Two separate comments? Why not edit the first one? I don't know but here's another one and I'm gonna pin it! Firstly, apologies for the clipping audio. I set the audio level higher to record the sound of the VCR and forgot to set it back. And here's that link to the T-shirt. It was in the description the whole time. But now here's another one. Cool! www.redbubble.com/people/fuzzclone/works/36782468-cromaclear-slot-mask-crt-pattern?p=classic-tee&ref=explore-recently-viewed
I remember anolog being washed out. It was kinda the whole reason I never really watched our home videos, they just look really bad. I'm more the kind of person who when they buy a TV I boost the contrast and turn the color to vibrant or dynamic for extra color vibrancy. I remember only 10 years ago having a tube TV that supported digital channels and I thought they looks so much more colorful while at the same time being clearer. Unfortunately my cable company ended up ending their digital channels only a year after I learned about them, now requiring a decoding box so that means digital was no longer an option. Later they would even force analog channels to have a digital decoder. What a scam. It seems like tube TVs with digital support is incredibly rare but unfortunately the TV no longer works. I somehow ruined the light causing it to flicker. With that, I finally moved up to a flat screen in 2013. That was a really short lived TV.
I'm speculating, but could the hdmi capture look better because it also does Gamma Correction? Analog TV is meant to be shown on CRT and modern LCD is using HDMI. These technologies have different Gamma curves. There is probably also some brightness levels that should be tuned in addition...
What I find funny, and I know that this isn’t the point of this video, is that we can’t see things as well as we think we can. What we see is thanks to our brains filling in what we don’t see.
Think the best way to sum up your sentiment is that for 95 percent more effort, you can make it 5 percent better. And for most sane people, it's not worth it.
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z Youre the reason he had to make this video. Sure, there is going to be shit like the moon landing that needs to be completely redone because of advances in tech, or because of the value of the footage, we are talking about the best prosumer level solution opposed to the consumer solution of pointing a camera at your TV
@Pusalieth dude, you do see this is the only comment he has agreed with. Im thankful to be a patron to this guy, cuz i know at the end of the day it offsets the BS he has to deal with.
@@FierceDeityLink1 less effort after you have learned the entire process right? This is what he is getting at. Those from the outside looking in don't even know what that is called, and if you're someone looking for a simple solution, you do just that, go for the simple option.
As an engineer who started his film/video career at the beginning of the Beta/VHS age I can say that VHS should never look washed out, that is simply ludicrous and is the result of a terrible quality transfer. Your easy to use method to perform transfers is awesome, easy, reliable and delivers quality better than what most people at home are getting otherwise, thank you!
I have a feeling that this recollection people have of washed out VHS video comes entirely from poorly set up televisions. Television with default settings for the showroom with a setup to look good under bright florescent lighting would look washed out, and I had plenty of friends with that issue on their television. My own parents had this strong belief for quite some time that the colour rendering on the television was too strong and vibrant when I had set it. I suspect this came from being used to earlier colour televisions perhaps not being as vivid, or equally poorly set up. The old BBC test screen did help make my point about colour rendering though. So, short story long, I suspect it is likely these people are conflating the washed out colour of their poorly set up television with the output from VHS.
Professionally produced videos should look ok on VHS (shot on studio grade cameras, with proper lighting, etc). Home movies always looked washed out as camcorders at the time had cheap image sensors and rarely the best shooting conditions for those sensors.
@@NJRoadfan None of my home videos ever looked washed out. Between 2 Sony 8mm , 1 Sony Hi-8, and 1 JVC VHS-C cameras I never had any issues with videos that had washed out colours. Obviously they were not studio quality videos, but colour rendition was absolutely fine (except when lighting conditions were suboptimal).
@@TheRealColBosch Not guessing. I have both shot and transferred video on period 80s and 90s studio cameras and consumer camcorders of various quality (from tube to MOS and CCD). I remember being very disappointed with the Panasonic AG-456 SVHS camcorder in particular. Despite being from their professional/industrial line and having a higher quality CCD sensor to take advantage of the extra SVHS resolution, the colors were always on the dull side, even on daytime outdoor footage.
"You trying to convince me that I shouldn't be happy is one of the most frustrating things that the internet does." That's almost T-shirt- or coffee mug-level pithy.
it is absolutely on this level. I could use a coffee mug with these sentiments scrawled on it. I don't even drink coffee, but I would be more than happy to stare at my empty mug and think "Yes. This is very true" and start my day on the right foot, with profound knowledge straight from Technology Connections.
ARGHH! I was gonna go into this, but forgot. S-video was most commonly used in S-VHS VCRs, and while there are a few standard VHS machines with S-video, that's on the whole even rarer than SVHS, in my estimation. In fact, S-video is so synonymous to S-VHS, that people often confuse the two. Laserdiscs *do* store composite video, and this may be why dot crawl can be so bad. But all consumer videotape formats that I know of used a color-under encoding scheme to get around their own bandwith limitations and present a reasonable color image after translating it into real NTSC or PAL.
Technology Connections 2 its a shame that you guys in the USA don’t have the SCART connecter like I do in the UK which transmits an RGB signal rather than composite. Combined with PAL being slightly higher resolution, means that analog video looks surprisingly good. In fact a good quality tape on my 6 Panasonic VCR looks almost as good as early DVDs.
@@doctormac123 most PAL VHS players just output composite trough scart and even if they output RGB the only thing that have improved color with RGB scart is the the on screen menus/overlays produced by the VHS player itself. The only benefit with PAL VHS is no dot crawl.
I learned the hard way to capture laserdisc from composite and VHS from S-Video (yay, extra ADB cables) when my laserdisc capture looked awful! After watching the previous video I thought, "hrm, this setup isn't for me but I really didn't know about those awesome 10¢ chips, so maybe I should head over to Amazon and see what's new since 2012." I currently have a $49 Hauppague (linux support advertised) on my electronics list for when I get some time that has all four inputs and USB out. I am somewhat confident that I will finally be able to get the quality I need out of some of those old tapes that I've been keeping because "argh, this is quality?" I think future generations may appreciate the work. So, even though I'm not using your specific setup, and I may even use ffmpeg (bum, bum, buuuuum) I still benefited greatly from your video and I absolutely love your channel. Thanks for all that you do, and congrats on the lovely new studio!
Starlight Yeah I’d say it’s the lack of dot crawl that makes it look good, I was convinced is was an RGB signal because of the lack of the usual composite artefacts. Also the TV I’m using is a Pioneer Kuro KRP-500a plasma, 50 inch in size, very high end model from the late 2000s it might just be very good at playing analog video.
@@Stjaernljus, My experience is exactly the opposite. The SCART has separate pins for RGB and Composite and it outputs both at the same time. Whenever RGB or Composite is desired is commanded by another dedicated pin.
I own a TV comercial production company and I work with old materials and I found the same problems as you when digitizing old analog video. And as you say analog video has great image quality if you find a nice and CONVENIENT way of digitizing. I'm bored of all these know-it-all guys that has allways something to say. So..keep your good work and your great way of explaining complex technologies in an easy to understand manner.
exactly, there's a thing that's worse than digitizing the old footage at 95% quality: not digitizing it at all because it requires more effort than just pressing two buttons
Your saying how you’re tired of rabbit holes and wanted a solution that just works made me think of this: “Do I look like I know what an FFMPEG is? I just want a video of a gosh dang hot dog!” -Alec Hill
KISS... You did just that. It's a simple process, gets quality results, reasonable costs. Done deal. If someone knows a better way, then they can make a video about it.
Hmm. Weird. I thought you made it clear that the video was about an easy and fast "good enough" capture of analog video. So definitely not your whole audience.
Same, in fact I almost made a comment myself about other methods he could try but then I was like "I'm sure that's not what he wants" and decided not to. I think a problem with youtube is that many people comment before they even finish watching a video.
Hey - I'll tell you this... As someone with a bunch of VHS-C tapes of long lost loved ones that are sitting in a box because I also didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of which X is the best........ I thank you for the video. It's exactly what I was looking for. An easy to use process that I can follow and achieve great results. Thank you for your research and help.
Steven Barnes I transferred my VHS-C tapes by running the VCR thru my mini-DV camcorder in pass through mode to my PC, but the terrible de-interlacing I get on the PC has me wanting to re-do them all using a setup like this!
EXACTLY my issue. I want to get a somewhat good digital save of my old home videos of the kids growing up, and this seems like a good enough solution before the VHS degrades and will be lost before the perfect method comes along. However ... I might have missed that boat. I moved from the UK to the USA in 1994, and while I used to have a PAL-NTSC VHS player, it (not surprisingly) died. These home videos are PAL, but I live in the USA and even back in the 90s it was tricky to find a PAL-NTSC VHS player (that plays all the speeds), so I doubt it's going to be easy today. My solution is likely to be send the home videos to my children in the UK, they digitize them ... but that brings other anxiety from shipping losses to a feeling they might not do as good a job as I would, or they might put it on THEIR "I'll do it one way" backburner, and it never gets done. Sigh...
People with a high level of knowledge in this area just get excited when normal people express interest. In your other content, you have always welcomed additional information in the comments because you seem to genuinely enjoy learning about this pedantic, nerdy stuff. You wouldn’t be the first for whom the intricacies of video processing was their limit, though.
I sorta agree, it's odd that this is the line lol, but I also got highly interested in analog video capture when I was in middle school and even carried the weight of the 1st broadcasting class in my High School. I thoroughly enjoyed it, mostly, but there were aspects of it that could be a real slog to get through. Maybe someone should just create an analog video capture Linux distro with wine and everything you would want, including premade scripts. I think it actually would be possible for people to more or less condense down all the knowledge in videohelp and other places and create something that could just work in general. I also still contend that finding a used VCR with firewire built in would be the simplest method - and possibly not cost much more than all the gear he listed. It would certainly save him a lot of time from not having to join all those separate clips. You could also feed the composite or svideo into a DVD recorder, as many of them had firewire built in and that'd be even better and cheaper than finding a VCR that had firewire natively. Firewire was also the interface that was actually designed for uncompressed SD video in the 90's and despite all of technological progress I don't think any modern capture device you find will out do a firewire captured SD video. Of course you will need a firewire pci card, but those are extremely cheap now. It also allows you to capture without needing to merge video clips later. Also ilo DVD recorders with Firewire sell for $50-60 on ebay, they work great. I bought one brand new for only like $100 back in the day.
Ben Reaves I don’t think it’s weird at all. I’ve been studying video encoding and restoration for 10 years and I still feel like a noob sometimes. I totally agree that there aren’t many good learning resources either.
I thought your first video was spot on. While we didn't have the best TV or VCR in our house, what we watched on pre-recorded, off air and, cam-cordered looked much closer to the results you achieved in that video. One can only imagine that the folks who take issue with your process, may have never seen a CRT during the era when they were king. While certainly not as high resolution as 720p and the like, they had great color and fantastic response times. The comment section is usually full of trolls who get the vast majority of their information from the internet and not actual experience. They also cannot be pleased or appeased. I really dig your videos and usually learn something watching them. I'm seriously still geeking out over that automatic toaster.
That's hilarious. And there's the rub: video from that era was crushed all over the place to begin with. There's only so much effort you want to expend polishing the turd.
This is somewhat what they did with D-VHS. They sendt back a forum guru that commanded a engineer that made the best way to film video with technology at that time. Soon we will get a guru who can capture vhs at the best method.
I use FFmpeg and similar tools all the time in my work, in lots of different ways, and I thought the last video was great! It was a really neat solution, that produced excellent results and could be used by everyone. Some people just need to understand that new ideas & solutions like this don't have to replace old ones, they can be used along side them. Keep up the good work!
I mean the only thing I'd use ffmpeg for in this context is to trim the video or stich them together, lol. The scope of the video was obvious from the get go. And is honestly something I really appreciate. I never would have thought that using an analog to HDMI _and_ HDMI capture would work out better than a direct analog capture device. So I appreciate what you shared.
This tbh. You don't have to be a programmer to use ffmpeg. It's a handy tool that can save you some work, not to "take the fun away". It's like that XKCD comic of doing something manually vs automating it.
You could also use ffmpeg to correct the aspect ratio. If you were doing a production line digitization then setting up an automated process with ffmpeg could make sense. But for just grabbing a bit of analogue footage here and there, I agree that you just use whatever's most convenient.
One of the main advantages of using HDMI > HDMI capture is that you're not limited to the bitrate and format of consumer analog capture devices. A lot of them are limited to 8mbps MPEG-2 for DVD compliance reasons. I personally like capturing at 480i H.264 and let video cards do the deinterlacing on playback, but I can understand why the method in question makes it simple for a lot of people, especially if they're using players like VLC which don't deinterlace by default and suck at deinterlacing when you enable it.
@@hmich176 So what if there is a learning curve? Do you want to stay stupid and not learn anything anymore because things could be slightly complicated?
I feel your pain, I felt you made your point crystal clear in the first video. I love your up beat humor and delivery. Please don't let anyone take the wind out of your sails. You are Awesome!
Welcome to people arguing over why the law of diminishing marginal returns doesn't apply to them. Or the Pareto principle. While they are endlessly stressing about eking the last .5% of quality out of one video you'll have yours all done and most of humanity won't know or care about the difference, if any.
Keeping in mind, of course, that this technique will be applied for the most part to old home tapes in varying state of signal decay (or whatever you call it). Signal, mind you, which originally carried significantly poorer image than early DVDs. It's not even RGB, it's the raw composite signal that goes straight into the TV. That signal is converted to a digital image in pretty much real time by an algorithm you don't understand or have influence over, so by the time a video compression algorithm comes into play - most of the damage has been done. Any *real* videophile dedicated to doing the job properly will sample the raw composite signal at 7MHz (64-bit depth ought to suffice), then write their own signal interpreter to produce the image, then store the whole thing raw in its interlaced format :P
@@whophd I just learned some things. I don't really mess around with video editing but I have a tendency of perusing advanced controls of pretty much any application I use including apps like VLC. I generally won't touch anything if I don't know what it does but I remember seeing some of those terms and now I have some idea of what they mean to the quality of the video.
Great explanation! Go with what works for you! Those that are looking for simplicity with great quality understand where you are coming from. Let everyone else follow their own rabbit hole and do what works for them..
Alec, I agree with your assessment about the "black crush": 90+% of the time, it improves the overall image quality-or at least the perception of it-by decluttering the image, minimizing low value content in shadows, and expanding the luminous details. What is lost in dark content is more than made up for by expanding the dynamic range of the luminous content (less "washed out"). I'll take an easy, fast, and not expensive solution which improves the vast majority of content.
It depends on the footage. Crushed blacks in animation is always horrendous. Stuff that was drawn and always meant to be clearly visible ends up gone in most modern releases. "Rrmastered in HD", but really it's just a highly processed, blurry, dark, uneven upscale of 480p footage scanned from a copy of a copy of the original film prints. Dragon Ball Z and Moomin are like that. It's awful. Especially since the original film prints exist. Just sitting there...waiting to rot away...
Black crush could have something to do with the PC vs TV output range. Hardware boxes you use could just be hard coded to use TV range 15 to 250 or something like this.
I was going to say this. If your capture assumes 16-235 levels but the source is full range then anything below 16 becomes full black, likewise for white. But alternatively, it could just be the maker of the composite to HDMI converter wanted the image to pop and weren't worried about losing detail
The limited range probably comes about analogously to CVBS signal anyway, there's a wider range of baseband luminance values which are all 'black' and do not result in any emission from the CRT whatsoever. I don't think it's necessarily a straight up limited vs. full range luminance issue in this instance, because the whites are full scale even in lower-contrast examples. But it could still be a remnant of the analogue pedestal. Something else to note, digital 8-bit RGB displays and outputs of video codecs use sRGB encoding which is a crude imitation of a part of CRT luminance emission transfer function. It is a sectionwise approximation, with a tiny linear section in the blacks and a big exponential section covering the rest, while the true CRT luminance function is a continuous S-curve. This is a video capture and processing inconvenience, unless you're working fully in extended dynamic range, linearised formats. If you just capture luminance voltages from your baseband and scale them to a valid range and then pretend they're sRGB values, the result is close to perfect for the vast majority of the signal except deep blacks where there's a few values of weirdness.
I purchased the devices and used them as you recommended. Other than the low audio level (easily fixed in my editor after the fact and now fixed with small audio mixer boosting the levels in the line), the results blew away the analog capture device I had been using for years. The images looked awesome. I am happy. Thank you very much. Just remember, "You can't please everyone". But, you made my day.
Thank you so much for this :-) I was getting to start archiving all my family's videos and quickly started to see all the different rabbit holes all got frustrated I would never get this done. I did want the best method, and now this helped me realize I just want the best PRACTICAL method that is both simple, easy, and good quality. I'm glad this and the other video popped up in my feed!
But have you tried capturing the footage with a turbo encabulator? It uses a base plate of pre-famulated amulite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing. I hear that helps keep the pixels from leaking out during the conversion.
@hqqns I've found ffmpeg used in tandem with a turbo encabulator works pretty seamlessly, but the pre-famulated amulite base plate will only polarize bit stream converter. Now, I've heard that if you re-bias the heads using a magneto-flux inhibitor, you might prevent the pixel leak a little more effectively.
Bottom line: please do NOT feel you need to reply to every pedantic comment and explain yourself. You will go insane. And I like your content. You’re just the right amount of insane. Don’t worry about the nerd/peanut gallery.
MAN! I am at the @8:10 mark and nearly have tears in my eyes BECAUSE YOU TOTALLY GET IT!!!! In the past week, I have endured so many hours on reddit, EVEN MORE DAYS ON ANCIENT FORUM THREADS, and watching numerous guides, where ALL the creators sum up their research and advice with "You really should own a VHS player with S-Video or Firewire ports, if your childhood memories matter to you" The same guides will spend 30 additional seconds suggesting to just get an EasyCap, if I cant be bothered to hunt down a $500 professional VHS player or circa year 2000 capture device. It's such a frustrating rabbit hole of "GET THE BEST, or just settle with garbage"
As a developer-type person, I agree with you about FFmpeg. It's a wonderfully-powerful tool, and one that I do use from time-to-time, but untangling the options is a nightmare every time. I'm sure there's a logic to it for someone (sound and video engineers, perhaps?) but the seemingly inconsistent order of commands (some are positional while some are not) and all of the esoteric terminology is confounding. I don't blame you for avoiding it. The existing GUIs that I've tried (and it has been a while, so this may have changed -- but I doubt it) either simplify things to the point of removing a lot of the power benefits of the tool, or just shift the confusion to a new form. To be fair, it's a hugely complex tool and making a coherent interface for that must be daunting, but that doesn't change the fact that it's extremely difficult to use effectively without help. The solution you give in your video was a perfect example of "this gets me within personal tolerance levels of my goal with a minimum of effort, and anything else doesn't provide enough benefit to offset the additional cost". I thought it was a very good explanation.
I agree. ffmpeg is very powerful and can get excellent results if you know what you're doing, but the user-friendliness and usability just aren't there. I've also found it a headache because it can be so dumb that it will mishandle things unless you pass it a slurry of options. As an example, I remember having to re-encode a bunch of stuff because I discovered that transcoding from one resolution to another can confuse video players into displaying colors wrong because they expect a colorspace conversion… and ffmpeg does *not* handle that automatically. And how on Earth would the average user know they need to do that? I sometimes think ffmpeg was really aimed at the sort of person to spend a number of years working on a college degree in video encoding theory. It's pretty hard to recommend it to the average, nontechnical guy. But for simple cases (or at least those in which you finally figure out the proper option magic) it can be very handy, especially when you need to process a whole batch of videos in exactly the same way automatically, which is a lot of what I personally use it for.
Well once you've used it a few times, it's easy to use. But in the end ffmpeg is a tool and just that and not an end user application. It provides an API for that exact use, so other applications can actually use all the technology in ffmpeg and provide it to users in various ways, like in Chrome or OBS.
I personally think that doing everything via video editor is a simpler solution, but it's really ass backwards considering you need to do specific manual edits to all of the clips. From my POV, if you're an average user who's unfamiliar with NLE software, you're gonna spend lots of time "fixing" your clips regardless, at which point, why not make a very simple script (literally 1-4 lines) that would do all the necessary edits with ffmpeg? Using Premier just for cropping video and adding gain to audio is like bringing a tank to a knife fight.
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 and keeping the quality: 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. Paste the command on the powershell window and Enter to run it. Then just go changing the correlative number. Enjoy!
I wanted to say I think you’re a freaking legend. I’m a massive nerd in video compression and used to do everything through avsynth and virtual dub and a myriad of other options and techniques evolved over the years and spent thousands of hours trying to get the absolute best but it just ended up wearing me down. I ended up losing the interest and wasn’t converting old video or post processing anymore so I’ve been out of the loop for a while. Having recently gotten back into it I’ve been getting frustrated and looking at some old vhs-c tapes I was dismayed at the thought of having to relearn it all. It’s just such a lot of effort for no guarantee of any gain. Your technique is bloody marvy and solves my dilemmas. I unlike a few realised that your technique is sound regardless of the cable you’re using but because I have a high end editing recorder with svhs it just occurred to me to see on my hunt for the upscaler if one supported s-video and Lo and behold found one without issue. Why anyone would criticise you for not doing that on your video is just sad and it’s a shame you got hounded so hard for that as well as the other issues. People just need to have something to moan about. Nameless idiots hiding behind aliases on here and slinging shit at people doing us a great service is a shame. I found some component video to hdmi upscalers as well and wondered if that would be worth trying to find a player for but ultimately if there is one given the cost and the low quality analog signal anyway there was a clear line I wouldn’t cross. I looked up the benefits of this extra level of quality and it appeared it’s only HD content that it’s good for anyway (perhaps some studio quality gear) so there’s little point expensing effort. Every technique has compromise and you have to be willing to know when to stop. Thanks for doing the follow up as the extra details from your examples has been really helpful. I still am working on finding a good hdmi capture box here in Australia, one with good options as I’d like 30mbps or more and good quality level control so as to give me the highest possible quality for editing. Again I really appreciate your efforts and think this channel is one of the best things I’ve found on RUclips.
I'm late to the party here but I love watching/listening to you. You're to the point while being thorough yet easily digestible. Keep up the GREAT work!
I found your video to be extremely helpful for my purpose. Your description seemed pretty clear to me. I very much appreciate your work, thanks for all the great content.
I can't figure out how to do a reply of my own (I never usually comment on a YT video) so I'll leave what I have to say here and hope it is seen. The video capture method he is using is mostly fine and on the right track. His problems with what he calls "black crush" is actually caused by an RGB + RGB partial mismatch. see this YT video for a good explanation ruclips.net/video/7kjZZNT5js4/видео.html You can also see the difference with a nvidia card on HDMI connections on the "change resolution" page of the driver settings change the "output dynamic range" drop down between "full" and "partial" to see the difference. What you need to avoid this is to set the HDMI capture device to capture as RGB Partial (could be called "console" or "tv" mode on gaming capture types) and not to RBG full. If the HDMI capture device isn't capable of doing this, get one that can.
Thank you for this video. Especially the beginning. Although this particular matter means little to me, I cannot count the number times I've tried to find a way to do something and all I can find are the most technical solutions out there. I generally don't need absolutely perfect; I generally just need good and easily. Thank you for saying what I've felt so many times!
BTW, related to differing standards of transferring video data from your old timey video hardware (like VHS or console) to your TV, have you ever considered doing a video on SCART? SCART was basically 'the' TV plug before HDMI in Europe, capable of handling composite, s-video, YPbPr component and analog RGB.
@UCZpAwg9LtA2a1OwS9hrtGYQ You misunderstand the question. I'm not asking him why he's not using SCART. I'm asking him to do a video about SCART, the question was merely prompted by the mention of S-Video.
SCART is just a type of multipin connector. The signal standards sent down those pins are irrelevant, the connector is just a way of getting electrical signals from device A to device B. Of course you could use NTSC via a SCART cable, if only any NTSC hardware actually had SCART connectors on it.
The first 2 minutes of this video - that's exactly the message I got from your previous video. You found a solution that worked for you. Not necessarily the best solution but one that was simple and easy and whose output quality was reasonable. It came through loud and clear. Ignore the haters - you're doing just fine. I love your videos and your method of delivery is spot on. 👍
I love what you do, I love your explanations. I know about law of diminishing returns. I am an engineer but appreciate the old phrase “Better is the enemy of good enough”!
I really appreciated seeing a solution that “just works”. I’ve always been a bit nervous to try converting analog video, because the topic is so overwhelming. Thanks!
Both of these videos were great. Conveniently, my dad had just asked me about converting some old VHS so I went ahead and bought the boxes you used. Excited for when they come! I might end up re-capturing my Star Wars VHS to really see the difference between the way I used to do it.
Love your videos! I bought a JVC SVHS VCR here in the UK for about £50 with the intention of capturing old tapes .. Glad I waited to see this as I would have a nightmare ahead otherwise!
Hey Alec, by looking at the footage that the capture card crushed the black levels I think it's probably related to the RGB Full/Limited Range, try capturing a regular black level test pattern and see if it still crushes the blacks or if it's only doing it with the VHS player.
you are likely correct, I have no idea but i dont care ... keep it simple - that is the fundamental issue under discussion. Great pair of videos Alec thank you
@@rogerbeck3018 yes, his workflow is quite amazing for the quality he gets out of it, but understanding what happens in the hardware *is* what this channel is about, so you know... more content :D
Hello, just to say I'm late to the party and have only just recently been binge watching all your videos. There's some great material, thank you! I've watched both your videos on VHS conversion with interest. For the past 10 years I've owned a Panasonic VHS and DVD combo unit which I originally used to burn copies of my old VHS tapes to DVD so I could watch them on my DVD player. Obviously technology has moved on and I decided to convert to MP4 instead. The Panasonic unit has a built in upscaler as well as an HDMI output. I basically connect this to an HDMI to USB3 capture card and use ORS software to capture on my computer. I configure all the necessary settings within ORS (e.g. Aspect ratio, resolution etc). The process works a treat. I occasionally use Premiere to edit the output and then upload to my Vimeo account so I can keep the files for posterity as well as have the benefit of being able to share the videos with family members. Please keep up the great work! Best wishes from London, Jonathan
@@ThePrinzKassad SCART was such a pain. The plug is so huge that it can be disassembled in order to fit through tight spaces. Many people also used cheap SCART cables that only transmitted Composite video. This is evident if you look at the plug: If most pins are missing, it's a cheap one. I tried to explain this to someone when I was a kid and they blanked out immediately and decided to ignore me because of my age...
@@no1DdC I know, that's why I had a Multimeter to check the continuity of everything because at some point you realize that the plug may have every available pin but there aren't connected
your method is just easy and makes good looking video? for the average person who wants to copy their home tapes from vhs to digital video, it honestly works perfectly fine. Once you have it set up, it records at the push of a button and yea okay for longer things you gotta stitch Em together but that's honestly the hardest part?? and it's not that hard once you know how??? the pursuit of perfection is never ending and so long as you keep digging, the rabbit hole will keep going. You found a method that not only works, but works for you and your needs and thought to share it with everyone so people can enjoy digital copies of their tapes without them being washed out.
I loved how simple and easy your idea for the quality is. I went out and ordered what you suggested and now waiting for them to arrive. Like you I tried to wade through all sorts of methods and software and gave up due to the hassles and time it takes. Thanks for figuring this out.
Having tried numerous and various capture methods, as well aa having numerous crt tvs and monitors, I can't argue with your results here. Simple and effective
“I just want something that Works, Looks Good and is correct.” Maybe add “is Simple” to that list too. This is by far the simplest method when you consider the workflow of converting all mum & dads old home videos. Thanks this is awesome!
I would love to go to a weekly lecture taught by this guy. It could honestly be about anything because his knowledge and more importantly passion for the inner workings of things that we don't give a second glance in our day to day lives is something I have been coming back to more and more lately and it is just very pleasing if not addictive in some way. Love your channel man, thanks for all your effort and dedication to teaching some random man from NH more than he ever thought he'd learn about many many things
Love your method, simple, reliable and good enough, I was around when vhs recording at home first appeared and it was amazing! If you scroll step-by-step through a video you will see things that you won’t see at normal playback speeds, especially on a fuzzy old crt tv.
By the way, I'd love to see a video on color under...seems very interesting... And here's another unwanted software suggestion : HandBrake is pretty convenient for rescaling, etc. It's like a frontend for FFmpeg, and it's GUI and very easy to use. Might be a little faster for bulk stuff as it supports presets. (I use terminal all the time and FFmpeg is still a pain in the ass, so don't worry about not wanting to use it.) Notably, HandBrake also has a Decomb option, which can help remove those deinterlace artifacts. Of course, depending on how fast you're already using your current think you probably won't need this. I just thought I might be interested in the decomb option.
As a devout follower of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy, and also having a large collection of crappy video digitizing hardware, I thought your solution was both elegant and clever, and seemed to solve the same problem I've had over the years, and I plan on duplicating your setup before transferring all my analog video to digital. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
21:00 About Premier missing frames. It is because of the PREVIEW. Look at your preview's resolution (bottom down of screen). It says 1/2, which technically means you are missing half the lines, or in this case, half the fields. This is intended for quicker render during preview, improving the workflow. The entire image would be rendered in the final result. You can also notice that Premiere tends to output lower quality images during preview playback, but will render a better image after the image has remained still for a little while. Consider this a "preview artifact". :-)
Thanks for showing a simple method to capture. I agree with you that it was easier with your method. I guess there are enthusiasts out there that want to get into the nuts and bolts. It reminds me of how I started to get right down into the specifics of fine tuning an overclock on my PC years ago...yet most people would be happy just to go with the basic tweaks to achieve the overclock.
Thanks for addressing the S-Video question. I have a SVHS machine, super high end thing for its time and very rare. But all the tapes I've digitised from it (through my USB TV tuner with S-Video input) have been traditional VHS format.
Huge thank you for this in the other video. I have had the same trouble digging through forms of details of you can do this but then they leave I have to instructions super loved all the videos you're wonderful
I have been using a method like this for years now. I use a Panasonic VCR/DVD burner with HDMI out and use an Avermedia Live Gamer Portable to capture the 480p60. The audio is always just-right and the video and deinterlacing quality is practically second to none. I don't want to plug my channel, but there are examples there. I tend to avoid the up-scalers, but I am going to try it since I need a better solution than the Hauppauge USB capture devices that never seem to work and wash out the video -- this is the method I use for more difficult tapes and a Panasonic 1980s editing deck. I think it'll work great, my only concern is having to re-encode the videos with ffmpeg to return the video to a proper 4:3 resolution and set the aspect ratio. Your video was extremely well done and demonstrates methods that are, in a word, EXCELLENT, for digitizing analog video and keeping it in its proper format. Software de-interlacing sucks and QTGMC is a huge pain since the software and config you have to do for it is clunky and very slow. ffmpeg is great with yadif and scaling, though... @Technology Connections 2, if you want a demonstration on an easy way to use ffmpeg, please DM me and we can do a Hangouts session
There might be better ways out there, but your method is what works for my dad. It's a simple solution requiring little computer skills and one touch button recording. He loves it! He's been backing up all of his old VHS home videos onto usb sticks for me to stitch together, thanks big time for your method.
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.
Your original video was very clear about the purpose. This video brings up two fascinating issues: 1) Restoration is interpretation...would you WANT a painting subdued for generations restored to original colors? It's an artistic choice that, yes, can step on the original artist's toes. 2) Utility has two legs: First, will people create (here, convert video). Second, will people consume (here, watch the converted video). Here, clearly it's better for hundreds of families to easily have their video archive that is flawed (first leg) than for one family with a video enthusiast to see the needles in the trees in the background--provided that the archive is at least good enough that it is enjoyable to watch so that (second leg) it does get watched by those families. Your method is a great balance. Note also that major release films are color/tone adjusted for each edit if not frame by frame, even when starting with professionals running professional equipment with professional lighting, etc.
There's a big difference between the quality needed for a professional video asset vs. one used for a RUclips channel. You are correct that the marginality of the quality isn't worth going down the rabbit hole of pedants. Don't let commenters get on your nerves. We truly enjoy your content and personality. Keep it up!
I believe I agree with mostly everything in this video here: When I saw the initial video, to me it was obvious that this was for a simple solution that didn't involve expensive equipment, heavy fine tuning of settings per video, analysis of interlacing, or post processing to get it right. Just something that a person who understands how to use a flash drive and drag and drop videos into a video editor to combine them can understand and do. Pretty sure you even briefly explained that was your goal. As for ffmpeg, my only nitpick of a qualm there is that you referred to yourself as a non-programmer. ffmpeg doesn't require to understand programming, but that's why this is a nitpick of a qualm: it's just semantics. You're not comfortable enough with a complex command line tool is what you're getting at, and that's perfectly fine. Hell even as a programmer I get confused with ffmpeg, especially when they keep changing how it works! Anybody that insists that ffmpeg is THE way to do it, well, ask your average grandma to do it. See how well they do and get back to me. As soon as you said people suggested S-Video, I did a double take and said "wait, people think there's a lot of devices with S-Video on it?!", and then you mentioned VCRs rarely having it. So I'm in 100% agreement here. I mean, if you HAVE S-Video capable equipment, I say definitely use that over composite! But really? "Why aren't you using S-Video"??? What reality are you in that this exists so easily? Finally I half agree on the black crushing. There's probably a lot of times the black crush will be negligible. But to me if it's more noticible, I think it can be an important missing piece, perhaps as important as the colors being washed out. Short of it all: I agree! This is just supposed to be simple for everyone and not overthought. But not perfect. Just enough to archive your VHS tapes for digital video. Not a studio trying to make analogue available in digital format.
Trolls will be trolls; and usually because they feel that people don't listen to them as they should because they are in some way superior. I use the same method with composite games consoles and they look fantastic. In fact all of my attempts to use S-Video have resulted in some sort of issue. At one point I have even had to ground out the inverted composite connector to sink the excessive luma which THEN creates a fantastic S-video image. But like you say, that IS NOT a simple "out of the box" solution. Someone will always criticise, and on youtube that counts as positive viewer interaction so, either way you're still winning. Keep up the good work my friend.
Hey, don't let the twerps in the comments get to you! Quick and dirty solutions have their place. Keep up the good work, I'm proud to be a Patreon supporter.
While I agree with your general ideas about ffmpeg, and I used to not use it for this very reason, I eventually switched over and have no regrets. Yes, it took a little bit of time at the start to figure out what I needed to do, but then I saved a list of the ~6 commands I use and I don’t need to understand anything else. It’s a higher startup cost, but saves so much time and effort in the long run for my basic and bulk encoding needs.
Whoever convinced you that using FFMPEG is coding did you a massive disservice in either making the technology sound more scary than it is or misleading you about what FFMPEG is. Which is not to say that FFMPEG is the right tool for the job for you - your setup looks just fine to me.
Its basically coding. In that you need to be constantly looking up how to use it, the commands need to be typed correctly, and if you do it wrong you will get error messages or incorrect results for something that could just be a missing space ffmpeg is also often used in shell scripts, which is literally coding
@@huttyblue No, it really isn't. There is no logic you can put in the commands. Its just "Tell me what you have, and tell me what you want". Its not coding, its not programming, its just using software.
@@Tritium21 It is coding because you are writing code for the computer to interpret. Yes you are also using software with the code, the things are not mutually exclusive. And its more involved than tell me what you have and tell me what you want. As how you tell ffmpeg what you have and what you want has very specific syntax that impossible to guess for anyone who isn't an experienced user. Have an external reference available as well as trial and error steps for the inevitable mistakes is required to make any use of the software.
@@huttyblue No, you are not writing code. At all. Ever. Giving arguments to the executable on the command processor (cmd.exe or bash) is not giving the computer instructions to execute. You are giving the executable data. that's it. If you were to use ffmpeg in a shell script workflow or write a wrapper around the executable, it would be programming, but thats not what we are talking about. It really is just tell it what you have and tell it what you want - its a declarative model. It is NOT programming. Do not continue to insult programmers by saying using FFMPEG is programming, since it absolutely is not.
@@Tritium21 Giving a program execution arguments is no different than setting the inputs to a function when you are programming. Its text the computer interprets to do stuff, which is code and a type of programming. You really are going full gatekeeping with that last statement though.
Oh boy, respect you made and posted this video. Thumbs up. My preferred way of tape capturing is now the method you described in the previous video. Thank you for that! And yes for 98% of my tapes 98% quality is good enough. If I have that specific recording that is sooooo important I want to be sure to have the maximum quality. I send that tape over to a professional capturing it with expensive equipment. This saves me time and money buying recorders encoders and diving into detailed settings.
I, for one, love your videos and I understand what you're getting at, and know that you're not claiming to be the ultimate authority on the subjects you cover. You make videos that are informative, and are to be enjoyed, not to be scrutinized and picked apart word by word. You create AMAZING content that is informative, interesting, entertaining and engaging. You do the research and the legwork and present your findings. I say, ignore the insufferable pedants and continue on with your bad self. We love Technology Connections because you cover interesting subjects in your own unique informative way. Kudos to you TC!
The only thing I really need for my VHS captures is the TBC. Everything else to me is like trying to overclock a videocard to get 103FPS instead of 101FPS in games.
@@kanalnamn I came here just for a comment like this. Is it 99% common or 99% uncommon? Really hoping the first one. Nobody seems to talk about it anymore!!
@@whophd I can't really tell. Many devices talk about nonsense like "locked audio" and other made up stuff that's not real. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that most of the better DVDR recorders had line TBCs. When it comes to more recent game recording devices I think it's not as common. The game console signals really don't need TBCs. Then... the things that converts to HDMI... who knows? I've never dealt with them, and the spec sheets can be hard to find.
I really appreciate your simple and straightforward approach to capturing through cards. Haters are gonna hate, hahaha. Thanks for sharing your method with us ✌️😎
Speaking of rabbit holes, the last video got me looking at what is state of the art in video processing. Like I suspected, there are a few papers using deep learning to perform somewhat better deinterlacing, but what really got my attention was video super resolution technologies. Would be pretty interesting to see how it works on VHS footage. There is demo code for both papers on github, but I'm not sure I'm motivated enough to dig up unprocessed VHS footage and hack up some scripts to feed it through these algorithms... If someone had enough motivation, I guess there is possibility for a fun paper in taking a bunch of HD footage, feeding it through a VHS and then training a neural network to reverse out any VHS artifacts.
I've thought of the idea of making a specialized VHS -> HD neural network. Considering the amount of movies available in VHS and DVD/Blu-Ray, a dataset isn't the issue. The approach I've thought of is first reversing the telecine process applied to the VHS version of the movie to obtain a 24fps image sequence, then matching that to the same frames in the HD version. For TV shows available in VHS and DVD, you could deinterlace both sources into a 50fps/60fps image sequence and match them. I think it's doable by someone with experience on AI image processing, but I'm currently unable to take on such a project.
You can buy an AI solution now . I use it, and its amazing for grainy, blurry VHS to denoise , deinterlace and upscale it. Look up Topaz Video Enhance AI .
You are 101% correct sir. Your follow up is very well done. Thank you. First. Analog VTRs are my passion and I have studied them maniacally since the late 1960s. I have personally worked with members of the original Ampex VTR team and other major players in this field. I have designed a dozen or more analog products for the broadcast industry in my career. I was an engineer at Prime Image in its heyday. Analog video and VTRs are about the onlyest thing in which I can claim great expertise. If the video was ever composite ANYWHERE in the chain, it becomes irrelevant whether you use S-video or component after that. Once the luma and 3.58MHz chroma signals have been mixed together, its game over. Taking them apart again is the black magic of the business. VHS is notorious for separating the original composite input Y/C signals very poorly and then, as mentioned in this video, the recording process was grim at its best. (BTW, monochrome VHS is very good quality) But the composite video damage was done in the first input stage. In the rare case of CAMCORDERS, many of them DID NOT encode the camera output to NTSC, but recorded the Y/C directly to the tape. The chroma was directly modulated to the 767KHz color under frequency, avoiding the first frequency conversion step, to boot! You can only do this when the camera and tape recorder are intimately mated together. This video from those recordings looks awesome!
It's funny, the only thing I took away from the original video is "I'm sure there must be a device that doesn't break up the video captures." Overall, I thought your solution was genius. I always felt that vhs captures on youtube always looked a bit bleh, especially considering I DID grown up in the vhs era. I wore out my vhs copy of "Chitty chitty bang bang" when I was really young, and I sure don't remember the colors looking so washed out. Hell, I didn't get DVDs until I was a teen, and I was working for Dell's technical support when BlueRay Disc came out.
No, the bandwith is not sufficient. To get an idea, most audio soft captures 44100 samples per second... and even the color in the most washed out VHS tape has its Shannon limit at 3579540 "samples" per second
If you want to record raw video out of the tape you want to read a bit about Domesday86 VHS-Decode that I am using too (warning, it's for perfectionists and you have to use linux).
Are there people who think "washed-out" was how old analog tapes were supposed to look? It's possible considering there are apps on the market that claims to emulate old Camcorder recordings by littering the output with lines of noise and other analog artifacts (along with a washed-out look). I think a lot of people today don't seem to understand that analog footage wasn't "bad" quality. Back then, if we rented a tape that looked the way some people these days *think* it should look, we'd go back and complain. (Or clean our heads.) I love your capture method. I've used capture cards, USB devices, even the camcorder and Firewire pass-through method. But I found a device that pretty much combines your two devices: it has analog input and records straight to a external drive or SD card (even has a built-in screen so no display required.) It has made capturing analog footage (in addition to modern HD footage) so much easier. I'll never go back.
Basically, with his method, you lose some detail on the things that don't matter, things in the background or in dark shadows. But in return all the things that do matter, the things you actually filmed to be able to watch later looks a lot better. Seem like a fair tradeoff too me.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Two separate comments? Why not edit the first one? I don't know but here's another one and I'm gonna pin it!
Firstly, apologies for the clipping audio. I set the audio level higher to record the sound of the VCR and forgot to set it back.
And here's that link to the T-shirt. It was in the description the whole time. But now here's another one. Cool!
www.redbubble.com/people/fuzzclone/works/36782468-cromaclear-slot-mask-crt-pattern?p=classic-tee&ref=explore-recently-viewed
It's fine. It's hardly like any of us would think you didn't know. You were probably day dreaming of toasters ;)
I remember anolog being washed out. It was kinda the whole reason I never really watched our home videos, they just look really bad. I'm more the kind of person who when they buy a TV I boost the contrast and turn the color to vibrant or dynamic for extra color vibrancy. I remember only 10 years ago having a tube TV that supported digital channels and I thought they looks so much more colorful while at the same time being clearer. Unfortunately my cable company ended up ending their digital channels only a year after I learned about them, now requiring a decoding box so that means digital was no longer an option. Later they would even force analog channels to have a digital decoder. What a scam.
It seems like tube TVs with digital support is incredibly rare but unfortunately the TV no longer works. I somehow ruined the light causing it to flicker. With that, I finally moved up to a flat screen in 2013. That was a really short lived TV.
I'm speculating, but could the hdmi capture look better because it also does Gamma Correction? Analog TV is meant to be shown on CRT and modern LCD is using HDMI. These technologies have different Gamma curves. There is probably also some brightness levels that should be tuned in addition...
What I find funny, and I know that this isn’t the point of this video, is that we can’t see things as well as we think we can. What we see is thanks to our brains filling in what we don’t see.
Black crush could have something to do with the PC vs TV output range. Hardware boxes you use could just be hard coded to use TV range 16 - 240.
Think the best way to sum up your sentiment is that for 95 percent more effort, you can make it 5 percent better. And for most sane people, it's not worth it.
It depends on the video.
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z Youre the reason he had to make this video. Sure, there is going to be shit like the moon landing that needs to be completely redone because of advances in tech, or because of the value of the footage, we are talking about the best prosumer level solution opposed to the consumer solution of pointing a camera at your TV
@Pusalieth dude, you do see this is the only comment he has agreed with. Im thankful to be a patron to this guy, cuz i know at the end of the day it offsets the BS he has to deal with.
Although if you use ffmpeg, it would be less effort for the same (or better) results. You could just make a batch script. Oh well.
@@FierceDeityLink1 less effort after you have learned the entire process right? This is what he is getting at. Those from the outside looking in don't even know what that is called, and if you're someone looking for a simple solution, you do just that, go for the simple option.
As an engineer who started his film/video career at the beginning of the Beta/VHS age I can say that VHS should never look washed out, that is simply ludicrous and is the result of a terrible quality transfer.
Your easy to use method to perform transfers is awesome, easy, reliable and delivers quality better than what most people at home are getting otherwise, thank you!
I have a feeling that this recollection people have of washed out VHS video comes entirely from poorly set up televisions.
Television with default settings for the showroom with a setup to look good under bright florescent lighting would look washed out, and I had plenty of friends with that issue on their television. My own parents had this strong belief for quite some time that the colour rendering on the television was too strong and vibrant when I had set it. I suspect this came from being used to earlier colour televisions perhaps not being as vivid, or equally poorly set up. The old BBC test screen did help make my point about colour rendering though.
So, short story long, I suspect it is likely these people are conflating the washed out colour of their poorly set up television with the output from VHS.
Professionally produced videos should look ok on VHS (shot on studio grade cameras, with proper lighting, etc). Home movies always looked washed out as camcorders at the time had cheap image sensors and rarely the best shooting conditions for those sensors.
@@NJRoadfan None of my home videos ever looked washed out. Between 2 Sony 8mm , 1 Sony Hi-8, and 1 JVC VHS-C cameras I never had any issues with videos that had washed out colours. Obviously they were not studio quality videos, but colour rendition was absolutely fine (except when lighting conditions were suboptimal).
@@NJRoadfan You know, if you're guessing, please say so. Because you're wrong.
@@TheRealColBosch Not guessing. I have both shot and transferred video on period 80s and 90s studio cameras and consumer camcorders of various quality (from tube to MOS and CCD). I remember being very disappointed with the Panasonic AG-456 SVHS camcorder in particular. Despite being from their professional/industrial line and having a higher quality CCD sensor to take advantage of the extra SVHS resolution, the colors were always on the dull side, even on daytime outdoor footage.
"You trying to convince me that I shouldn't be happy is one of the most frustrating things that the internet does."
That's almost T-shirt- or coffee mug-level pithy.
it is absolutely on this level. I could use a coffee mug with these sentiments scrawled on it. I don't even drink coffee, but I would be more than happy to stare at my empty mug and think "Yes. This is very true" and start my day on the right foot, with profound knowledge straight from Technology Connections.
YES! This is tee-shirt level sell out quick sort of stuff!! I would buy it!
Where can I buy one of those?
The problem with perfectionism: there's always a stronger microscope to find imperfections.
"The problem with perfection is There's always a bigger fish"
perfection by definition cant be achieved. Its only something you strive towards. The chaos wont permit the last stretch anyway.
What ever you find easiest to achieve the quality you want is the best approach for you. QED.
Actually, "@@Andytlp," perfection actually _can_ be achieved, but just not here in our temporary mortal lives.
"Achiving perfection is as possible as how perfect you are, imperfect"
ARGHH! I was gonna go into this, but forgot. S-video was most commonly used in S-VHS VCRs, and while there are a few standard VHS machines with S-video, that's on the whole even rarer than SVHS, in my estimation. In fact, S-video is so synonymous to S-VHS, that people often confuse the two.
Laserdiscs *do* store composite video, and this may be why dot crawl can be so bad. But all consumer videotape formats that I know of used a color-under encoding scheme to get around their own bandwith limitations and present a reasonable color image after translating it into real NTSC or PAL.
Technology Connections 2 its a shame that you guys in the USA don’t have the SCART connecter like I do in the UK which transmits an RGB signal rather than composite. Combined with PAL being slightly higher resolution, means that analog video looks surprisingly good. In fact a good quality tape on my 6 Panasonic VCR looks almost as good as early DVDs.
@@doctormac123 most PAL VHS players just output composite trough scart and even if they output RGB the only thing that have improved color with RGB scart is the the on screen menus/overlays produced by the VHS player itself. The only benefit with PAL VHS is no dot crawl.
I learned the hard way to capture laserdisc from composite and VHS from S-Video (yay, extra ADB cables) when my laserdisc capture looked awful!
After watching the previous video I thought, "hrm, this setup isn't for me but I really didn't know about those awesome 10¢ chips, so maybe I should head over to Amazon and see what's new since 2012." I currently have a $49 Hauppague (linux support advertised) on my electronics list for when I get some time that has all four inputs and USB out. I am somewhat confident that I will finally be able to get the quality I need out of some of those old tapes that I've been keeping because "argh, this is quality?" I think future generations may appreciate the work.
So, even though I'm not using your specific setup, and I may even use ffmpeg (bum, bum, buuuuum) I still benefited greatly from your video and I absolutely love your channel.
Thanks for all that you do, and congrats on the lovely new studio!
Starlight Yeah I’d say it’s the lack of dot crawl that makes it look good, I was convinced is was an RGB signal because of the lack of the usual composite artefacts. Also the TV I’m using is a Pioneer Kuro KRP-500a plasma, 50 inch in size, very high end model from the late 2000s it might just be very good at playing analog video.
@@Stjaernljus, My experience is exactly the opposite. The SCART has separate pins for RGB and Composite and it outputs both at the same time. Whenever RGB or Composite is desired is commanded by another dedicated pin.
I own a TV comercial production company and I work with old materials and I found the same problems as you when digitizing old analog video. And as you say analog video has great image quality if you find a nice and CONVENIENT way of digitizing. I'm bored of all these know-it-all guys that has allways something to say. So..keep your good work and your great way of explaining complex technologies in an easy to understand manner.
exactly, there's a thing that's worse than digitizing the old footage at 95% quality: not digitizing it at all because it requires more effort than just pressing two buttons
Your saying how you’re tired of rabbit holes and wanted a solution that just works made me think of this:
“Do I look like I know what an FFMPEG is? I just want a video of a gosh dang hot dog!”
-Alec Hill
Do I look like I knew what this allusion was? I just wanted pithy info on video transfer.....
(sorry, I know that's not catchy)
"I sell technology connections and technology connections accessories:"
KISS... You did just that. It's a simple process, gets quality results, reasonable costs. Done deal. If someone knows a better way, then they can make a video about it.
23:00 I'm just amazed at how the process can take pants that almost look gray and show clearly a discernible pattern. In real time on top of that.
That's why I'm pretty convinced this method is near-perfect
Haha, I can feel your frustration with this one.
Thank you so much for the T-shirt shout out! I sold about 10 yesterday! So fun! Thanks for all your content!
Hmm. Weird. I thought you made it clear that the video was about an easy and fast "good enough" capture of analog video. So definitely not your whole audience.
Same, in fact I almost made a comment myself about other methods he could try but then I was like "I'm sure that's not what he wants" and decided not to. I think a problem with youtube is that many people comment before they even finish watching a video.
Hey - I'll tell you this...
As someone with a bunch of VHS-C tapes of long lost loved ones that are sitting in a box because I also didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of which X is the best........ I thank you for the video. It's exactly what I was looking for. An easy to use process that I can follow and achieve great results. Thank you for your research and help.
Steven Barnes I transferred my VHS-C tapes by running the VCR thru my mini-DV camcorder in pass through mode to my PC, but the terrible de-interlacing I get on the PC has me wanting to re-do them all using a setup like this!
EXACTLY my issue. I want to get a somewhat good digital save of my old home videos of the kids growing up, and this seems like a good enough solution before the VHS degrades and will be lost before the perfect method comes along.
However ... I might have missed that boat.
I moved from the UK to the USA in 1994, and while I used to have a PAL-NTSC VHS player, it (not surprisingly) died.
These home videos are PAL, but I live in the USA and even back in the 90s it was tricky to find a PAL-NTSC VHS player (that plays all the speeds), so I doubt it's going to be easy today. My solution is likely to be send the home videos to my children in the UK, they digitize them ... but that brings other anxiety from shipping losses to a feeling they might not do as good a job as I would, or they might put it on THEIR "I'll do it one way" backburner, and it never gets done.
Sigh...
People often have trouble seeing the forest for the trees, thanks for sharing the awesome method from your previous video!
From the sounds of it, there are some people too wrapped up in the intricacies of the leaves to notice even the tree let alone the forest.
People with a high level of knowledge in this area just get excited when normal people express interest. In your other content, you have always welcomed additional information in the comments because you seem to genuinely enjoy learning about this pedantic, nerdy stuff. You wouldn’t be the first for whom the intricacies of video processing was their limit, though.
I sorta agree, it's odd that this is the line lol, but I also got highly interested in analog video capture when I was in middle school and even carried the weight of the 1st broadcasting class in my High School. I thoroughly enjoyed it, mostly, but there were aspects of it that could be a real slog to get through.
Maybe someone should just create an analog video capture Linux distro with wine and everything you would want, including premade scripts. I think it actually would be possible for people to more or less condense down all the knowledge in videohelp and other places and create something that could just work in general. I also still contend that finding a used VCR with firewire built in would be the simplest method - and possibly not cost much more than all the gear he listed. It would certainly save him a lot of time from not having to join all those separate clips.
You could also feed the composite or svideo into a DVD recorder, as many of them had firewire built in and that'd be even better and cheaper than finding a VCR that had firewire natively. Firewire was also the interface that was actually designed for uncompressed SD video in the 90's and despite all of technological progress I don't think any modern capture device you find will out do a firewire captured SD video. Of course you will need a firewire pci card, but those are extremely cheap now. It also allows you to capture without needing to merge video clips later.
Also ilo DVD recorders with Firewire sell for $50-60 on ebay, they work great. I bought one brand new for only like $100 back in the day.
Ben Reaves I don’t think it’s weird at all. I’ve been studying video encoding and restoration for 10 years and I still feel like a noob sometimes. I totally agree that there aren’t many good learning resources either.
I thought your first video was spot on. While we didn't have the best TV or VCR in our house, what we watched on pre-recorded, off air and, cam-cordered looked much closer to the results you achieved in that video. One can only imagine that the folks who take issue with your process, may have never seen a CRT during the era when they were king. While certainly not as high resolution as 720p and the like, they had great color and fantastic response times.
The comment section is usually full of trolls who get the vast majority of their information from the internet and not actual experience. They also cannot be pleased or appeased.
I really dig your videos and usually learn something watching them. I'm seriously still geeking out over that automatic toaster.
If you really cared about your production quality you'd build a time machine and travel back in time to capture the footage in 8k 120fps...
That's hilarious. And there's the rub: video from that era was crushed all over the place to begin with. There's only so much effort you want to expend polishing the turd.
@@johnberkley6942 Yep!!
This is somewhat what they did with D-VHS. They sendt back a forum guru that commanded a engineer that made the best way to film video with technology at that time.
Soon we will get a guru who can capture vhs at the best method.
@@LordGryllwotth Domesday86 VHS-Decode
But first you would travel to the future, and get yourself a nice 32k 240fps video camera, or whatever we will have access to in 10 to 20 years.
You're extremely good at balancing solutions and recognizing/avoiding diminishing returns and I appreciate the time you take in communicating it all.
I use FFmpeg and similar tools all the time in my work, in lots of different ways, and I thought the last video was great! It was a really neat solution, that produced excellent results and could be used by everyone. Some people just need to understand that new ideas & solutions like this don't have to replace old ones, they can be used along side them.
Keep up the good work!
21:21 "I don't know what we learned there but we learned something." Pretty sure I say this at least once a day.
I mean the only thing I'd use ffmpeg for in this context is to trim the video or stich them together, lol. The scope of the video was obvious from the get go. And is honestly something I really appreciate. I never would have thought that using an analog to HDMI _and_ HDMI capture would work out better than a direct analog capture device. So I appreciate what you shared.
This tbh. You don't have to be a programmer to use ffmpeg. It's a handy tool that can save you some work, not to "take the fun away". It's like that XKCD comic of doing something manually vs automating it.
FierceDeityLink1 There is still a learning curve. I'm not sure why that's difficult to understand.
You could also use ffmpeg to correct the aspect ratio. If you were doing a production line digitization then setting up an automated process with ffmpeg could make sense. But for just grabbing a bit of analogue footage here and there, I agree that you just use whatever's most convenient.
One of the main advantages of using HDMI > HDMI capture is that you're not limited to the bitrate and format of consumer analog capture devices. A lot of them are limited to 8mbps MPEG-2 for DVD compliance reasons. I personally like capturing at 480i H.264 and let video cards do the deinterlacing on playback, but I can understand why the method in question makes it simple for a lot of people, especially if they're using players like VLC which don't deinterlace by default and suck at deinterlacing when you enable it.
@@hmich176 So what if there is a learning curve? Do you want to stay stupid and not learn anything anymore because things could be slightly complicated?
I feel your pain, I felt you made your point crystal clear in the first video. I love your up beat humor and delivery. Please don't let anyone take the wind out of your sails. You are Awesome!
Welcome to people arguing over why the law of diminishing marginal returns doesn't apply to them. Or the Pareto principle. While they are endlessly stressing about eking the last .5% of quality out of one video you'll have yours all done and most of humanity won't know or care about the difference, if any.
Keeping in mind, of course, that this technique will be applied for the most part to old home tapes in varying state of signal decay (or whatever you call it). Signal, mind you, which originally carried significantly poorer image than early DVDs. It's not even RGB, it's the raw composite signal that goes straight into the TV.
That signal is converted to a digital image in pretty much real time by an algorithm you don't understand or have influence over, so by the time a video compression algorithm comes into play - most of the damage has been done.
Any *real* videophile dedicated to doing the job properly will sample the raw composite signal at 7MHz (64-bit depth ought to suffice), then write their own signal interpreter to produce the image, then store the whole thing raw in its interlaced format :P
233kosta You were getting dangerously close to Poe’s Law there with that bit lol
@@mrb692 Not close enough, apparently 😂
@@233kosta May I introduce you to … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-1_(Sony)
@@whophd I just learned some things. I don't really mess around with video editing but I have a tendency of perusing advanced controls of pretty much any application I use including apps like VLC. I generally won't touch anything if I don't know what it does but I remember seeing some of those terms and now I have some idea of what they mean to the quality of the video.
Great explanation! Go with what works for you! Those that are looking for simplicity with great quality understand where you are coming from. Let everyone else follow their own rabbit hole and do what works for them..
I appreciate how honestly you speak, and how straightforward you are. Love your channel. Keep up the good work.
You do such amazing tech videos, never feel frustrated by the conversations they start.
Alec, I agree with your assessment about the "black crush": 90+% of the time, it improves the overall image quality-or at least the perception of it-by decluttering the image, minimizing low value content in shadows, and expanding the luminous details. What is lost in dark content is more than made up for by expanding the dynamic range of the luminous content (less "washed out"). I'll take an easy, fast, and not expensive solution which improves the vast majority of content.
especially since the detail in dark areas won't be great to begin with.
It depends on the footage. Crushed blacks in animation is always horrendous. Stuff that was drawn and always meant to be clearly visible ends up gone in most modern releases. "Rrmastered in HD", but really it's just a highly processed, blurry, dark, uneven upscale of 480p footage scanned from a copy of a copy of the original film prints. Dragon Ball Z and Moomin are like that. It's awful. Especially since the original film prints exist. Just sitting there...waiting to rot away...
Fighting pedanticism is like shouting at the sun. Keep up the good fight, tho!
books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pedantry%2C+pedanticism
(I couldn't help be pedantic; you forced my hand. 🤷)
It's PEDANTRY not pedanticism! 😫🌞 LOL
I like the way you present things in a reasonably easy way to follow and it's because of this that is why keep watching. Keep up the good work.
Black crush could have something to do with the PC vs TV output range. Hardware boxes you use could just be hard coded to use TV range 15 to 250 or something like this.
^^^ this @@oo8dev dzięki
Franko yeah, full rgb vs limited rgb.
I was going to say this. If your capture assumes 16-235 levels but the source is full range then anything below 16 becomes full black, likewise for white.
But alternatively, it could just be the maker of the composite to HDMI converter wanted the image to pop and weren't worried about losing detail
Yes, and is a common bug in Chinese capture cards
The limited range probably comes about analogously to CVBS signal anyway, there's a wider range of baseband luminance values which are all 'black' and do not result in any emission from the CRT whatsoever.
I don't think it's necessarily a straight up limited vs. full range luminance issue in this instance, because the whites are full scale even in lower-contrast examples. But it could still be a remnant of the analogue pedestal.
Something else to note, digital 8-bit RGB displays and outputs of video codecs use sRGB encoding which is a crude imitation of a part of CRT luminance emission transfer function. It is a sectionwise approximation, with a tiny linear section in the blacks and a big exponential section covering the rest, while the true CRT luminance function is a continuous S-curve. This is a video capture and processing inconvenience, unless you're working fully in extended dynamic range, linearised formats. If you just capture luminance voltages from your baseband and scale them to a valid range and then pretend they're sRGB values, the result is close to perfect for the vast majority of the signal except deep blacks where there's a few values of weirdness.
I purchased the devices and used them as you recommended. Other than the low audio level (easily fixed in my editor after the fact and now fixed with small audio mixer boosting the levels in the line), the results blew away the analog capture device I had been using for years. The images looked awesome. I am happy. Thank you very much. Just remember, "You can't please everyone". But, you made my day.
You are doing great you will be okay
what is this AA support group !!???? "walk it off,Men walk it OFF"
Thank you so much for this :-) I was getting to start archiving all my family's videos and quickly started to see all the different rabbit holes all got frustrated I would never get this done. I did want the best method, and now this helped me realize I just want the best PRACTICAL method that is both simple, easy, and good quality. I'm glad this and the other video popped up in my feed!
But have you tried capturing the footage with a turbo encabulator? It uses a base plate of pre-famulated amulite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing. I hear that helps keep the pixels from leaking out during the conversion.
Exactly what I was thinking. With only a few years of practice, he can have at least intermediate skills.
r/VXJunkies is leaking... :D
ffmpeg is better...
:D
@hqqns I've found ffmpeg used in tandem with a turbo encabulator works pretty seamlessly, but the pre-famulated amulite base plate will only polarize bit stream converter. Now, I've heard that if you re-bias the heads using a magneto-flux inhibitor, you might prevent the pixel leak a little more effectively.
@@SF-tb4kb OMG Nuetrinos have polarity. Also ffmpeg needs no help damnit and doesn't even need a computer, it's that good!
I've learned so much from you. Thank you very much.
Bottom line: please do NOT feel you need to reply to every pedantic comment and explain yourself. You will go insane. And I like your content. You’re just the right amount of insane. Don’t worry about the nerd/peanut gallery.
MAN!
I am at the @8:10 mark and nearly have tears in my eyes BECAUSE YOU TOTALLY GET IT!!!!
In the past week, I have endured so many hours on reddit, EVEN MORE DAYS ON ANCIENT FORUM THREADS, and watching numerous guides, where ALL the creators sum up their research and advice with "You really should own a VHS player with S-Video or Firewire ports, if your childhood memories matter to you"
The same guides will spend 30 additional seconds suggesting to just get an EasyCap, if I cant be bothered to hunt down a $500 professional VHS player or circa year 2000 capture device.
It's such a frustrating rabbit hole of "GET THE BEST, or just settle with garbage"
As a developer-type person, I agree with you about FFmpeg. It's a wonderfully-powerful tool, and one that I do use from time-to-time, but untangling the options is a nightmare every time. I'm sure there's a logic to it for someone (sound and video engineers, perhaps?) but the seemingly inconsistent order of commands (some are positional while some are not) and all of the esoteric terminology is confounding. I don't blame you for avoiding it. The existing GUIs that I've tried (and it has been a while, so this may have changed -- but I doubt it) either simplify things to the point of removing a lot of the power benefits of the tool, or just shift the confusion to a new form. To be fair, it's a hugely complex tool and making a coherent interface for that must be daunting, but that doesn't change the fact that it's extremely difficult to use effectively without help.
The solution you give in your video was a perfect example of "this gets me within personal tolerance levels of my goal with a minimum of effort, and anything else doesn't provide enough benefit to offset the additional cost". I thought it was a very good explanation.
I agree. ffmpeg is very powerful and can get excellent results if you know what you're doing, but the user-friendliness and usability just aren't there. I've also found it a headache because it can be so dumb that it will mishandle things unless you pass it a slurry of options. As an example, I remember having to re-encode a bunch of stuff because I discovered that transcoding from one resolution to another can confuse video players into displaying colors wrong because they expect a colorspace conversion… and ffmpeg does *not* handle that automatically. And how on Earth would the average user know they need to do that? I sometimes think ffmpeg was really aimed at the sort of person to spend a number of years working on a college degree in video encoding theory. It's pretty hard to recommend it to the average, nontechnical guy.
But for simple cases (or at least those in which you finally figure out the proper option magic) it can be very handy, especially when you need to process a whole batch of videos in exactly the same way automatically, which is a lot of what I personally use it for.
@@shade221 What's your secret?
Well once you've used it a few times, it's easy to use. But in the end ffmpeg is a tool and just that and not an end user application. It provides an API for that exact use, so other applications can actually use all the technology in ffmpeg and provide it to users in various ways, like in Chrome or OBS.
I personally think that doing everything via video editor is a simpler solution, but it's really ass backwards considering you need to do specific manual edits to all of the clips.
From my POV, if you're an average user who's unfamiliar with NLE software, you're gonna spend lots of time "fixing" your clips regardless, at which point, why not make a very simple script (literally 1-4 lines) that would do all the necessary edits with ffmpeg? Using Premier just for cropping video and adding gain to audio is like bringing a tank to a knife fight.
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 and keeping the quality:
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. Paste the command on the powershell window and Enter to run it. Then just go changing the correlative number. Enjoy!
I wanted to say I think you’re a freaking legend. I’m a massive nerd in video compression and used to do everything through avsynth and virtual dub and a myriad of other options and techniques evolved over the years and spent thousands of hours trying to get the absolute best but it just ended up wearing me down. I ended up losing the interest and wasn’t converting old video or post processing anymore so I’ve been out of the loop for a while. Having recently gotten back into it I’ve been getting frustrated and looking at some old vhs-c tapes I was dismayed at the thought of having to relearn it all. It’s just such a lot of effort for no guarantee of any gain. Your technique is bloody marvy and solves my dilemmas. I unlike a few realised that your technique is sound regardless of the cable you’re using but because I have a high end editing recorder with svhs it just occurred to me to see on my hunt for the upscaler if one supported s-video and Lo and behold found one without issue. Why anyone would criticise you for not doing that on your video is just sad and it’s a shame you got hounded so hard for that as well as the other issues. People just need to have something to moan about. Nameless idiots hiding behind aliases on here and slinging shit at people doing us a great service is a shame. I found some component video to hdmi upscalers as well and wondered if that would be worth trying to find a player for but ultimately if there is one given the cost and the low quality analog signal anyway there was a clear line I wouldn’t cross. I looked up the benefits of this extra level of quality and it appeared it’s only HD content that it’s good for anyway (perhaps some studio quality gear) so there’s little point expensing effort. Every technique has compromise and you have to be willing to know when to stop. Thanks for doing the follow up as the extra details from your examples has been really helpful. I still am working on finding a good hdmi capture box here in Australia, one with good options as I’d like 30mbps or more and good quality level control so as to give me the highest possible quality for editing. Again I really appreciate your efforts and think this channel is one of the best things I’ve found on RUclips.
WHITE SPACE!!!!!!!!!!!
Dude, I love you. Keep up the good work. I've learned a lot from you and seeing your vids is a pleasure.
I'm late to the party here but I love watching/listening to you. You're to the point while being thorough yet easily digestible. Keep up the GREAT work!
I found your video to be extremely helpful for my purpose. Your description seemed pretty clear to me. I very much appreciate your work, thanks for all the great content.
I can't figure out how to do a reply of my own (I never usually comment on a YT video) so I'll leave what I have to say here and hope it is seen.
The video capture method he is using is mostly fine and on the right track. His problems with what he calls "black crush" is actually caused by an RGB + RGB partial mismatch. see this YT video for a good explanation ruclips.net/video/7kjZZNT5js4/видео.html
You can also see the difference with a nvidia card on HDMI connections on the "change resolution" page of the driver settings change the "output dynamic range" drop down between "full" and "partial" to see the difference.
What you need to avoid this is to set the HDMI capture device to capture as RGB Partial (could be called "console" or "tv" mode on gaming capture types) and not to RBG full. If the HDMI capture device isn't capable of doing this, get one that can.
Sometimes, a working solution that is easy to use is much better than the best solution, especially if the results are good enough already.
Thank you for this video. Especially the beginning. Although this particular matter means little to me, I cannot count the number times I've tried to find a way to do something and all I can find are the most technical solutions out there. I generally don't need absolutely perfect; I generally just need good and easily. Thank you for saying what I've felt so many times!
BTW, related to differing standards of transferring video data from your old timey video hardware (like VHS or console) to your TV, have you ever considered doing a video on SCART?
SCART was basically 'the' TV plug before HDMI in Europe, capable of handling composite, s-video, YPbPr component and analog RGB.
As you said, SCART was the TV plug before HDMI in Europe, but not in the US. I don't know even if the SCART standard can work with NTSC.
@@nanopulga098 In theory it should be able to, the problem is finding any NTSC hardware that supports SCART
+
@UCZpAwg9LtA2a1OwS9hrtGYQ You misunderstand the question. I'm not asking him why he's not using SCART. I'm asking him to do a video about SCART, the question was merely prompted by the mention of S-Video.
SCART is just a type of multipin connector. The signal standards sent down those pins are irrelevant, the connector is just a way of getting electrical signals from device A to device B. Of course you could use NTSC via a SCART cable, if only any NTSC hardware actually had SCART connectors on it.
The first 2 minutes of this video - that's exactly the message I got from your previous video. You found a solution that worked for you. Not necessarily the best solution but one that was simple and easy and whose output quality was reasonable. It came through loud and clear. Ignore the haters - you're doing just fine. I love your videos and your method of delivery is spot on. 👍
the scaling works like a TBC ….. there are converters that scale to 1080 and put aspect ratio to 4:3
I worked as a software developer but never have liked diminishing returns rabbit holes. Thank you.
I love what you do, I love your explanations. I know about law of diminishing returns. I am an engineer but appreciate the old phrase “Better is the enemy of good enough”!
As a game developer of over 400 Freeware titles.. ...
... ffmpeg baffles me, too!
There's a lot of complexity available but you can usually get by with a few simple settings and presets.
I really appreciated seeing a solution that “just works”. I’ve always been a bit nervous to try converting analog video, because the topic is so overwhelming. Thanks!
Both of these videos were great. Conveniently, my dad had just asked me about converting some old VHS so I went ahead and bought the boxes you used. Excited for when they come! I might end up re-capturing my Star Wars VHS to really see the difference between the way I used to do it.
Going through a similar process years later, did it end up working well for you?
@@TimelyAdventure it did! Everything came out so well!
@@techguypaul awesome thanks!
Love your videos! I bought a JVC SVHS VCR here in the UK for about £50 with the intention of capturing old tapes .. Glad I waited to see this as I would have a nightmare ahead otherwise!
DR-MV7?
Clay3613 not sure. Dont think so though. There are tons on ebay right now though
Hey Alec, by looking at the footage that the capture card crushed the black levels I think it's probably related to the RGB Full/Limited Range, try capturing a regular black level test pattern and see if it still crushes the blacks or if it's only doing it with the VHS player.
you are likely correct, I have no idea but i dont care ... keep it simple - that is the fundamental issue under discussion. Great pair of videos Alec thank you
@@rogerbeck3018 yes, his workflow is quite amazing for the quality he gets out of it, but understanding what happens in the hardware *is* what this channel is about, so you know... more content :D
Hello, just to say I'm late to the party and have only just recently been binge watching all your videos. There's some great material, thank you! I've watched both your videos on VHS conversion with interest. For the past 10 years I've owned a Panasonic VHS and DVD combo unit which I originally used to burn copies of my old VHS tapes to DVD so I could watch them on my DVD player. Obviously technology has moved on and I decided to convert to MP4 instead. The Panasonic unit has a built in upscaler as well as an HDMI output. I basically connect this to an HDMI to USB3 capture card and use ORS software to capture on my computer. I configure all the necessary settings within ORS (e.g. Aspect ratio, resolution etc). The process works a treat. I occasionally use Premiere to edit the output and then upload to my Vimeo account so I can keep the files for posterity as well as have the benefit of being able to share the videos with family members. Please keep up the great work! Best wishes from London, Jonathan
S-Video? Composite? Component?
SCREW THAT, I have SCART with RGB *bad pokerface*
But really. As far as I know SCART was common in Europe and *definitely* was common in Russia
Oh, lucky you...
Exactly, because I am German therefore normal for us using SCART or Composite ^^
@@ThePrinzKassad SCART was such a pain. The plug is so huge that it can be disassembled in order to fit through tight spaces. Many people also used cheap SCART cables that only transmitted Composite video. This is evident if you look at the plug: If most pins are missing, it's a cheap one. I tried to explain this to someone when I was a kid and they blanked out immediately and decided to ignore me because of my age...
@@no1DdC I know, that's why I had a Multimeter to check the continuity of everything because at some point you realize that the plug may have every available pin but there aren't connected
your method is just easy and makes good looking video? for the average person who wants to copy their home tapes from vhs to digital video, it honestly works perfectly fine. Once you have it set up, it records at the push of a button and yea okay for longer things you gotta stitch Em together but that's honestly the hardest part?? and it's not that hard once you know how??? the pursuit of perfection is never ending and so long as you keep digging, the rabbit hole will keep going. You found a method that not only works, but works for you and your needs and thought to share it with everyone so people can enjoy digital copies of their tapes without them being washed out.
I must say, the new take on the analog capture does indeed look better even with blacks slightly crushed.
I loved how simple and easy your idea for the quality is. I went out and ordered what you suggested and now waiting for them to arrive. Like you I tried to wade through all sorts of methods and software and gave up due to the hassles and time it takes. Thanks for figuring this out.
Having tried numerous and various capture methods, as well aa having numerous crt tvs and monitors, I can't argue with your results here. Simple and effective
“I just want something that Works, Looks Good and is correct.” Maybe add “is Simple” to that list too. This is by far the simplest method when you consider the workflow of converting all mum & dads old home videos. Thanks this is awesome!
I would love to go to a weekly lecture taught by this guy. It could honestly be about anything because his knowledge and more importantly passion for the inner workings of things that we don't give a second glance in our day to day lives is something I have been coming back to more and more lately and it is just very pleasing if not addictive in some way. Love your channel man, thanks for all your effort and dedication to teaching some random man from NH more than he ever thought he'd learn about many many things
Love your method, simple, reliable and good enough, I was around when vhs recording at home first appeared and it was amazing! If you scroll step-by-step through a video you will see things that you won’t see at normal playback speeds, especially on a fuzzy old crt tv.
By the way, I'd love to see a video on color under...seems very interesting...
And here's another unwanted software suggestion :
HandBrake is pretty convenient for rescaling, etc. It's like a frontend for FFmpeg, and it's GUI and very easy to use. Might be a little faster for bulk stuff as it supports presets.
(I use terminal all the time and FFmpeg is still a pain in the ass, so don't worry about not wanting to use it.)
Notably, HandBrake also has a Decomb option, which can help remove those deinterlace artifacts.
Of course, depending on how fast you're already using your current think you probably won't need this. I just thought I might be interested in the decomb option.
As a devout follower of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy, and also having a large collection of crappy video digitizing hardware, I thought your solution was both elegant and clever, and seemed to solve the same problem I've had over the years, and I plan on duplicating your setup before transferring all my analog video to digital. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
21:00 About Premier missing frames. It is because of the PREVIEW. Look at your preview's resolution (bottom down of screen). It says 1/2, which technically means you are missing half the lines, or in this case, half the fields. This is intended for quicker render during preview, improving the workflow. The entire image would be rendered in the final result. You can also notice that Premiere tends to output lower quality images during preview playback, but will render a better image after the image has remained still for a little while.
Consider this a "preview artifact". :-)
Thanks for showing a simple method to capture. I agree with you that it was easier with your method. I guess there are enthusiasts out there that want to get into the nuts and bolts.
It reminds me of how I started to get right down into the specifics of fine tuning an overclock on my PC years ago...yet most people would be happy just to go with the basic tweaks to achieve the overclock.
Thanks for addressing the S-Video question. I have a SVHS machine, super high end thing for its time and very rare. But all the tapes I've digitised from it (through my USB TV tuner with S-Video input) have been traditional VHS format.
Huge thank you for this in the other video. I have had the same trouble digging through forms of details of you can do this but then they leave I have to instructions super loved all the videos you're wonderful
I have been using a method like this for years now. I use a Panasonic VCR/DVD burner with HDMI out and use an Avermedia Live Gamer Portable to capture the 480p60. The audio is always just-right and the video and deinterlacing quality is practically second to none. I don't want to plug my channel, but there are examples there. I tend to avoid the up-scalers, but I am going to try it since I need a better solution than the Hauppauge USB capture devices that never seem to work and wash out the video -- this is the method I use for more difficult tapes and a Panasonic 1980s editing deck. I think it'll work great, my only concern is having to re-encode the videos with ffmpeg to return the video to a proper 4:3 resolution and set the aspect ratio. Your video was extremely well done and demonstrates methods that are, in a word, EXCELLENT, for digitizing analog video and keeping it in its proper format.
Software de-interlacing sucks and QTGMC is a huge pain since the software and config you have to do for it is clunky and very slow. ffmpeg is great with yadif and scaling, though... @Technology Connections 2, if you want a demonstration on an easy way to use ffmpeg, please DM me and we can do a Hangouts session
There might be better ways out there, but your method is what works for my dad. It's a simple solution requiring little computer skills and one touch button recording. He loves it! He's been backing up all of his old VHS home videos onto usb sticks for me to stitch together, thanks big time for your method.
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.
I've seen that mentioned before too, unfortunately it seems likely to vary a lot with different brands/models.
Your original video was very clear about the purpose. This video brings up two fascinating issues: 1) Restoration is interpretation...would you WANT a painting subdued for generations restored to original colors? It's an artistic choice that, yes, can step on the original artist's toes. 2) Utility has two legs: First, will people create (here, convert video). Second, will people consume (here, watch the converted video). Here, clearly it's better for hundreds of families to easily have their video archive that is flawed (first leg) than for one family with a video enthusiast to see the needles in the trees in the background--provided that the archive is at least good enough that it is enjoyable to watch so that (second leg) it does get watched by those families. Your method is a great balance. Note also that major release films are color/tone adjusted for each edit if not frame by frame, even when starting with professionals running professional equipment with professional lighting, etc.
As a capture novice your last video was perfect. I don't need that last n'th quality percentage, I need fast and easy.
There's a big difference between the quality needed for a professional video asset vs. one used for a RUclips channel. You are correct that the marginality of the quality isn't worth going down the rabbit hole of pedants. Don't let commenters get on your nerves. We truly enjoy your content and personality. Keep it up!
I believe I agree with mostly everything in this video here:
When I saw the initial video, to me it was obvious that this was for a simple solution that didn't involve expensive equipment, heavy fine tuning of settings per video, analysis of interlacing, or post processing to get it right. Just something that a person who understands how to use a flash drive and drag and drop videos into a video editor to combine them can understand and do. Pretty sure you even briefly explained that was your goal.
As for ffmpeg, my only nitpick of a qualm there is that you referred to yourself as a non-programmer. ffmpeg doesn't require to understand programming, but that's why this is a nitpick of a qualm: it's just semantics. You're not comfortable enough with a complex command line tool is what you're getting at, and that's perfectly fine. Hell even as a programmer I get confused with ffmpeg, especially when they keep changing how it works! Anybody that insists that ffmpeg is THE way to do it, well, ask your average grandma to do it. See how well they do and get back to me.
As soon as you said people suggested S-Video, I did a double take and said "wait, people think there's a lot of devices with S-Video on it?!", and then you mentioned VCRs rarely having it. So I'm in 100% agreement here. I mean, if you HAVE S-Video capable equipment, I say definitely use that over composite! But really? "Why aren't you using S-Video"??? What reality are you in that this exists so easily?
Finally I half agree on the black crushing. There's probably a lot of times the black crush will be negligible. But to me if it's more noticible, I think it can be an important missing piece, perhaps as important as the colors being washed out.
Short of it all: I agree! This is just supposed to be simple for everyone and not overthought. But not perfect. Just enough to archive your VHS tapes for digital video. Not a studio trying to make analogue available in digital format.
Trolls will be trolls; and usually because they feel that people don't listen to them as they should because they are in some way superior. I use the same method with composite games consoles and they look fantastic. In fact all of my attempts to use S-Video have resulted in some sort of issue. At one point I have even had to ground out the inverted composite connector to sink the excessive luma which THEN creates a fantastic S-video image. But like you say, that IS NOT a simple "out of the box" solution.
Someone will always criticise, and on youtube that counts as positive viewer interaction so, either way you're still winning. Keep up the good work my friend.
Hey, don't let the twerps in the comments get to you! Quick and dirty solutions have their place. Keep up the good work, I'm proud to be a Patreon supporter.
While I agree with your general ideas about ffmpeg, and I used to not use it for this very reason, I eventually switched over and have no regrets. Yes, it took a little bit of time at the start to figure out what I needed to do, but then I saved a list of the ~6 commands I use and I don’t need to understand anything else. It’s a higher startup cost, but saves so much time and effort in the long run for my basic and bulk encoding needs.
There's also a number of GUIs for it, though they vary from each other a lot.
Yes!! Just got something to eat, and now i have something good to watch! :3
be sure to bring lots to drink with your food, as it's (deservedly) salty 🤣
Damn and i thought i was the only one who did that
At last somebody who knows of what he talks Till I watched this info I was totally lost now I just gotta watch a few times well done
As they say, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
I'm sure I saw a RUclips video about that. It may have even involved traffic lights.
It looks good; you should be happy! Thanks, I enjoy your productions.
Whoever convinced you that using FFMPEG is coding did you a massive disservice in either making the technology sound more scary than it is or misleading you about what FFMPEG is. Which is not to say that FFMPEG is the right tool for the job for you - your setup looks just fine to me.
Its basically coding.
In that you need to be constantly looking up how to use it, the commands need to be typed correctly, and if you do it wrong you will get error messages or incorrect results for something that could just be a missing space
ffmpeg is also often used in shell scripts, which is literally coding
@@huttyblue No, it really isn't. There is no logic you can put in the commands. Its just "Tell me what you have, and tell me what you want". Its not coding, its not programming, its just using software.
@@Tritium21 It is coding because you are writing code for the computer to interpret. Yes you are also using software with the code, the things are not mutually exclusive.
And its more involved than tell me what you have and tell me what you want. As how you tell ffmpeg what you have and what you want has very specific syntax that impossible to guess for anyone who isn't an experienced user. Have an external reference available as well as trial and error steps for the inevitable mistakes is required to make any use of the software.
@@huttyblue No, you are not writing code. At all. Ever. Giving arguments to the executable on the command processor (cmd.exe or bash) is not giving the computer instructions to execute. You are giving the executable data. that's it. If you were to use ffmpeg in a shell script workflow or write a wrapper around the executable, it would be programming, but thats not what we are talking about.
It really is just tell it what you have and tell it what you want - its a declarative model. It is NOT programming.
Do not continue to insult programmers by saying using FFMPEG is programming, since it absolutely is not.
@@Tritium21 Giving a program execution arguments is no different than setting the inputs to a function when you are programming. Its text the computer interprets to do stuff, which is code and a type of programming.
You really are going full gatekeeping with that last statement though.
Oh boy, respect you made and posted this video. Thumbs up. My preferred way of tape capturing is now the method you described in the previous video. Thank you for that! And yes for 98% of my tapes 98% quality is good enough. If I have that specific recording that is sooooo important I want to be sure to have the maximum quality. I send that tape over to a professional capturing it with expensive equipment. This saves me time and money buying recorders encoders and diving into detailed settings.
You look and sound tired man, kind of gets me worried. Get some rest! Keep up the great work though. ;-)
You're solution is great. When my mom wants to encode our old home movies, this is probably the first option that I will be presenting.
You are doing a great job. I appreciate that very much. Don‘t be frustrated by some smart a??. Just continue your good work. Thank you very much
I, for one, love your videos and I understand what you're getting at, and know that you're not claiming to be the ultimate authority on the subjects you cover. You make videos that are informative, and are to be enjoyed, not to be scrutinized and picked apart word by word. You create AMAZING content that is informative, interesting, entertaining and engaging. You do the research and the legwork and present your findings. I say, ignore the insufferable pedants and continue on with your bad self. We love Technology Connections because you cover interesting subjects in your own unique informative way. Kudos to you TC!
The only thing I really need for my VHS captures is the TBC. Everything else to me is like trying to overclock a videocard to get 103FPS instead of 101FPS in games.
Yes, a TBC is essential. Preferbly a full-frame such. However, many simple capturing devices have build in line-TBCs, and that's quite good too.
@@kanalnamn I came here just for a comment like this. Is it 99% common or 99% uncommon? Really hoping the first one. Nobody seems to talk about it anymore!!
@@whophd I can't really tell. Many devices talk about nonsense like "locked audio" and other made up stuff that's not real. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that most of the better DVDR recorders had line TBCs. When it comes to more recent game recording devices I think it's not as common. The game console signals really don't need TBCs. Then... the things that converts to HDMI... who knows? I've never dealt with them, and the spec sheets can be hard to find.
Domesday86 VHS-Decode
I really appreciate your simple and straightforward approach to capturing through cards. Haters are gonna hate, hahaha. Thanks for sharing your method with us ✌️😎
Speaking of rabbit holes, the last video got me looking at what is state of the art in video processing. Like I suspected, there are a few papers using deep learning to perform somewhat better deinterlacing, but what really got my attention was video super resolution technologies. Would be pretty interesting to see how it works on VHS footage. There is demo code for both papers on github, but I'm not sure I'm motivated enough to dig up unprocessed VHS footage and hack up some scripts to feed it through these algorithms... If someone had enough motivation, I guess there is possibility for a fun paper in taking a bunch of HD footage, feeding it through a VHS and then training a neural network to reverse out any VHS artifacts.
I've thought of the idea of making a specialized VHS -> HD neural network. Considering the amount of movies available in VHS and DVD/Blu-Ray, a dataset isn't the issue. The approach I've thought of is first reversing the telecine process applied to the VHS version of the movie to obtain a 24fps image sequence, then matching that to the same frames in the HD version. For TV shows available in VHS and DVD, you could deinterlace both sources into a 50fps/60fps image sequence and match them. I think it's doable by someone with experience on AI image processing, but I'm currently unable to take on such a project.
This is the reason why I keep a lossless copy of all my captures... I think AI will work wonders on them in the future.
You can buy an AI solution now . I use it, and its amazing for grainy, blurry VHS to denoise , deinterlace and upscale it. Look up Topaz Video Enhance AI .
You are 101% correct sir. Your follow up is very well done. Thank you.
First. Analog VTRs are my passion and I have studied them maniacally since the late 1960s. I have personally worked with members of the original Ampex VTR team and other major players in this field. I have designed a dozen or more analog products for the broadcast industry in my career. I was an engineer at Prime Image in its heyday. Analog video and VTRs are about the onlyest thing in which I can claim great expertise.
If the video was ever composite ANYWHERE in the chain, it becomes irrelevant whether you use S-video or component after that. Once the luma and 3.58MHz chroma signals have been mixed together, its game over. Taking them apart again is the black magic of the business. VHS is notorious for separating the original composite input Y/C signals very poorly and then, as mentioned in this video, the recording process was grim at its best. (BTW, monochrome VHS is very good quality) But the composite video damage was done in the first input stage.
In the rare case of CAMCORDERS, many of them DID NOT encode the camera output to NTSC, but recorded the Y/C directly to the tape. The chroma was directly modulated to the 767KHz color under frequency, avoiding the first frequency conversion step, to boot! You can only do this when the camera and tape recorder are intimately mated together. This video from those recordings looks awesome!
It's funny, the only thing I took away from the original video is "I'm sure there must be a device that doesn't break up the video captures."
Overall, I thought your solution was genius. I always felt that vhs captures on youtube always looked a bit bleh, especially considering I DID grown up in the vhs era. I wore out my vhs copy of "Chitty chitty bang bang" when I was really young, and I sure don't remember the colors looking so washed out. Hell, I didn't get DVDs until I was a teen, and I was working for Dell's technical support when BlueRay Disc came out.
"Sploops." I love it when you talk technical... 😊
Random question : is it possible to record composite as an audio signal into eg Audacity and use computer software to convert it into raw video?
No, the bandwith is not sufficient. To get an idea, most audio soft captures 44100 samples per second... and even the color in the most washed out VHS tape has its Shannon limit at 3579540 "samples" per second
If you want to record raw video out of the tape you want to read a bit about Domesday86 VHS-Decode that I am using too (warning, it's for perfectionists and you have to use linux).
Are there people who think "washed-out" was how old analog tapes were supposed to look? It's possible considering there are apps on the market that claims to emulate old Camcorder recordings by littering the output with lines of noise and other analog artifacts (along with a washed-out look).
I think a lot of people today don't seem to understand that analog footage wasn't "bad" quality. Back then, if we rented a tape that looked the way some people these days *think* it should look, we'd go back and complain. (Or clean our heads.)
I love your capture method. I've used capture cards, USB devices, even the camcorder and Firewire pass-through method. But I found a device that pretty much combines your two devices: it has analog input and records straight to a external drive or SD card (even has a built-in screen so no display required.) It has made capturing analog footage (in addition to modern HD footage) so much easier. I'll never go back.
Basically, with his method, you lose some detail on the things that don't matter, things in the background or in dark shadows. But in return all the things that do matter, the things you actually filmed to be able to watch later looks a lot better. Seem like a fair tradeoff too me.
Omg! That was my childhood tape player! The microphone let me scream to my favorite tunes and my parents loved that! 😂