• Most new users don't bother reading our rules. Here's the one that is ignored almost immediately upon signup: DO NOT ASK FOR FANEDIT LINKS PUBLICLY. First, read the FAQ. Seriously. What you want is there. You can also send a message to the editor. If that doesn't work THEN post in the Trade & Request forum. Anywhere else and it will be deleted and an infraction will be issued.
  • If this is your first time here please read our FAQ and Rules pages. They have some useful information that will get us all off on the right foot, especially our Own the Source rule. If you do not understand any of these rules send a private message to one of our staff for further details.
  • Please read our Rules & Guidelines

    Read BEFORE posting Trades & Request

question for vhs cappers out there

N

NexPhr3ak0r

Well-known member
Messages
565
Reaction score
0
Trophy Points
16
So I have been doing research and looking at different methods and was wondering what people use for the best vhs caps they are capable of (be reasonable as well I'm not going out and buying some $100,000 piece of equipment tv studio use). I have heard of use strictly hardware with a good vcr, video processor and cap card. Does the kind of cap card make a huge difference in picture quality? For example a $30 kworld card vs a $100 hauppauge card. Is there a tremendous quality difference. Also do you run filters on your video afterwards. I think the most my video needs to cut some noise off the bottom of the screen. The picture is a little whitewashed and that is about all the video I am working with needs. But for the filters do you use compression or do you bite the bullet and go full quality or do you use huffyuv (or something else). Any other filters I should be interested in running. I want to hear from the people who have had good luck with quality screen capping.
 
I'm not a perfectionist in this, more like a starting amateur. But I can tell you what I have done for my Terminator 2 3D project.

I just had a VHS recorder and a DVD recorder. I played the VHS while I let the DVD recorder record it. And then I edit the DVD afterwards on my computer.
 
what kind of work are you doing on the computer? are you cleaning up the quality of the picture at all? How was the quality of your vhs to begin with?
 
quality of the VHS was good. I just edit the videos, like cutting out the commercials, etc.

I don't do anything like improving the quality, I have no idea how those restoration things work...
 
as for preserving old vhs that is not available in a dvd format, and for some will probably never be available in a dvd format. is there a way people deal with macrovision? i know its probably in bad taste to bring that up, and boon feel free to delete this comment if it is inappropriate, but i was wondering what people did to capture this kind of vhs? i didnt mean to hijack this thread, i thought it was related, and sorry if i am asking something that shouldn't be asked, i was just curious about preserving some things.
 
ThrowgnCpr said:
as for preserving old vhs that is not available in a dvd format, and for some will probably never be available in a dvd format. is there a way people deal with macrovision? i know its probably in bad taste to bring that up, and boon feel free to delete this comment if it is inappropriate, but i was wondering what people did to capture this kind of vhs? i didnt mean to hijack this thread, i thought it was related, and sorry if i am asking something that shouldn't be asked, i was just curious about preserving some things.
Click to expand...

You can discuss this stuff all you want.

The rule is meant to cut back on the public-ness of the more-risky direct-download links (Rapidshare links, nzb files, and maybe links to torrent pages).


I can't tell you, for sure, if your projects will be affected by the rules, we're going to be clarifying that stuff over the next few days.
 
yep, JT is right, discussing it is all A ok.
 
OK, thanks. so does anyone know how to get around this for old vhs that are encoded with MV?
 
Back in my VHS times I had a special box of hardware to do that trick for me. One scart in two scart out. It was quite expensive.
 
This OT thread can help get you started with Macrovision Removal. capturing VHS?

Search "cap", "macrovision", and stuff, to get other threads.

And searching the forums at http://www.videohelp.com/ can get you lots more advice on hardware.

Often, if you're using a capture card, you can make the card ignore macrovision.

NexPhr3ak0r said:
So I have been doing research and looking at different methods and was wondering what people use for the best vhs caps they are capable of (be reasonable as well I'm not going out and buying some $100,000 piece of equipment tv studio use). I have heard of use strictly hardware with a good vcr, video processor and cap card. Does the kind of cap card make a huge difference in picture quality? For example a $30 kworld card vs a $100 hauppauge card. Is there a tremendous quality difference. Also do you run filters on your video afterwards. I think the most my video needs to cut some noise off the bottom of the screen. The picture is a little whitewashed and that is about all the video I am working with needs. But for the filters do you use compression or do you bite the bullet and go full quality or do you use huffyuv (or something else). Any other filters I should be interested in running. I want to hear from the people who have had good luck with quality screen capping.
Click to expand...

Technically, I've done some capping, but it's been years. But I can give some good (if vauge) advice.

(Searching videohelp and OT can get you a bunch more).


Of course the better cards will have better shielding, so they won't be very susceptible to picking up noise (interference). A cheapo capture card will also have poor quality control, so there's the luck of the draw, you could get one that's crappy, then buy exactly the same model again, and get pretty good results.


For best results, capture to Huffyuv (lossless & fast) codec. It'll take up something like 15 Gigs per half-hour, but you get to color-correct & filter to your hearts content, and then run it through a great encoder.


You'll get vastly better results with a Time Base Controller, and that might also take care of macrovison, and stuff. That's probably around $300~$500 for a solid basic model - you could probably get a used one, from an eBay seller with a good rep, for cheaper.

You can also get one of those Panasonic VCRs that have a limited Time Base Corrector (but you probably want to shut off the other signal processing). They are fine VCRs, to boot. They have pretty much quit making them, so you could go for used. Hafta get one of the right models, so search http://www.videohelp.com


And this is why you want a TBC (Time Base Corrector):

Say this is a closeup of the TV screen:

This is how the little rows of dots line up perfectly, before you tape them, and after you run the VCR output through a TBC:
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................
...............................................................................................


This is how they don't line up if you play the VHS without a TBC.


No... damn, The forum software won't display it the way it's written.

Ok, what happens is that each row starts at a different position.

The picture is all fuzzy (and harder to compress), and the vertical lines are jaggedly blurs.
 
for those who want to mcguyver a vhs cap you can always do what i did

i played the movie on my VCR and had the video go into my Digital camcorders video in port...

i did not record the video on my camcorder since the movie had a anti recording protection on it, but i let it play on my camcorder and i conected the camcorder to my PC using the firewire.. i captiured that video feed

so in short

vcr-camcorder-computer all at the same time, the camcorder serves as a bridge and eliminates the Macrovision issue..


sry if anyone went over this...
 
thanks. I am unable to do this with my digital video camcorder, but i have heard others say this same thing. what camcorder do you have?
 
does macrovision apply when the composite out is used?
 
I'm hearing alot of people like to go the hardware route instead of messing with filters. Man things like time base correctors and video processors are still expensive even on ebay. I thought vhs was dead why is this stuff still so damn expensive.

So far I have seen my capture card give me the same video results as just the vcr to a tv.

As for the macrovision. I've only used capture cards and have never run into a problem with macrovision stopping me.
 
ThrowgnCpr said:
thanks. I am unable to do this with my digital video camcorder, but i have heard others say this same thing. what camcorder do you have?
Click to expand...

sonydigital 8 handycam
 
aha, yeah i think thats what others have used to do this. i bought a panasonic because it had a greater optical zoom (digital zoom is shit) and i needed that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom