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The Best VHS Capture System Using Free Software?
mrcgran asks: "I have been trying to find the best solution to transfer VHS tapes to a digital format using Free Software only. I would like to lose as little as possible in the conversion, sampling optimally, minimizing noise and being in control of every step of the process. Storage is not a problem. I'm expecting to use around 5GB+ for each hour of raw captured footage." If you were going to build a VHS capture system using Free Software, how would you do it?
The software part seems promising: VLC and mencoder for conversion of raw footage, Cinelerra and many others for video editing.
However, the hardware is being tricky. Most try to bloat the device adding functions like TV/compression/edition instead of focusing on the raw A/D conversion. Chipsets are hidden, and parameters like signal-to-noise, sampling rate etc are unavailable for comparison. Information is scattered and very difficult to find.
Which chipsets/products should I look for, specially for use with Linux and BSD? Which ones allow oversampling of pixel resolution and number of frames (in order to average the values and reduce the noise)? Which setup should I use: S-Video/Composite, sampling rate/oversampling, suggestions on high-quality VHS players/heads/tape cleaning processes, etc? Has anyone tried to use scaling algorithms such as hq/scalenx to upscale video and sound resolution? Pitfalls?"
The software part seems promising: VLC and mencoder for conversion of raw footage, Cinelerra and many others for video editing.
However, the hardware is being tricky. Most try to bloat the device adding functions like TV/compression/edition instead of focusing on the raw A/D conversion. Chipsets are hidden, and parameters like signal-to-noise, sampling rate etc are unavailable for comparison. Information is scattered and very difficult to find.
Which chipsets/products should I look for, specially for use with Linux and BSD? Which ones allow oversampling of pixel resolution and number of frames (in order to average the values and reduce the noise)? Which setup should I use: S-Video/Composite, sampling rate/oversampling, suggestions on high-quality VHS players/heads/tape cleaning processes, etc? Has anyone tried to use scaling algorithms such as hq/scalenx to upscale video and sound resolution? Pitfalls?"
Plug the VHS reader with the DVD recorder. Play the tape and record it on a DVDRW (using highest available quality). Voilà. That's the easiest way to do it, and the quality is good. Now put the DVDRW in your PC, and get the files (MPEG2 VOB), and use any software for editing them.
-- Rastignac was here.
TBC's do a lot - you should read this short page, it is very concise and to the point.
The other two questions are not relevant because you were fed misinformation. You do want an SVHS deck, and you do want to use S-Video as the source if humanly possible. Composite video is more of a compromise than S-Video is. Keeping the chroma and luma separate resolve interference issues you have seen many times such as ties with stripes turning colors.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.