Hi there Ben, I'm following every step to set up OBS and I am finding (probably due to a different Capture Card ) is that I am not being offered CPQ. Unfortunately I will be using CRF which will create a larger file. Do I need to install some kind of external Laptop hardware for that kind of memory need? Anyway, I thought I might, with your permission of course, post my quick research notes on how to accommodate this very important CRF = Constant Rate Factor for the highest quality? I do hope you don't mind some great discussion on your Chanel? This is just what I found online to tell me how to adjust the CRF. "CRF (Constant Rate Factor) x264 only Similar to how CQP gives you a range of 0 to 30, with the lower numbers being better quality, CRF ranges from 0 to 51, with around 17 to 24 being considered ‘good quality’. Approximately every 6 points will double your file size, and as you can imagine, subtracting 6 will halve it."
The files might be larger but you can always use software like handbrake to lower the file size if you're running out of space (though the quality will be lower).
@@TheBenCrazy Hi again, This is news to me. I thought Handbrake was only to rip DVDs. I'm going to look into it. By any chance, have you tried to capture your live TV yet? Connecting a laptop to a HDMI is easy, but getting it to come out in the other direction? Well this guy is doing it using two splitters. I'm so tired of new technology turnover that eats my money. Mind you, HDMI tv is incredible! Happy Canada Day eh! UA-cam; How to record Capture DVR Live TV NETFLIX AMAZON VIDEO GAMES ANYTHING in 1080p
you can also fix the aspect ratio straight in obs by adding the "scaling/aspect ratio" filter to the capturecard and setting it to 4:3 and then losslessly cut the beginning and end with lossless cut
I recently got a Panasonic DMP-BD70v to capture some old VHS tapes directly from the HDMI output. Figured it’d be the best way to get as much of an HD capture from the source as possible.
Combo decks are generally not recommended. The best option is to find a VHS player with TBC. One of the most regarded VHS players for digitizing is the Panasonic AG-1980P. This has S-Video out & a built in TBC. S-Video (or HDMI) will give the best image - albeit HDMI is overkill and you probably won't reap any benefit as your deck is not suitable for archiving/digitizing footage, or capable of producing a video output capable of restoration.
The best option is use a DV cam fireware, a S-VHS VCR, S-video cable to DV cam, Record DV 4.3 interlace format. The AVI is a strong file to make any post production without loss.
Exactly. His RCA cable in the workflow just loses way too much info to begin with. I know there are some VHS decks with component output, that'd be the ultimate goal to extract every last bit of detail from the tape.
@@miguelescutia1928 You can find a test of VCRs VHS mono x S-VHS stereo Hi-Fi playing the same tape in the playlist "VHS, S-VHS, D-VHS Memory Rescue" Sound, colors and stability image is much better digitizing with S-VHS VCR.
I wouldn't necessarily say it's the best, but it can certainly be very good. It seems the DV codec can also lose some of the chroma(colour) information, as it seemingly uses 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.
I have the firewire setup but looking into doing this method instead. How do you get the upscaling with the firewire method? Is it the same as exporting HD from Premiere?
There are plenty of used VHS to DVD recorders that are very good, at least in my country those are far more common than the cheap variety. Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, and perhaps Samsung make good ones, for a start. These almost always also correct a lot of the video signal timing issues, and reduce noise via a high quality '3d' comb filter. The VHS decks in them probably aren't the best, but they're certainly not bad(and most or all are 'VHS HQ' models which can squeeze out a little more quality, depending on the recording), and most will likely have had far less use than older standalone VHS machines. I think any of these are likely to give an image at least of similar quality to the method above, while being very simple and not requiring a computer to be connected for hours. They are steadily increasing in value, because they're a good, easy option. It won't give you the absolute best image(neither will the method above), but it's more than good enough for most. Upscaling before capture may not be a good idea, relying on cheap converters to deinterlace and scale the image seems unlikely to give the best image. The video is then being scaled again anyway(to get back to the correct aspect ratio) afterwards. As the video is being re-encoded again(when de-noising etc) afterwards, upscaling & de-interlacing could've been done at this stage(at higher quality) anyway. The 'downscale filter' option in OBS won't do anything, the chosen input & output resolutions are the same - there is no scaling.
I have the following setup: 1. Panasonic NV-HS1000/Loewe OC3800H 2. Mini Av2Hdmi upscaler look similar to your one 3. Avermedia EzRecorder 300 Standalone Capture box. I have a tape that play well with two major dropouts (tape damaged by other vcr) if I connect the vcr to tv using cvbs cables. If i use the upscaler there are more dropouts sometimes it display a blue screen then the image came back. Do you have an idea how to solve it ? I want to capture complete image including the dropouts but not to replace dropouts with blue screen. A workaround is to edit the captured video with premiere pro apply scene detection then delete all the blue screens generated by the upscaler. With this both video and sound are choppy.
You would probably need a Time Base Corrector to get through the bad section. These are very expensive. Some people use old DVD recorders from Panasonic to achieve similar results. The DMR-ES10 is supposed to be the best at this. You run directly out of the VCR into the DVR, the signal passes through and then run the DVR into your existing setup.
Your footage seem overal nice and clear, but do you have advice on S-VHS footage that is full of white flickering scratches? Is there some kind of software that can digitally clean up the white tape scratches? Adjusting the tracking and cleaning the video heads did not help to improve the output footage :( So I'm hoping a software solution might help; something like neatvideo but I'm not sure if neatvideo can remove the kind of white flickering scratches we're talking about.
Hello, this might be a VCR issue if it is happening on all of your tapes when playing back. Not sure if neatvideo can fix it but it's better to try to fix it before having to do anything in post. I found this website although it seems like you have tried most of these steps. Another option is looking for a local repair shop to see if they can resolve the head tracking or lastly, get a different VCR. www.freevideoworkshop.com/fix-vhs-tape-flickering/
If you plan to Upscale your video with an A.I. after it is recorded, is it better to rip the VHS in it's native 480p resolution and skip the upscaler device?
I love Neat Video, I use it every day on my modem day 4K footage. But, I actually like to leave in the noise and grain on VHS footage. I guess it’s all a matter of taste.
I've got a Canopus AVDC converter unit that can feed VHS directly thru the Canopus and thru firewire into my Adobe Premier Pro capture program and then after loading and building onto timeline in adobe premier pro go out thru the adobe Media encoder 2023 and trying to decide the best format for the project to be digitized for transfer to a thumbdrive ,,,,,, the results aren't what I would consider 'good' .
Often on playback a video tape will display some weird squiggly lines running across the entire screen at the bottom of the screen about a centimater high. How do you get rid of those? Can you crop out that on the video capture with software? Do you need a new vcr? Or do you need image stabilizer?
That line is a VCR head switch noise. It preserves on all VCRs i know. This area doesn't contain any useful signal so you can just crop it out. However a centimeter high line is abnormal i guess. Usually it barely visible.
Hey Ben! I don't know why some express the aspect ratio as "by". A ratio is one "to" another. Resolution is one "by" another. Examples. 1920"by" "x"1080, 16 "to"" :"9
If my research is correct on that device, you could either record them to dvds and rip the dvds onto your PC or you can still use a capture card to record the digital video.
Nice video for working VHS. But you don't mention what you do if all you see is static noise in the video? I can hear the audio but no visual. Nothing you can do right? That's what I was actually hoping to find here.
Anyone can explain me what's happened here at 0:45? ua-cam.com/video/w0m5wa5kKBc/v-deo.html Looks like its something what makes damaged tape parts masked. Its some kind of TBC or vcr function?
Out of the Elgato recorders out at the time of making the video, it was the best one. I think right now the HD60 X is the best external capture card but again, any capture card that can record at 1080 60fps will do the job since we are essentially capturing 480 60fps (30 interlaced) video.
Did you have those nascar videos on regular tape or on chrome?I have many music and snl videos on chrome BASF's.The lsat time i accessed them about 10-12 years ago, there was no quality loss on them.I'm planning to transfer them in the coming months,hopefully the recordings didn't deteriorate.
For me, it's different because I used a DVD recorder to record Music Videos off MTV , VH1 and other music channels back in the 2000s and early 2010s so I instead used DVD ripping software to copy the DVD to mp4.
Hi Ben, thank you for this lesson, I've purchased everything as suggested, but the capture stutters terribly and cannot record. I'm guessing my computer is not powerful enough to handle everything. So I am looking into buying a new system. Could you please tell me what computer, you use?... the graphics card and anything else I would need to make sure my computer has, in order to use these upscale and capture components. Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm hoping to buy a new computer in the next couple of weeks.
Hello, I have a ryzen 3800x with a gtx 1080 for the computer i capture on but you can get a waaay cheaper computer than what I have to make this work. If you're looking at laptops the Lenovo IdeaPads with a rtx 3050 is a really good deal. Desktop side you should be able yo get a used one pretty cheaply. Just got to check what year the cpu and gpu in it was made (look for 2019 and higher) and you should be set.
OMGosh, thank you for getting back to me so quickly! You are the best, and a great resource. I have subscribed as well. I will look into these suggestions and cant wait to produce high quality restorations as you have done! Have a fab day!
@@TheBenCrazy I just realized you mentioned these specs are for the computer you "capture" on, I'll be editing also on the same computer (I do have Vegas pro as well) is your editing computer stronger? Is there something I should make sure I have for that? My finished film will be 1.5 hours. Again thank you, I'm sorry if this is all mentioned in your other films. In time I will watch them all! Thanks, Gary
I recently tried this for the first time. I'm waiting for an Elgarto card to arrive to try again. My biggest issue is the size of the finished file. 2.5 hour video in MP4 comes out at 8.6gb. Is that normal? If I try to do all my family videos, it's going to require a serious amount of storage
Yes, that is a normal amount. You can use handbrake to lower the size but it will also lower the quality. I really don't recommend that cause in the future when storage is larger and cheaper, now you have lower quality videos to remake
Hi! Thanks very much for this great video. I’m looking to transfer/clean up very old VHS tapes from the early to mid-80’s. Because of their age, these tapes are prone to bad tracking and noise problems, as well as being quite fragile and prone to damage. I’ve already had tapes damaged by my current players (a Sharp VC-H972 and one of those DVD/VCR combos you mentioned as a no-no). Based on your experience, what might be the best VHS player option for tapes that old? You mentioned JVC HRS8000U & SONY SLV-700 HF. Do you think one of those two would be the best bet?
An issue I'm running into is while running the video through the upscaler, the picture keeps cutting in and out. It seems to work just fine when I run the vcr straight to a tv, but upscaler to tv or computer cuts out. Is there any way to connect the vhs to tv through analogue, then record from the tv to my computer through hdmi?
Could be the upscaler losing signal. Try a different rca cable to make sure its not a bad connection, otherwise a different upscaler might be needed. Does it happen on other vhs tapes or just one?
You can’t digitize a VHS through HDMI from an analog TV. VHS is analog. Digital is digital. Analog signal is fluctuating current. Digital is bits. A capture card gives a digital representation of your analog media. There’s a reason you don’t get static and a noisy picture anymore. It’s digital. So it’s compression artifacts. This method he is using isn’t good. You can play a VHS through a combo unit but that is because it has a DAC (digital to analog converter) in combo units. It’ll make a mess of the interlacing though. What he is doing really doesn’t make sense as far as aspect ratio. 4 by 3 is what it’s supposed to be captured in. 720 by 480 then square pixels for UA-cam which is 640 by 480. That plays better on UA-cam. That’s better than pillarboxing a 16 by nine.
@@TheBenCrazy do you know anyway to stop obs losing signel when the vhs is tracking? I've been trying to figure it out and have come up with nothing, is there any other capture software to use that might not do that? sorry to keep bothering you
All good, are you seeing no signal by itself or no signal from the elgato? If its by itself, its from the upscaler and its because the tape tracking is causing it. If its from the elgato, go into the elgato software and double check the settings. Then add the elgato in obs again and see if it gets a picture. If you're able to upload a quick video of what you see and link it on UA-cam, that will help me more to troubleshoot
@@TheBenCrazy I read up alot about it and its the elgato not being able to keep the signal when the video loses tracking so im trying something new, i've aquired a dvd recorder from gumtree and am now recording my videos onto the HDD on that and am then gonna record them from there onto my laptop
What’s with this world? Old clips are trended to be remastered, and nowadays so many people use VHS filter on modern cameras to look cool. A little amazed by the fact.
Dear Ben, hope all is well with you. Thank you for the video. Would it still work, if I hired the services of a company to do the video capture, and then apply the post production techniques later on? As much as I would love to do all the stages myself, I would have to purchase two different VCRs (one for cleaning the tapes and another for the capture) and that will not be possible. Also, after downloading the Vegas editor, when it opens up, it says Photo Director on the upper right hand corner. It does not give me the option of uploading an MP4 video. Anything I am doing wrong? Thanks
Interesting that your intro clip is at 30p, while the one at the end is at 60p. Did you use different tools to capture them? Also, your setup is too elaborate, you don't get picture that looks better than with a simpler setup, and you get your aspect ratio all screwed up in the process, which you need to correct in an NLE.
#TheBenCrazy if I have a vhs with composite output and i get a composite to hdmi adaptor, will the translation of the original vhs tape be better when digitizing?
I have an EasyCAP composite to USB device. Setting this up as the capture device in OBS results in 4:3 aspect ratio, but I'm not using an extra upscaler before this capture device. Using the OBS settings suggested here, OBS still outputs a 1920x1080 video file, essentially upscaling the resulting video file. Is there an advantage to using an upscaler device + capture card versus just using a composite capture device if OBS is going to upscale it anyway? If not, then the external upscaler is just adding an extra step to have to fix the aspect ratio with little benefit otherwise.
If you go into the description, I linked a video from Technology Connections which is mainly what I based my settings off of. I highly recommend watching it to get a better idea why I set it up this way using the upscaler. In your situation, it's not necessarily needed but I felt it looked better and made it easier to capture since it converted it to HDMI which is what my capture card uses
@@TheBenCrazy Cool, I'll check it out. I also have an upscaler and an HDMI capture device, so I'm just trying to weigh the pros and cons of each for the best quality. Great video, your OBS and restoration tips have been a huge help!
Hi Ben - I'm confused by one thing. Your description and schematic shows a USB out of the HD60 S+ to the computer. I have that capture card but it only has HDMI out not USB? What am I missin g??
Hi there, I am enjoying this lesson very much. This lesson makes me want to drop Corel Video Studio which does not have any external plug insssssss available however, I looked up Sony Vegas and it states that it is available for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. I'm running Windows 10. Could I please ask, which video editor would you suggest to work with Windows 10 that does not involve buying into a subscription? Thanks!
They're plenty of free ones out there. I would suggest Davinci Resolve (close to adobe premier but takes some learning), vsdc is good, and openshot is good for starting out but is missing features you would get in a more complex editor
@@TheBenCrazy Hi Ben, Thanks guy! B.T.W. My hubby is a Nascar armchair driver, and knows all the characters. He said you restoration was better than the tv he watched some of his original games on. I'm slowly getting through the Specs on your list of possible video editors. I am trying to find a decent editor that will support the noise profile offered by Neat Video. What a great utility! DiVinci is for windows 8.1, VSDC is for Windows 10, but it doesn't look like it will accept the Neat plug in. Openshot isn't a bad little editor, especially for Free. Nice junior editor. I am going to look at the other editors mentioned in your lesson that will couple with the noise reduction plug in. Happy Canada Day or July 4th!
I believe you would get essentially the IDENTICAL result using the Elgato consumer device. It would require no additional software or effort. The Elgato produces VHS captures that have very little noise. Looking at your results on this video, I think you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish them from the Elgato. Give it a try.
Elgato (and this device) both hardware compress the incoming stream AFAIK - essentially making restoration impossible. For archiving video, neither of these devices - or OBS studio are recommended. The "industry" accepted workflow is generailly: capture from a high quality VHS player with TBC using VirtualDub, recording in AVI, Avisynth/Virtualdub for converting to a lossy or other lossless format, QTGMC for deinterlacing (noise/artifact removal), then desnoising with a product like NeatVideo. And then linearly editing in Premiere or similar.
@@jheins3 That’s why you get the HD60S since the S stands for software, it’s only the regular HD60 which has a built-in hardware encoder. I only loosely recommend using these HDMI devices with 4:3 output settings on OBS if you’re digitalizing S-VHS or (more commonly) Hi8 tapes using S-Video out, maybe use the Y wired AUX to RCA audio only if there’s no line out. Besides that however, the industry standard as you described it is the surefire way to follow.
@@damian9303 I'm not too familiar with the elgatoo product lines, I bought one and threw it away. I'm not sure but also with the hardware encoding that I forgot to mention is that it limits frame rate to 30fps however with VHS interlaced frames, you can achieve ~60fps. So they also throw away half the data that exists on your tapes. If you can use 3rd party software with a n elgatoo and lossless codecs, then I agree for most use cases it would be sufficient but I'm skeptical they have the bandwidth to transfer raw uncompressed data over USB - ie 20-30 GB per hour of playback.
@@jheins3 20-30GB should be handled fine even by USB2, *if* the device supports it. USB2=480Mb/s = 60MB/s = 216GB per hour, minus overheads. From my calculations, the data size would be larger, but should still be handled fine. eg: NTSC = 360(if capturing interlaced) x 480 x 12 bits bit depth x 60 fields per second / 8(bits to bytes) = 15MB/s = 900MB/min = 54GB/hour. It could be smaller on the disk, using a lossless codec.
@@DoubleMonoLR you're missing the point it may be able to handle it but I don't know a single consumer or professional device that can send uncompressed raw incoming video streams via USB (it may exist but I'm unaware). The problem is the consumer grade elgatoo USB sticks compress via hardware to MKV or MP4 prior to sending it. This makes the video impossible to improve or edit. With these devices you get what you get and have little to no hope in the future of improving the quality because you threw away 50%+ of the data from the get go.
Obs works on mac but im not sure about the denoising software or the editor. There might be different software out there that does the same stuff with mac but you would need to google it.
Will any vcr work that has 4 head or does it have to be the same as yours including noise reduction? I have a couple but idk if ill need to buy another one to get the same results as you
@@TheBenCrazy what about the order hardware like the capture card etc.. does cost of it make a difference also? I heard it does but not to sure, your way is the best ive seen & cheapest. I just dont wanna run into problems with the video or audio feed.
@@GAGAMONSTER152 The cost of equipment is not everything, its also being able to setup the hardware and software. This video should show you what you're getting yourself into. Yes it would be easier to send it to someone to get it done professionally but its prohibitely expensive. Could get a vcr dvd combo and record to dvds but they are typically low quality and now you're stuck with dvds to convert. The way in the video is the in-between, somewhat costly and takes time to setup but you get high quality in return.
usually the one which was used to record the tape will work best, funny enough. And no, doesnt need to be a four head machine, mono will do fine, just make sure you tick the boxes for mono audio input in whatever software you use to capture the tape. Most importantly, the machine should work ok, at best let it have a service and cleaning bc those things can collect a lof of dust and dirt over the years.
Hi Ben, I'm using a VCR Panasonic AG 5210, a TBC 1000 (Datavideo) and capture video blackmagic thunderbolt plus Vegas Pro 14. Does Neatvideo work over 64 bits?
Upscaling for the archive doesn't make sense. More storage space, and no possibility of denoising and only sharpening horizontally later with AI. I never understood what the upscaling nonsense was all about. All of my devices can still play PAL.
In my experience, I had way better results along with how cheap and fast it is with Neat Video. Topaz has all the buzz but neat video is much better. ua-cam.com/video/Y-Oeo2oFZ5g/v-deo.html
I use Sony Vegas V.4 (not pro) with windows 10 without any problem and also Neat video for denoising. I use a Panasonic S-Vhs NV HS950 which is connected to the bypass of a Sony camera, thus instant conversion to digital from analogue, and then feed to it to my computer via firewire. The results are excellent. I use sharpening in Vegas first at around .200 and then I denoise the video. I have been converting some old slap stick comedies and the image is always perfect on the monitor but after I have rendered and burnt to DVD I have a problem with parallel lines periodically showing up in the image. I had previously tried denoising and then sharpening with Vegas but that was actually worse. I had read that TBC can cause this problem so I reloaded the tape with TBC turned off but it made no difference. I would welcome any thoughts from you, P.S I use Pal as I am is New Zealand but you seem to me to have excellent knowledge in this area, thanks Allan
If you're playing off of the DVD in a DVD player, the resolution you should render in is 720x576 for PAL. Another issue is all DVD players play interlaced (probably the cause of the lines) so try rendering it interlaced instead of progressive. Lastly, PAL frame rates are 25 and 50 so make sure you're using one of those. Hope this helps!
@@TheBenCrazy Thanks for that, I have been rendering with the setting at interlaced but have also tried progressive which of course gave worse results. I realise there are two fields per frame at 50 cycles. The image is good until I use both sharpen and Neat video to improve it. The image is really good once this is done but periodically these parallel lines show up particularly on anything with a curve in it. However, thanks for your response I appreciate you giving it some thought, Allan.
@@ajthecat2 What you need to do is to use Deinterlace so you can get rid of the interlace image, i prefer to use Topaz AI, but a lot of software has the de-interlace option.
I've been looking for a decent video on how to do this. What I find aggravating about this video is that you use software, hardware, and and settings without explaining WHY people should choose them in setting up the capture. For instance, why use the upscaler vs buying an RCA to HDMI adapter? Why did you select certain resolutions vs. others? Not deep enough, I'm moving on.
The upscaler makes (personal opinion) a cleaner image than getting a straight signal from rca to hdmi. VHS is interlaced 30 frames a second. That means half of each frame is rendered at what would be now 60 frames a second, so 60 frames is what i recommend. Not sure what you mean by resolutions. 1080p vs 4k? You could if you have the file space. 16:9 vs 4:3? 16:9 would look stretched out since it was originally recorded in 4:3. Hope that helps
It's more of how not to capture VHS tapes. True capture cards and devices follow the D1 standard a.k.a rec.601 that the founding fathers of digital capture set back in the 80's. HDMI capture and OBS do not follow those rules.
I see you a lot in the comment section of a lot of VHS videos and it seems like you’re never satisfied no matter how hard people try. You always seem to be complaining about “it should be done this way” or “you shouldn’t use this JVC SVHS video player you should be using that JVC SVHS video player because it has a built-in TBC.” I also find it ironic you said “this is how you should not capture VHS tapes” considering about 90% to 95% of all videos on UA-cam and the Internet that were taken from VHS tapes are never in the proper framerate, wrong aspect ratio, colours are all off, either too dark or too light and very heavily compressed to 144p or 240p that you can’t see a thing. If anything, this is one of the better examples I’ve seen on VHS capture. At the end of the day this is VHS we are talking about, only 240 lines of resolution compared to today which a lot of television sets are now in 4K (2160 lines) it is never going to look as good as the original broadcast tape or The original master tape. And as for you saying those do not follow those rules, so what? Times have changed, remember when we used to capture celluloid movie film using optical telecine and now we capture it frame by frame? I don’t see anyone complaining about that. If it works it works. TheBenCrazy, Great video, keep up the good work. As for you Capturing Memories, I do apologise if I do seem a bit harsh, however if I don’t say it, no one else will. Thanks.
@@stressball1324 First you are not trying hard for me, It's your videos. Second when I see something not right I have the public right to speak up, I'm not forcing anyone to dis-follow you and never wrote a guide on how to capture VHS because there isn't such guide, There are better and worse methods but no specific guide. As to times have changed, No VHS never changed it's an old format defined by a standard and once captured in that standard it can be brought to the 21st century by converting it properly to another standards, there is nothing wrong with that, I've done it on my videos and some of my customers requested it.
@@Capturing-Memories 1. I wasn’t trying to please you, I was criticising the fact that you seemed like you were commenting in other videos in a rude manner saying “this is not the best VCR, this VCR is the best one to use.” Etc.. 2. You have the public right to speak up in the same way I have the public right to criticise you when I think you’re being apathetic. The fact of the matter is that this is a anorak hobby/job and a very confusing and complicated one at that, I am personally grateful when I see a VHS video shown in its actual frame rate as it’s not very common on this website or the Internet for that matter. I just wanted to make you think twice, it doesn’t hurt to be nice.
LOL, no AviSynth? Come on now, if you want the best looking VHS, AviSynth is the only tool that can do it with the appropriate plugins, also never record something and then proceed to deinterlace it at the same time, uff.
never use a cvbs to hdmi upscaler! never use 3.5mm cables! never use elgato! dont use 60 for the fps. vhs is 30000/1001 interlaced! also use quicktime if you are using h.264 though neat video is good
u made 3x click process so complicated.. i hope there is something about real video restoring, like frames reconstruction. but no. just typical american video how to make things which are in the first place explained in the instructions of every analog video grabber that u buys..
MAN this is total Bullcrap this "tutorial" HDMI upscaler, 60P, mid 90's VCR's (multi cards types, rats nest known junk), all wrong here, trust me guys)
Great video everything proven vhs tapes proven it doesn't stop playing at all it's the people who stops playing it yet everything proven vhs tapes don't have picture quality problem's at all it's the TVs proven there are the problem
you gave such bad advice, denoising is NOT a RESTORE, its more like polishing ancient coins, a crime. 1st you are rendering in vegas an additional generation is lost, rendering is a lossy format. while you could achieve the same 4:3 scaling in OBS, or use a better (proper) capture card. if you use MKV not mp4 , you can cut the parts you want out, using lossless cut. no loss of a generation, no re-rendering and its as fast as your hard drive. 2. denoise DOES NOT IMPROVE anything, noise is part of life and the original footage . you will always loose detail and VHS has little detail anyway. if anything you would sharpen just a little bit, which you can do via OBS without loosing a generation.
Why are you saying demonizing doesn’t improve anything. Yeah noise is part of the original tape but you are going to digital. With digital you have to compress to a viewing codec. VHS is noisy. Compression relies on redundancies. Noise isn’t redundant. Noise doesn’t compress well. You need to de noise but go lossless then de noise before you go to macroblocks. Don’t capture to a compressed codec. OBS is screen recording software. It’s not meant for capturing.
@@duncanmacleod2136 OBS is general software and works great with capturing hardware , not just screens, while what you said about noise and codecs IS CORRECT in principal and for low bandwidth, BUT for archiving purposes, and considering standard resolution material (not HD/FHD/4k), all modern codecs such as h.265 will preserve all details including noise , you don't need to go easy on modern codecs, just give them sufficient bitrate, after all , hard disk storage is huge these days, never been cheaper, DENOISING = butchering , smearing, loss of detail , loss of original look, loss of originality, CANNOT BE UNDONE, lost forever if you are archiving old tapes never to be read ever again, denoising is not how you archive, its a crime.
@ OBS isn’t capture software. VHS is standard definition. The resolution is set. H.264 is a lossy delivery codec. It was never meant to be captured to. Lossy means it throws out information. That’s how it gets too such a small size. That is it’s purpose reducing size so it can be shared. It averages color information within a macroblock. You don’t want multiple lossy encodes. Capture to something like Huffy. It’s a lossless codec. Which means it doesn’t lose information. When it is decoded it is the same information as when it was encoded. You denoise and edit when it is lossless and then compress once it is cleaned up. You can have multiple lossless encodes without messing up your content. H.265 is great for higher resolution video as a delivery codec but it doesn’t handle analog noise well. It uses bigger macroblocks. H.265 It’s strange that you say denoising can’t be undone because really the things that can’t be undone are what is done during capture. You can go back to your capture file and just re edit and then not denoise if you want. If you capture to compressed or the wrong aspect ratio then that’s a recapture. Denoising isn’t that damaging if it’s a lossless video. Svideo prevents sone noise. Good hardware reduces noise then get rid of more noise in software. I would look into how compression works.
@@duncanmacleod2136 You are welcome to capture to lossless with all noise , and burry it deep in your archive where no one will ever get access to it, and it will get wiped after your passing. and publish washed out "denoised" video god forbid someone will see a spec. but lets be practical, all conversion houses capture directly to h.264, no processing, sometimes with god awful capture devices such as elgato, directly into an mp4, charge $$$ and call it a day. I recommend just capture to high bitrate highly efficient h.265 which NVIDIA cards and even intel gen8 and above do in hardware real time, with the noise and call it a day, I de interlace on a 2nd pass for 60P INTERPOLATED , the smoothness of 60fps and minimal artifacts, the type of "look" is not a technical choice as there are many way to go about de interlacing, and it boils down to personal preference, I use some SHARPENING which increases details and some noise, for hand filmed shaky video I add some frame stabilization so that we don't get sea sick. If uploading to UA-cam, you have to fool youtube cause their SD480 degrades when they re-encode, so I blow it up to FHD, this fools YT, so you get the best possible look on the other side. REMEMEBR, before video, we all watched Hawaii5.0 and Starsky & Hatch, and Knight Rider, ALL ON FILM and ALL WITH TONS OF GRAIN, no one complained about noise. DONT MAKE boring glass smeared looking video, no one will watch it.
@@xprcloud H.264 (MP4 container) isn’t optimized for interlaced video. That can lead to a lot of artifacts. That’s just a really cheap easy way to get some kind of video. H.264 is supposed to be encoded to after deinterlacing with a good deinterlacer like QTGMC. Sharpening is done after noise reduction so that you aren’t sharpening noise. You just don’t want to overdue noise reduction. That’s when you get the loss of detail and all of that. That’s best handled in scripting like Avisynth. Selur’s hybrid provides a GUI that reduces the learning curve compared to using Avisynth in Pmod.
Hi there Ben,
I'm following every step to set up OBS and I am finding (probably due to a different Capture Card ) is that I am not being offered CPQ. Unfortunately I will be using CRF which will create a larger file.
Do I need to install some kind of external Laptop hardware for that kind of memory need?
Anyway, I thought I might, with your permission of course, post my quick research notes on how to accommodate this very important CRF = Constant Rate Factor for the highest quality?
I do hope you don't mind some great discussion on your Chanel?
This is just what I found online to tell me how to adjust the CRF.
"CRF (Constant Rate Factor)
x264 only
Similar to how CQP gives you a range of 0 to 30, with the lower numbers being better quality, CRF ranges from 0 to 51, with around 17 to 24 being considered ‘good quality’. Approximately every 6 points will double your file size, and as you can imagine, subtracting 6 will halve it."
The files might be larger but you can always use software like handbrake to lower the file size if you're running out of space (though the quality will be lower).
@@TheBenCrazy Hi again, This is news to me. I thought Handbrake was only to rip DVDs. I'm going to look into it.
By any chance, have you tried to capture your live TV yet?
Connecting a laptop to a HDMI is easy, but getting it to come out in the other direction? Well this guy is doing it
using two splitters. I'm so tired of new technology turnover that eats my money. Mind you, HDMI tv is incredible!
Happy Canada Day eh!
UA-cam; How to record Capture DVR Live TV NETFLIX AMAZON VIDEO GAMES ANYTHING in 1080p
Thank you for researching and sharing. My computer is the same no CPQ but I do have CRP so I’ve made the adjustments you suggest. Thank you
I really appreciate that you went through this ENTIRE process without mentioning the BIG ASS watermark that this demo adds to your project.
Think you mean the bentire process
you can also fix the aspect ratio straight in obs by adding the "scaling/aspect ratio" filter to the capturecard and setting it to 4:3 and then losslessly cut the beginning and end with lossless cut
I recently got a Panasonic DMP-BD70v to capture some old VHS tapes directly from the HDMI output. Figured it’d be the best way to get as much of an HD capture from the source as possible.
Wow, that is an awesome machine! Definitely a great option to get a clean HDMI feed from the tapes
Combo decks are generally not recommended. The best option is to find a VHS player with TBC. One of the most regarded VHS players for digitizing is the Panasonic AG-1980P. This has S-Video out & a built in TBC. S-Video (or HDMI) will give the best image - albeit HDMI is overkill and you probably won't reap any benefit as your deck is not suitable for archiving/digitizing footage, or capable of producing a video output capable of restoration.
The best option is use a DV cam fireware, a S-VHS VCR, S-video cable to DV cam, Record DV 4.3 interlace format.
The AVI is a strong file to make any post production without loss.
Exactly. His RCA cable in the workflow just loses way too much info to begin with. I know there are some VHS decks with component output, that'd be the ultimate goal to extract every last bit of detail from the tape.
@@miguelescutia1928 You can find a test of VCRs VHS mono x S-VHS stereo Hi-Fi playing the same tape in the playlist "VHS, S-VHS, D-VHS Memory Rescue"
Sound, colors and stability image is much better digitizing with S-VHS VCR.
I wouldn't necessarily say it's the best, but it can certainly be very good. It seems the DV codec can also lose some of the chroma(colour) information, as it seemingly uses 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.
I have the firewire setup but looking into doing this method instead. How do you get the upscaling with the firewire method? Is it the same as exporting HD from Premiere?
@@jorge242 need create a 1080 60p sequence, upscale and set color, sharp etc.
There are plenty of used VHS to DVD recorders that are very good, at least in my country those are far more common than the cheap variety.
Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, and perhaps Samsung make good ones, for a start. These almost always also correct a lot of the video signal timing issues, and reduce noise via a high quality '3d' comb filter. The VHS decks in them probably aren't the best, but they're certainly not bad(and most or all are 'VHS HQ' models which can squeeze out a little more quality, depending on the recording), and most will likely have had far less use than older standalone VHS machines. I think any of these are likely to give an image at least of similar quality to the method above, while being very simple and not requiring a computer to be connected for hours.
They are steadily increasing in value, because they're a good, easy option. It won't give you the absolute best image(neither will the method above), but it's more than good enough for most.
Upscaling before capture may not be a good idea, relying on cheap converters to deinterlace and scale the image seems unlikely to give the best image. The video is then being scaled again anyway(to get back to the correct aspect ratio) afterwards. As the video is being re-encoded again(when de-noising etc) afterwards, upscaling & de-interlacing could've been done at this stage(at higher quality) anyway.
The 'downscale filter' option in OBS won't do anything, the chosen input & output resolutions are the same - there is no scaling.
I have the following setup:
1. Panasonic NV-HS1000/Loewe OC3800H
2. Mini Av2Hdmi upscaler look similar to your one
3. Avermedia EzRecorder 300 Standalone Capture box.
I have a tape that play well with two major dropouts (tape damaged by other vcr) if I connect the vcr to tv using cvbs cables.
If i use the upscaler there are more dropouts sometimes it display a blue screen then the image came back.
Do you have an idea how to solve it ? I want to capture complete image including the dropouts but not to replace dropouts with blue screen.
A workaround is to edit the captured video with premiere pro apply scene detection then delete all the blue screens generated by the upscaler. With this both video and sound are choppy.
You would probably need a Time Base Corrector to get through the bad section. These are very expensive. Some people use old DVD recorders from Panasonic to achieve similar results. The DMR-ES10 is supposed to be the best at this. You run directly out of the VCR into the DVR, the signal passes through and then run the DVR into your existing setup.
Your footage seem overal nice and clear, but do you have advice on S-VHS footage that is full of white flickering scratches? Is there some kind of software that can digitally clean up the white tape scratches? Adjusting the tracking and cleaning the video heads did not help to improve the output footage :( So I'm hoping a software solution might help; something like neatvideo but I'm not sure if neatvideo can remove the kind of white flickering scratches we're talking about.
Hello, this might be a VCR issue if it is happening on all of your tapes when playing back. Not sure if neatvideo can fix it but it's better to try to fix it before having to do anything in post. I found this website although it seems like you have tried most of these steps. Another option is looking for a local repair shop to see if they can resolve the head tracking or lastly, get a different VCR.
www.freevideoworkshop.com/fix-vhs-tape-flickering/
What about if its done been converted to DVD but is grainy and kinda pixilated. Can it be restored if its on dvd ?
You could do the aspect ratio at the beginning to 4:3 - 1440x1080
If you plan to Upscale your video with an A.I. after it is recorded, is it better to rip the VHS in it's native 480p resolution and skip the upscaler device?
@asdad asdasd So are you saying:
"No, don't use the (hardware) upscaler device"
or
"No don't use an A.I. upscaler (such as Topaz)"
I love Neat Video, I use it every day on my modem day 4K footage. But, I actually like to leave in the noise and grain on VHS footage. I guess it’s all a matter of taste.
I've got a Canopus AVDC converter unit that can feed VHS directly thru the Canopus and thru firewire into my Adobe Premier Pro capture program and then after loading and building onto timeline in adobe premier pro go out thru the adobe Media encoder 2023 and trying to decide the best format for the project to be digitized for transfer to a thumbdrive ,,,,,, the results aren't what I would consider 'good' .
Often on playback a video tape will display some weird squiggly lines running across the entire screen at the bottom of the screen about a centimater high. How do you get rid of those? Can you crop out that on the video capture with software? Do you need a new vcr? Or do you need image stabilizer?
That line is a VCR head switch noise. It preserves on all VCRs i know. This area doesn't contain any useful signal so you can just crop it out. However a centimeter high line is abnormal i guess. Usually it barely visible.
Hey Ben! I don't know why some express the aspect ratio as "by". A ratio is one "to" another. Resolution is one "by" another. Examples. 1920"by" "x"1080, 16 "to"" :"9
I have a Panasonic DMR-E75V. Do I need any extra hardware?
If my research is correct on that device, you could either record them to dvds and rip the dvds onto your PC or you can still use a capture card to record the digital video.
@@TheBenCrazy thanks so much!
Hi Ben - Why didn't you just use a composite/S-Video capture device connected via USB?
Shouldnt the resolution be in 4:3 instead of 16:9?
Nice video for working VHS. But you don't mention what you do if all you see is static noise in the video? I can hear the audio but no visual. Nothing you can do right? That's what I was actually hoping to find here.
Anyone can explain me what's happened here at 0:45? ua-cam.com/video/w0m5wa5kKBc/v-deo.html
Looks like its something what makes damaged tape parts masked. Its some kind of TBC or vcr function?
You could've stretch the aspect ratio on OBS for capturing VHS tapes.
CAN PEOPLE PAY YOU TO DO IT?
Hey Ben, just a quick question, any particular reason you prefer the other video recorder over the El Gato default one?
Out of the Elgato recorders out at the time of making the video, it was the best one. I think right now the HD60 X is the best external capture card but again, any capture card that can record at 1080 60fps will do the job since we are essentially capturing 480 60fps (30 interlaced) video.
Thanks that was a really good video. 👍
does the capture device accept windows system
?
I would recommend purchasing a dvd vhs combo that has an hdmi output. Then using your capture device so your not losing any quality with rca analog.
Did you have those nascar videos on regular tape or on chrome?I have many music and snl videos on chrome BASF's.The lsat time i accessed them about 10-12 years ago, there was no quality loss on them.I'm planning to transfer them in the coming months,hopefully the recordings didn't deteriorate.
Amazing job! Thorough without being wordy!
For me, it's different because I used a DVD recorder to record Music Videos off MTV , VH1 and other music channels back in the 2000s and early 2010s so I instead used DVD ripping software to copy the DVD to mp4.
Yup, or better yet use MakeMKV. Free software that makes sure you get the highest quality rip from dvds and blurays
Hi Ben, thank you for this lesson, I've purchased everything as suggested, but the capture stutters terribly and cannot record. I'm guessing my computer is not powerful enough to handle everything. So I am looking into buying a new system. Could you please tell me what computer, you use?... the graphics card and anything else I would need to make sure my computer has, in order to use these upscale and capture components. Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm hoping to buy a new computer in the next couple of weeks.
Hello, I have a ryzen 3800x with a gtx 1080 for the computer i capture on but you can get a waaay cheaper computer than what I have to make this work.
If you're looking at laptops the Lenovo IdeaPads with a rtx 3050 is a really good deal.
Desktop side you should be able yo get a used one pretty cheaply. Just got to check what year the cpu and gpu in it was made (look for 2019 and higher) and you should be set.
OMGosh, thank you for getting back to me so quickly! You are the best, and a great resource. I have subscribed as well. I will look into these suggestions and cant wait to produce high quality restorations as you have done! Have a fab day!
@@TheBenCrazy I just realized you mentioned these specs are for the computer you "capture" on, I'll be editing also on the same computer (I do have Vegas pro as well) is your editing computer stronger? Is there something I should make sure I have for that? My finished film will be 1.5 hours. Again thank you, I'm sorry if this is all mentioned in your other films. In time I will watch them all! Thanks, Gary
Yup, same computer and again, anything modern with the specs I recommended should be able to handle both just fine
I recently tried this for the first time. I'm waiting for an Elgarto card to arrive to try again. My biggest issue is the size of the finished file. 2.5 hour video in MP4 comes out at 8.6gb. Is that normal? If I try to do all my family videos, it's going to require a serious amount of storage
Yes, that is a normal amount. You can use handbrake to lower the size but it will also lower the quality. I really don't recommend that cause in the future when storage is larger and cheaper, now you have lower quality videos to remake
Hey Ben! Is there any reason you recommend recording in 16:9 and scaling to 4:3 in post, vs just recording in 4:3?
The av to hdmi converter forced me to do that because it stretched it. If you're able to record it at 4:3, do it
@@TheBenCrazy Makes sense. Thanks for the help!
Hi! Thanks very much for this great video. I’m looking to transfer/clean up very old VHS tapes from the early to mid-80’s. Because of their age, these tapes are prone to bad tracking and noise problems, as well as being quite fragile and prone to damage. I’ve already had tapes damaged by my current players (a Sharp VC-H972 and one of those DVD/VCR combos you mentioned as a no-no). Based on your experience, what might be the best VHS player option for tapes that old? You mentioned JVC HRS8000U &
SONY SLV-700 HF. Do you think one of those two would be the best bet?
Any tape player with 4 heads from the early to mid 90s should be fine. Sony and JVC are good brands to buy
@@TheBenCrazy Thanks very much!!
An issue I'm running into is while running the video through the upscaler, the picture keeps cutting in and out. It seems to work just fine when I run the vcr straight to a tv, but upscaler to tv or computer cuts out.
Is there any way to connect the vhs to tv through analogue, then record from the tv to my computer through hdmi?
Or would a better upscaler possibly help?
Could be the upscaler losing signal. Try a different rca cable to make sure its not a bad connection, otherwise a different upscaler might be needed. Does it happen on other vhs tapes or just one?
@@TheBenCrazy Some vhs work better than others. All of them work normally when played on a tv.
You can’t digitize a VHS through HDMI from an analog TV. VHS is analog. Digital is digital. Analog signal is fluctuating current. Digital is bits. A capture card gives a digital representation of your analog media. There’s a reason you don’t get static and a noisy picture anymore. It’s digital. So it’s compression artifacts. This method he is using isn’t good. You can play a VHS through a combo unit but that is because it has a DAC (digital to analog converter) in combo units. It’ll make a mess of the interlacing though. What he is doing really doesn’t make sense as far as aspect ratio. 4 by 3 is what it’s supposed to be captured in. 720 by 480 then square pixels for UA-cam which is 640 by 480. That plays better on UA-cam. That’s better than pillarboxing a 16 by nine.
Excellent explanation! Thanks for sharing. Do you have the '96 year in review and RCR Shop tour VHS tapes? Been looking for those online.
Just get a GV USB2 and capture in the correct aspect ratio in OBS
for some reason when recording obs just loses the signal to the vhs for a few seconds, any idea on why that is?
Is it on a particular tape? Ive seen where the upscaler will say no signal if a tape has bad tracking
@@TheBenCrazy I think its the video player, I setup a 2nd one I had and it had no problems at all, thanks for the reply
@@TheBenCrazy do you know anyway to stop obs losing signel when the vhs is tracking? I've been trying to figure it out and have come up with nothing, is there any other capture software to use that might not do that? sorry to keep bothering you
All good, are you seeing no signal by itself or no signal from the elgato? If its by itself, its from the upscaler and its because the tape tracking is causing it. If its from the elgato, go into the elgato software and double check the settings. Then add the elgato in obs again and see if it gets a picture. If you're able to upload a quick video of what you see and link it on UA-cam, that will help me more to troubleshoot
@@TheBenCrazy I read up alot about it and its the elgato not being able to keep the signal when the video loses tracking so im trying something new, i've aquired a dvd recorder from gumtree and am now recording my videos onto the HDD on that and am then gonna record them from there onto my laptop
Do you offer a service to enhance a Mp4 format video to a 1080p or 4k level with Audio modifications?
What’s with this world? Old clips are trended to be remastered, and nowadays so many people use VHS filter on modern cameras to look cool. A little amazed by the fact.
Dear Ben, hope all is well with you. Thank you for the video. Would it still work, if I hired the services of a company to do the video capture, and then apply the post production techniques later on? As much as I would love to do all the stages myself, I would have to purchase two different VCRs (one for cleaning the tapes and another for the capture) and that will not be possible. Also, after downloading the Vegas editor, when it opens up, it says Photo Director on the upper right hand corner. It does not give me the option of uploading an MP4 video. Anything I am doing wrong? Thanks
Interesting that your intro clip is at 30p, while the one at the end is at 60p. Did you use different tools to capture them? Also, your setup is too elaborate, you don't get picture that looks better than with a simpler setup, and you get your aspect ratio all screwed up in the process, which you need to correct in an NLE.
#TheBenCrazy if I have a vhs with composite output and i get a composite to hdmi adaptor, will the translation of the original vhs tape be better when digitizing?
I would think so
I have an EasyCAP composite to USB device. Setting this up as the capture device in OBS results in 4:3 aspect ratio, but I'm not using an extra upscaler before this capture device. Using the OBS settings suggested here, OBS still outputs a 1920x1080 video file, essentially upscaling the resulting video file. Is there an advantage to using an upscaler device + capture card versus just using a composite capture device if OBS is going to upscale it anyway? If not, then the external upscaler is just adding an extra step to have to fix the aspect ratio with little benefit otherwise.
If you go into the description, I linked a video from Technology Connections which is mainly what I based my settings off of. I highly recommend watching it to get a better idea why I set it up this way using the upscaler. In your situation, it's not necessarily needed but I felt it looked better and made it easier to capture since it converted it to HDMI which is what my capture card uses
@@TheBenCrazy Cool, I'll check it out. I also have an upscaler and an HDMI capture device, so I'm just trying to weigh the pros and cons of each for the best quality. Great video, your OBS and restoration tips have been a huge help!
Hi Ben - I'm confused by one thing. Your description and schematic shows a USB out of the HD60 S+ to the computer. I have that capture card but it only has HDMI out not USB? What am I missin g??
One side should have a hdmi and a usb c which the usb goes to your pc
@@TheBenCrazy Got it! Thank you!
Thanks for sharing. Good setup.
Hi there, I am enjoying this lesson very much.
This lesson makes me want to drop Corel Video Studio which does not have any external plug insssssss available however, I looked up Sony Vegas and it states that it is available for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. I'm running Windows 10.
Could I please ask, which video editor would you suggest to work with Windows 10 that does not involve buying into a subscription?
Thanks!
They're plenty of free ones out there. I would suggest Davinci Resolve (close to adobe premier but takes some learning), vsdc is good, and openshot is good for starting out but is missing features you would get in a more complex editor
@@TheBenCrazy Hi Ben, Thanks guy!
B.T.W. My hubby is a Nascar armchair driver, and knows all the characters. He said you restoration was better than the tv he watched some of his original games on.
I'm slowly getting through the Specs on your list of possible video editors. I am trying to find a decent editor that will support the noise profile offered by Neat Video. What a great utility!
DiVinci is for windows 8.1, VSDC is for Windows 10, but it doesn't look like it will accept the Neat plug in.
Openshot isn't a bad little editor, especially for Free. Nice junior editor.
I am going to look at the other editors mentioned in your lesson that will couple with the noise reduction plug in.
Happy Canada Day or July 4th!
When I try to download Neat Video my computers thinks it's a virus and stops the download.
I believe you would get essentially the IDENTICAL result using the Elgato consumer device. It would require no additional software or effort. The Elgato produces VHS captures that have very little noise. Looking at your results on this video, I think you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish them from the Elgato. Give it a try.
Elgato (and this device) both hardware compress the incoming stream AFAIK - essentially making restoration impossible. For archiving video, neither of these devices - or OBS studio are recommended. The "industry" accepted workflow is generailly: capture from a high quality VHS player with TBC using VirtualDub, recording in AVI, Avisynth/Virtualdub for converting to a lossy or other lossless format, QTGMC for deinterlacing (noise/artifact removal), then desnoising with a product like NeatVideo. And then linearly editing in Premiere or similar.
@@jheins3 That’s why you get the HD60S since the S stands for software, it’s only the regular HD60 which has a built-in hardware encoder. I only loosely recommend using these HDMI devices with 4:3 output settings on OBS if you’re digitalizing S-VHS or (more commonly) Hi8 tapes using S-Video out, maybe use the Y wired AUX to RCA audio only if there’s no line out. Besides that however, the industry standard as you described it is the surefire way to follow.
@@damian9303 I'm not too familiar with the elgatoo product lines, I bought one and threw it away. I'm not sure but also with the hardware encoding that I forgot to mention is that it limits frame rate to 30fps however with VHS interlaced frames, you can achieve ~60fps. So they also throw away half the data that exists on your tapes.
If you can use 3rd party software with a n elgatoo and lossless codecs, then I agree for most use cases it would be sufficient but I'm skeptical they have the bandwidth to transfer raw uncompressed data over USB - ie 20-30 GB per hour of playback.
@@jheins3 20-30GB should be handled fine even by USB2, *if* the device supports it. USB2=480Mb/s = 60MB/s = 216GB per hour, minus overheads. From my calculations, the data size would be larger, but should still be handled fine.
eg: NTSC = 360(if capturing interlaced) x 480 x 12 bits bit depth x 60 fields per second / 8(bits to bytes) = 15MB/s = 900MB/min = 54GB/hour. It could be smaller on the disk, using a lossless codec.
@@DoubleMonoLR you're missing the point it may be able to handle it but I don't know a single consumer or professional device that can send uncompressed raw incoming video streams via USB (it may exist but I'm unaware).
The problem is the consumer grade elgatoo USB sticks compress via hardware to MKV or MP4 prior to sending it. This makes the video impossible to improve or edit.
With these devices you get what you get and have little to no hope in the future of improving the quality because you threw away 50%+ of the data from the get go.
Do either of these softwares work on MAC?
Obs works on mac but im not sure about the denoising software or the editor. There might be different software out there that does the same stuff with mac but you would need to google it.
Another great piece of software besides OBS for capturing VHS tapes is VirtualDub.
Will any vcr work that has 4 head or does it have to be the same as yours including noise reduction? I have a couple but idk if ill need to buy another one to get the same results as you
Any vcr will work. 4 head vcrs have better quality which is why i recommended them
@@TheBenCrazy what about the order hardware like the capture card etc.. does cost of it make a difference also? I heard it does but not to sure, your way is the best ive seen & cheapest. I just dont wanna run into problems with the video or audio feed.
@@GAGAMONSTER152 The cost of equipment is not everything, its also being able to setup the hardware and software. This video should show you what you're getting yourself into. Yes it would be easier to send it to someone to get it done professionally but its prohibitely expensive. Could get a vcr dvd combo and record to dvds but they are typically low quality and now you're stuck with dvds to convert. The way in the video is the in-between, somewhat costly and takes time to setup but you get high quality in return.
usually the one which was used to record the tape will work best, funny enough. And no, doesnt need to be a four head machine, mono will do fine, just make sure you tick the boxes for mono audio input in whatever software you use to capture the tape. Most importantly, the machine should work ok, at best let it have a service and cleaning bc those things can collect a lof of dust and dirt over the years.
Excellent! Concise, to the point and very thorough!
Hi Ben, I'm using a VCR Panasonic AG 5210, a TBC 1000 (Datavideo) and capture video blackmagic thunderbolt plus Vegas Pro 14. Does Neatvideo work over 64 bits?
It should
I have the JVC HR-S5800U VCR and I'm using the
Hi! I set everything as you are showing and still the audio is not being recorded I don't know why :(
Make sure that you change the audio from hdmi to the 3.5mm in the elgato software
One of the most direct, and clear to understand videos on this subject. Thank you for this effort. Very helpful.
i get no auido everything is grayed out
Thank you for this.
This is awesome!
Upscaling for the archive doesn't make sense. More storage space, and no possibility of denoising and only sharpening horizontally later with AI. I never understood what the upscaling nonsense was all about. All of my devices can still play PAL.
Topaz video enhance AI is a game changer for this type of project.
In my experience, I had way better results along with how cheap and fast it is with Neat Video. Topaz has all the buzz but neat video is much better.
ua-cam.com/video/Y-Oeo2oFZ5g/v-deo.html
I use Sony Vegas V.4 (not pro) with windows 10 without any problem and also Neat video for denoising. I use a Panasonic S-Vhs NV HS950 which is connected to the bypass of a Sony camera, thus instant conversion to digital from analogue, and then feed to it to my computer via firewire. The results are excellent. I use sharpening in Vegas first at around .200 and then I denoise the video. I have been converting some old slap stick comedies and the image is always perfect on the monitor but after I have rendered and burnt to DVD I have a problem with parallel lines periodically showing up in the image. I had previously tried denoising and then sharpening with Vegas but that was actually worse. I had read that TBC can cause this problem so I reloaded the tape with TBC turned off but it made no difference. I would welcome any thoughts from you, P.S I use Pal as I am is New Zealand but you seem to me to have excellent knowledge in this area, thanks Allan
If you're playing off of the DVD in a DVD player, the resolution you should render in is 720x576 for PAL. Another issue is all DVD players play interlaced (probably the cause of the lines) so try rendering it interlaced instead of progressive. Lastly, PAL frame rates are 25 and 50 so make sure you're using one of those.
Hope this helps!
@@TheBenCrazy Thanks for that, I have been rendering with the setting at interlaced but have also tried progressive which of course gave worse results. I realise there are two fields per frame at 50 cycles. The image is good until I use both sharpen and Neat video to improve it. The image is really good once this is done but periodically these parallel lines show up particularly on anything with a curve in it. However, thanks for your response I appreciate you giving it some thought, Allan.
@@ajthecat2 What you need to do is to use Deinterlace so you can get rid of the interlace image, i prefer to use Topaz AI, but a lot of software has the de-interlace option.
You can capture with potplayer.
Very helpful and detailed. Thank you!
Nice video
I've been looking for a decent video on how to do this. What I find aggravating about this video is that you use software, hardware, and and settings without explaining WHY people should choose them in setting up the capture. For instance, why use the upscaler vs buying an RCA to HDMI adapter? Why did you select certain resolutions vs. others? Not deep enough, I'm moving on.
The upscaler makes (personal opinion) a cleaner image than getting a straight signal from rca to hdmi. VHS is interlaced 30 frames a second. That means half of each frame is rendered at what would be now 60 frames a second, so 60 frames is what i recommend. Not sure what you mean by resolutions. 1080p vs 4k? You could if you have the file space. 16:9 vs 4:3? 16:9 would look stretched out since it was originally recorded in 4:3. Hope that helps
It's more of how not to capture VHS tapes. True capture cards and devices follow the D1 standard a.k.a rec.601 that the founding fathers of digital capture set back in the 80's. HDMI capture and OBS do not follow those rules.
I see you a lot in the comment section of a lot of VHS videos and it seems like you’re never satisfied no matter how hard people try. You always seem to be complaining about “it should be done this way” or “you shouldn’t use this JVC SVHS video player you should be using that JVC SVHS video player because it has a built-in TBC.”
I also find it ironic you said “this is how you should not capture VHS tapes” considering about 90% to 95% of all videos on UA-cam and the Internet that were taken from VHS tapes are never in the proper framerate, wrong aspect ratio, colours are all off, either too dark or too light and very heavily compressed to 144p or 240p that you can’t see a thing.
If anything, this is one of the better examples I’ve seen on VHS capture.
At the end of the day this is VHS we are talking about, only 240 lines of resolution compared to today which a lot of television sets are now in 4K (2160 lines) it is never going to look as good as the original broadcast tape or The original master tape.
And as for you saying those do not follow those rules, so what? Times have changed, remember when we used to capture celluloid movie film using optical telecine and now we capture it frame by frame? I don’t see anyone complaining about that. If it works it works.
TheBenCrazy, Great video, keep up the good work.
As for you Capturing Memories, I do apologise if I do seem a bit harsh, however if I don’t say it, no one else will.
Thanks.
@@stressball1324 He is right about this amatourish guide.
@@stressball1324 First you are not trying hard for me, It's your videos. Second when I see something not right I have the public right to speak up, I'm not forcing anyone to dis-follow you and never wrote a guide on how to capture VHS because there isn't such guide, There are better and worse methods but no specific guide.
As to times have changed, No VHS never changed it's an old format defined by a standard and once captured in that standard it can be brought to the 21st century by converting it properly to another standards, there is nothing wrong with that, I've done it on my videos and some of my customers requested it.
@@romekatomek1507 if this is considered amateurish to you I would hate to see what is considered awful.
@@Capturing-Memories
1. I wasn’t trying to please you, I was criticising the fact that you seemed like you were commenting in other videos in a rude manner saying “this is not the best VCR, this VCR is the best one to use.” Etc..
2. You have the public right to speak up in the same way I have the public right to criticise you when I think you’re being apathetic.
The fact of the matter is that this is a anorak hobby/job and a very confusing and complicated one at that, I am personally grateful when I see a VHS video shown in its actual frame rate as it’s not very common on this website or the Internet for that matter.
I just wanted to make you think twice, it doesn’t hurt to be nice.
I have a DVD/VHS player and I want to restore my special VHS collection
LOL, no AviSynth? Come on now, if you want the best looking VHS, AviSynth is the only tool that can do it with the appropriate plugins, also never record something and then proceed to deinterlace it at the same time, uff.
The people who is the problem not the vhs tape itself
I captured everything in 4k, then ran it through a doubler 5 times, giving me a videos that are 128K.
Fun fact: I have to do that more than 30 times! 🥴
Library
never use a cvbs to hdmi upscaler!
never use 3.5mm cables!
never use elgato!
dont use 60 for the fps. vhs is 30000/1001 interlaced!
also use quicktime if you are using h.264
though neat video is good
The fact that you used a Composite-to-HDMI converter makes this entire video wrong. I'm sorry.
u made 3x click process so complicated.. i hope there is something about real video restoring, like frames reconstruction. but no. just typical american video how to make things which are in the first place explained in the instructions of every analog video grabber that u buys..
MAN this is total Bullcrap this "tutorial" HDMI upscaler, 60P, mid 90's VCR's (multi cards types, rats nest known junk), all wrong here, trust me guys)
Great video everything proven vhs tapes proven it doesn't stop playing at all it's the people who stops playing it yet everything proven vhs tapes don't have picture quality problem's at all it's the TVs proven there are the problem
English MFer... Do you speak it?
VCRs and CRTs we’ll get in worse and worse shape. VHS tapes have a limited lifespan also. If it’s not digitized it goes away.
Vhs movies doesn't have bad color everything proven people don't never set up tv picture settings at all
you gave such bad advice, denoising is NOT a RESTORE, its more like polishing ancient coins, a crime.
1st you are rendering in vegas an additional generation is lost, rendering is a lossy format.
while you could achieve the same 4:3 scaling in OBS, or use a better (proper) capture card.
if you use MKV not mp4 , you can cut the parts you want out, using lossless cut. no loss of a generation, no re-rendering and its as fast as your hard drive.
2. denoise DOES NOT IMPROVE anything, noise is part of life and the original footage .
you will always loose detail and VHS has little detail anyway. if anything you would sharpen just a little bit, which you can do via OBS without loosing a generation.
Why are you saying demonizing doesn’t improve anything. Yeah noise is part of the original tape but you are going to digital. With digital you have to compress to a viewing codec. VHS is noisy. Compression relies on redundancies. Noise isn’t redundant. Noise doesn’t compress well. You need to de noise but go lossless then de noise before you go to macroblocks. Don’t capture to a compressed codec. OBS is screen recording software. It’s not meant for capturing.
@@duncanmacleod2136 OBS is general software and works great with capturing hardware , not just screens, while what you said about noise and codecs IS CORRECT in principal and for low bandwidth, BUT for archiving purposes, and considering standard resolution material (not HD/FHD/4k), all modern codecs such as h.265 will preserve all details including noise , you don't need to go easy on modern codecs, just give them sufficient bitrate, after all , hard disk storage is huge these days, never been cheaper, DENOISING = butchering , smearing, loss of detail , loss of original look, loss of originality, CANNOT BE UNDONE, lost forever if you are archiving old tapes never to be read ever again, denoising is not how you archive, its a crime.
@ OBS isn’t capture software. VHS is standard definition. The resolution is set. H.264 is a lossy delivery codec. It was never meant to be captured to. Lossy means it throws out information. That’s how it gets too such a small size. That is it’s purpose reducing size so it can be shared. It averages color information within a macroblock. You don’t want multiple lossy encodes. Capture to something like Huffy. It’s a lossless codec. Which means it doesn’t lose information. When it is decoded it is the same information as when it was encoded. You denoise and edit when it is lossless and then compress once it is cleaned up. You can have multiple lossless encodes without messing up your content. H.265 is great for higher resolution video as a delivery codec but it doesn’t handle analog noise well. It uses bigger macroblocks. H.265 It’s strange that you say denoising can’t be undone because really the things that can’t be undone are what is done during capture. You can go back to your capture file and just re edit and then not denoise if you want. If you capture to compressed or the wrong aspect ratio then that’s a recapture. Denoising isn’t that damaging if it’s a lossless video. Svideo prevents sone noise. Good hardware reduces noise then get rid of more noise in software. I would look into how compression works.
@@duncanmacleod2136 You are welcome to capture to lossless with all noise , and burry it deep in your archive where no one will ever get access to it, and it will get wiped after your passing. and publish washed out "denoised" video god forbid someone will see a spec. but lets be practical, all conversion houses capture directly to h.264, no processing, sometimes with god awful capture devices such as elgato, directly into an mp4, charge $$$ and call it a day. I recommend just capture to high bitrate highly efficient h.265 which NVIDIA cards and even intel gen8 and above do in hardware real time, with the noise and call it a day, I de interlace on a 2nd pass for 60P INTERPOLATED , the smoothness of 60fps and minimal artifacts, the type of "look" is not a technical choice as there are many way to go about de interlacing, and it boils down to personal preference, I use some SHARPENING which increases details and some noise, for hand filmed shaky video I add some frame stabilization so that we don't get sea sick. If uploading to UA-cam, you have to fool youtube cause their SD480 degrades when they re-encode, so I blow it up to FHD, this fools YT, so you get the best possible look on the other side. REMEMEBR, before video, we all watched Hawaii5.0 and Starsky & Hatch, and Knight Rider, ALL ON FILM and ALL WITH TONS OF GRAIN, no one complained about noise. DONT MAKE boring glass smeared looking video, no one will watch it.
@@xprcloud H.264 (MP4 container) isn’t optimized for interlaced video. That can lead to a lot of artifacts. That’s just a really cheap easy way to get some kind of video. H.264 is supposed to be encoded to after deinterlacing with a good deinterlacer like QTGMC. Sharpening is done after noise reduction so that you aren’t sharpening noise. You just don’t want to overdue noise reduction. That’s when you get the loss of detail and all of that. That’s best handled in scripting like Avisynth. Selur’s hybrid provides a GUI that reduces the learning curve compared to using Avisynth in Pmod.
@TheBenCrazy Bullshit... I own Thomson VCR from 2001 and performs very well...