia Dual TV tuner?

Thanks,
Mike

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

I would do it through a DV camcorder as an analog to digital converter. Most DV camcorder has S-video or composite input where you can connect a VCR to it. And connect the DV camcorder via Firewire to the PC. Then use something like Windows Movie Maker (WMM) to capture the video to DV AVI files. You can also use WMM to edit the video.

If you don't have a DV camcorder, then I suggest the nVidia dual TV since it has a better MPEG2 encoder. But I would test the PVR-150 recording at the maximum bit rate or 8Mbit/sec to see if the quality improves. As for the VCR, just make sure the head is clean as PhillJones mentioned. I think any brand name ones are fine.

[mayamaniac]

As I mentioned first, I would do it with the DV camcorder. Do the nVidia tuner way if you don't own a DV camcorder.

[mike1961]

Regarding the DV Camcorder - it sounds like that rather than use a media player to capture, couldn't I just record it onto a DV Camcorder's hard drive (since many have hard drives today rather than tape) and then simply plug the Cam into the USB and do a direct hard drive copy?

Mike

[sjgore]

I've just recently finished converting about 150 VHS tapes to DVD video.

I used a Hauppauge WinTV PCI-FM which has a composite video input, and used a cable which has a gold-plated SCART connector at one end, and gold-plated video composite & audio-left/right phono connectors at the other.

You definitely need a very good video player. I used a Panasonic 6-head nicam stereo VHS recorder. I would highly recommend Panasonic VCRs for the quality of the picture.

For the software, I used Main Concept's MPEG Encoder version 1.5.1 and encoded straight to high quality MPEG2 on my hard disk. Most of my VHS cassettes are 100 minutes long, and they take up approx. 4.5GB of hard disk space.

For playback through the main TV in my house, I could have burnt the videos to DVD, but I opted for SageTV and a MVP instead!

Steve.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Regarding the DV Camcorder - it sounds like that rather than use a media player to capture, couldn't I just record it onto a DV Camcorder's hard drive (since many have hard drives today rather than tape) and then simply plug the Cam into the USB and do a direct hard drive copy?

Mike

Yes, same thing.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Regarding the DV Camcorder - it sounds like that rather than use a media player to capture, couldn't I just record it onto a DV Camcorder's hard drive (since many have hard drives today rather than tape) and then simply plug the Cam into the USB and do a direct hard drive copy?

Mike

Yes, you are capturing straight to the harddrives with Windows Movie Maker, the DV camcorder only acts as an analog to digital converter/encoder, it doesn't record anything to tape. So basically this is the connections from VHS tape to DV AVI on your harddrive:

VHS > VCR > S-Video/Audio cables > DV Camcorder > Firewire cable > PC firewire port > WMM Capture > DV AVIs.

simple enough?

[jbarr]

Also, be aware that most commercial VHS tapes are protected with Macrovision, and many DV cameras DO NOT pass through Macrovision-protected content. Obviously, this is a complete non-issue for "home-made" videos, but just understand that DV cameras may not be a "total" solution for ALL of your videos....

[PhillJones]

There are things called video stabilizers that can strip out macrovision.

[mike1961]

Can you give me the name of a good camcorder? It seems that many if not most camcorders with SVideo have SVideo out, not SVideo in (or RCA or anything else). It seems that Camcorder are mostly made to bring the signal out (which makes sense since 98% of all capturing would probably be directly with the camcorder.

Thanks,
Mike

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Can you give me the name of a good camcorder? It seems that many if not most camcorders with SVideo have SVideo out, not SVideo in (or RCA or anything else). It seems that Camcorder are mostly made to bring the signal out (which makes sense since 98% of all capturing would probably be directly with the camcorder.

Thanks,
Mike

Sorry for the late response, but try the Canon or Sony miniDV camcorders. I have an old canon ZR series from 5 years ago and it has S-Video in/out. And make sure it has this feature before you purchase.