Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

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RE: VHS to DVD

Posted by bassbinotoko on March 19, 2010 at 23:22:19:
Does your video camera have connectors for video (and audio) in? If so, you may be able to use the camera as the capture device. The video would be streamed down the USB or Firewire cable to the computer, and then whatever video software you have would record it as DV.
Otherwise... most TV tuner cards have video inputs that can be used for capturing from VHS or other sources.
One gotcha with recording from VHS is that tape is a low-quality video source both in resolution and in timing quality. Something called a "Time Base Corrector" is what pros use for the best quality capture from VHS. Video scalers often do this as a byproduct. Some VCR's do, mostly pro or high-end units (SVHS). Most promising, though, are DVD recorders or VHS/DVD combo recorders, which often TBC the video out. Specific examples are Panasonic DMR-ES10 and DMR-ES15. Digital camcorders may also TBC video in. If you have access to any of those things, give 'em a try.
http://www.unterzuber.com/TBC.html.
The most visible symptom of the need for TBC is that a bunch of lines at the bottom of the screen are "torn" and distorted. Other than ignoring it, one fix is to clip off the noisy lines, and recenter the picture. The following link explains more or less how to use Virtualdub to clip the torn lines from the bottom. Except the current version of Virtualdub is different.
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/postprocessing_vdub.html
One point: direct stream copy doesn't do the clipping, so use the full process thingy. And choose something that makes DV from the compression settings or it'll default to something that makes even DV look small.
One final thing: capture from a Hi8 tape were excellent, no torn lines, darn near DVD quality (I used an SVideo cable between camcorder and capture card, a Hauppauge PVR250, which did hardware compression to DVD compliant MPEG2). Maybe original camera tapes are better quality than dupes, so you may get good results without resorting to TBC or processing.
And, another guide to video capture:
http://www.divxland.org/avicapture.php