How does it feel to publish something on the internet that is EXACTLY what people were looking for? Easy to understand. Explained things I would have never have realized I could do to video. The only problem is now I need a bigger hard drive for all the videos my wife wants me to convert. AMAZING. TEACH US MORE! TEACH US MORE!
The advice in this tutorial is about 90% of the way there and should serve for most purposes. There's no way to turn SD into true HD -- you can't add detail that isn't in the original signal.
I'm a professional video archivist and have to say that this video is not only very informative, it also handles a few technical issue's perfectly. Hat's off to you, sir!
well you say you are a proffessional video archvist, and I want to trouble you, but I am curious about 30p o 60p archive from tv news or even hi8 videotapes. What I want to know is if there is a way of mixing them together with 24fps video withouth having to slow down the archive files. I'm just an student, it would be awesome if you can help me :D
I'm so glad I found this video. I've been searching for 20 years to find my old Hi8 video tapes and just found them a week ago, so I've been searching YT 24/7 to learn how to properly digitize them. You have addressed a very important and pretty complicated subject (for most of us over 70) and made it a pleasure to learn how to do it. Not all teachers can teach. You are an incredible teacher.
My mother-in-law gave me 85 videotape some VHS 8 mm. All of my husbands childhood is documented, your instructions are so easy to follow, now for the next 90 days or so I will be doing this digital conversion thank you so much for taking the time. And for saving us a buttload of money versus sending it out to be digitized.
im going through 20 sony hi8 tapes not sure what the best bitrate or settings to upscale for best quality for a 55 inch tv. I assume 720 resolution should do. what bitrate or setting and anyone suggest. thanks in advance!
skykid2 "for the next 90 days or so"...lolol! I hear ya skykid2, goin' through this for the 2nd time in 2 years....it would be a perfect hobby for a 3-toed sloth!
Wow excellent tutorial :) The deinterlacing filter is really a necessity when converting VHS, so thanks for explaining. *A quick update for 2019* VirtualDub2 is now available, which supports Save-as to MPEG-4, Quicktime MOV or any FFMPEG format. So with VirtualDub2 it is possible to do the deinterlacing and/or resizing plus compression in one go, instead of re-compressing with Handbreak. This saves time and requires less diskspace, especially when converting long videos or lots of tapes. :)
Thanks for noting the deinterlacing talk -- that was the primary motivation for this video. Too many tapes are being converted into 30p videos, unfortunately. As for VirtualDub2, that is indeed a worthy successor and you can use it for this tutorial too.
Hello, I am trying to use VD2 to save as Mpeg-4. I have tried multiple lossless codes. I get this error" pcm_s 16le: codec not currently supported in container mp4". Please help
WOW!! Thank you so very much for this tutorial! I would have been absolutely lost without it. I was given a yuuuuuge box of old home movies that my parents had left for me and I didn't have any place for them. I'm a total beginner and I had no idea where to start or what to do. Thanks to this tutorial I've already captured one full VHS tape and it looks amazing and is a good size to boot! Thanks again! Very very very very helpful!
A tip, after doing "Set capture file" in the file menu, you can also select "Allocate disk space". For example you can set it to 20Gb if you expect like a 15Gb capture file. And also in the menu Capture -> Disk I/O, I set the Chunk size to 16MB instead of the default 256KB. I've found that this helps to get a better video capture, with less dropped frames.
im not expert at all but digging and see frame by frame (firewire vs capture card) using one those old sony cameras for transfer through firewire port you get a better video for edition later.
Thank you SO much for this tutorial, you won't believe how long I held off backing up my VHS tapes for years bc I had no clear way..but you did this tutorial perfectly!
Wow, we just bought an elgato capture card and their software converts Analog tapes to digital to an unwatchable quality. So glad I found you and your impeccable video!
This is the absolute best videotape conversion tutorial vid on UA-cam. Thank you very much for taking the time to share your knowledge. I think it would be fantastic if you made an updated 2020 version of this video using VirtualDub2. Don't want this video and knowledge to slip into obscurity.
An update for 2020 is definitely due, although the lack of consistent hardware capture devices that will work with Vdub2 and windows 10 is highly variable, which is what is preventing me from doing it.
An excellent tutorial and one of the most clear, concise, and thoroughly understandable ones which I've seen... Thank you for taking the time and effort to produce it!
This tutorial is by far the most comprehensive yet succinct video on how to capture/convert video tapes that I have seen on UA-cam. I can't thank you enough for answering virtually every question I wanted to ask about the subject. Kudos!
Your video is exactly what UA-cam was suppose to be all along. An informative, factual presentation of procedures that provide a guide path for others. I am so very glad to have found your channel. I am now subscribed and look forward to whatever you have in your content. Thank you for posting.
This is a top notch instructional video! Really enjoyed it. Perfect teaching pace and great information. Thanks for making this available! ~ Mark, at CHAP
I have dabbled with dubbing analog NTSC video over to the computer with mediocre results prior to viewing your video! You get a thumbs up because I learned a few new things from this video. Kudos to you! 👍
It might be an old vid, but it certainly helped me get my head round converting old VHS tapes to MP4 using both apps in the vid. Great tutorial - clearly spoken with no noisy music or flashy sfx to distract things.
Thank you SO SO SO SO MUCH! This has really helped me. Ive been messing around with VDUB for the last 48 hours and was missing the step where you can deinterlace and double the frame rate. FINALLY MY VIDEOS LOOK LIKE THEY SHOULD! YOU ROCK!
Absolutely Fantastic Tutorial Jim! Had no idea how to do this before. Very clear video with instructions that were easy to follow. Thank you very much for this, appreciate the effort! Watched this video multiple times and this helped me get an understanding. It was great with the amount of detail and depth into which you went! Liked the video and Subscribed. I have digitised many VHS tapes with different capture devices and software settings but none of them were this smooth and crisp. Thanks again! :)
Jim, I have recorded several videos with the settings in the video, only to realise that the audio is losing sync being delayed when capturing with Virtual Dub. This is a problem which occurs on longer recordings. I am using the Elgato Video Capture device, and it is perfectly in sync when using the elgato software, but the quality isn't as good as Virtual Dub. I am unsure of what the problem could be. I would appreciate any assistance or ideas, thanks.
OMG! The best video I ever saw on UA-cam with the most simplified way! I have converted my all VHS and Hi8 videos to hard disk but never satisfied with it. So I hung on to those original tapes thinking someday there will be a better technology or tools will be available. Gosh, it's was never the tools issue but rather lack of knowledge for what settings needs to be used for the best conversion. Thank you so much for publishing this video. I will be looking for all of your publications.
The best explanation I have seen in years, especially the part about the deinterlacing. The are so many people that can't tell de difference (in fluidity terms) between properly deinterlaced footage, by doubling the frame rate, and bad deinterlancing, by blending frames only (as many cheap VHS to digital do by default). But I do see the difference and the blending was hurting my eyes all the time :-). Thank you!
Thanks so much! Have long known that I needed to use some sort of frame doubling intelligent deinterlacing process to get the best out of old NTSC footage, but until now had a hard time finding an easy way of getting that done. Now it almost looks as good as it did 20 years ago on a CRT. Also, I improved my footage by messing with the proc amp settings: lowering the contrast a tad and boosting the saturation a little bit.
I can understand why UA-cam doesn't bother. yadif, frame doubling, and 720 upres took 24 hours to process for a single 2- hour home video... 20 more hi-8 tapes left to go!
Was the audio out of sync before you started processing? Load the raw capture into virutaldub and seek to the end, then play it. Is it out of sync? If so, it's getting out of sync during the capture phase and you should probably go to the Capture->Timing menu while in capture mode and select Resync mode: "Sync audio to video by resampling the audio to a faster or slower rate". This will fix audio drift by resampling the audio while you capture.
It shouldn't be taking that long; what processor does your computer use? If it has multiple cores, you might want to go into the configuration dialog for the codec you're using (in virtualdub, this is video->compression and then you pick your codec and choose Configure) and make sure it's using multiple cores. In any of the UT codecs, there is a field "Frame Divide Count", where you tell it how many cores to use, or optionally check a box "Same Number of Logical Cores". Check that for a big codec speedup.
Thanks for the suggestions. It's a fairly recent thinkpad laptop, so it's not cutting edge, but should be plenty powerful. It was indeed using all the cores, it was at 95% CPU the whole time. Maybe the problem was compressing it directly to x264... maybe that's what was slowing it down. As for the audio, yeah, I had done that as per your advice in the video, but it captured it out of sync nonetheless. Perhaps the cassettes themselves have fallen out of sync -- I think Hi-8 maybe used analog for video but a digital soundtrack -- I wonder how that holds up as the tapes degrade and stretch. I'll try to figure this out.
Jim, Thank you for this extremely informative and well presented video. It has inspired me to start on a long overdue project. I had an Easycap kicking around for years and had yet to open it. It turned out I couldn't find any drivers for Windows 10 so I ordered vidbox and cannot wait to get started. Cheers!
Bummer you couldn't use what you already had, thanks for the save on purchasing though. I'm curious, once you get your new hardware, will you let us know if it successfully transferred your media (home videos)? And maybe quality expectation vs reality? I know I'd appreciate it!
Great tutorial. A couple things I'd like to add are: - analog video often has black bars on the left and right sides, it can be cropped off with the crop filter in virtual dub, then resized for the correct aspect ratio. Same thing if there's a lot of video noise at the bottom of the video, it can be cropped off too. - the analog recorded audio often will be recorded too loud or quiet, I like to extract it from the captured file as wav using virtual dub, and I edit it in Audition (The free Audacity program should work well too). I make sure the levels are correct (normalized to -0.1 dB, crop any noise peaks using a noise gate filter) and that background hiss is removed using noise reduction. Also, often the left/right audio channels will be imbalanced, normalizing will fix this too. It's important to edit audio using headphones so you can distinctly hear it. I save the edited wav separately, and load it as the audio source along with the edited video in the encoder like handbrake.
Just remember to use an RCA Y-adapter or encode the audio to mono if your audio source is mono, so you get the audio coming through both speakers, instead of only in the left channel. Besides bad de-interlacing, that is the second most common -- or maybe even *the* most common -- mistake I see when people convert old analog video sources.
Agreed, but it is not nearly as heinous as throwing away half the temporal information, hence the tutorial. I've been wanting to do a "split the fields apart" animation for a while. If I had seen that in the late 1990s, it would have saved me a lot of heartache in the early 2000s.
Jim Leonard BTW, Handbrake can convert 60i to 60p as well if you use bob deinterlacing (its name for Yadif mode 1), but it doesn't support upscaling -- which is unfortunate, because otherwise Handbrake is a very useful tool.
+vwestlife I think you are mistaken; bob != yadif. Last time I used it, it line-doubled and I never checked it again. The advantage of doing the deinterlacing in virtualdub is that you can visually check if you have the field order correct. I don't believe you have field order control in handbrake.
Awesome lesson. How to set up your video capture so the recording will be STABLE!!!! This is exactly what I have to do to my old home videos! Video Interlacing!
Ok. So I'm 4 years late in seeing this, but doesn't prevent me from commenting on your wonderful and easy teaching style. Really fabulous. I am a teacher in UK.
AGAIN.. wanted to share and ask... HOW DID THIS PROCESS GO... SOME THINKING '" EVEN A WOMAN CAN DO THIS.. " come on share with us PLAYING 10 /20 YEAR OLD VIDEO TAPES ON A 30 YEAR OLD VCR.. DOES'T GO WELL NOT FOR ANYBODY.. FOR MORE THAN ONE TAPE OR 20 MINUTES DEGRADED TAPES LEAVE MASSIVE RESIDUE ON THE VCR'S HEAD AND YOU LOSE
Very good instructive video! But I have a a problem that I'm not sure if it can be solved. I have some VHS tapes that have been recorded on a camera was brought to me (in Greece) by uncle from States. So its NTSC. I have a Mitsubishi M1000 VHS player and a cassette adapter for the tapes. When I'm connected to TV I can see picture and everything is fine. When I m connected to pc I have no colors. I'm using an DVD EZMaker USB Gold video Capture device with Veedub64. I have tried also an Intensity Hustle from Blackmagicdesign with OBS software.I could receive colors but loosing frames every now and then. Image going totally black for a sec very often. If I change to Pal B I get only sound. Could you think something else I can try? Thanks alot!
Thank you. This the best instruction video I have seen not only on subject matter (increased my knowledge by 200%) but the quality of your production. No loud distracting music, no garbled speaking, clear and concise screen shots sharp in focus and easy to read. A thousand thanks for your effort oh forgot no annoying advertisements.
Helpful tip! First, use VirtualDub2 so you can directly save out to an MP4 instead of needing to use handbrake. If you go to save and you get an error looking like this (pcm_s 16le: codec not currently supported in container mp4) This happened because you didn't choose an audio compression type. Make sure Audio/full processing mode is checked. Then Audio/compression and then choose FFMpeg AAC. Assuming you have your video compression set to x264, you should be able to save now. Happy converting!
@Nikolai Domek I followed your advice and the video saved as MP4 (thanks!). However, when I tried to play the video with VLC, I got this error message: "Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "ULRA" (Ut Video)." Windows Media Player also could not play it. After the error, both played the audio but no video.
@@TheOldskoolPC I was able to save as MP4. However, when I tried to play the video with VLC, I got this error message: "Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "ULRA" (Ut Video)." Windows Media Player also could not play it. After the error, both played the audio but no video. Any help is appreciated!
EXCELLENT Tutorial!! Your explainations are flawless (considering this video was totally ad lib) and simplified enough for anyone to understand. I've been looking for a while now for a good layman's tutorial on these conversions of analog tapes to digital and this couldn't be a better demonstration. Even your voice is soothing. Lol. Thank you sir.
Thank you very much for your video. I've read a lot about video capturing but you are one of the few people out there that knows how to do it correctly without throwing away all that temporal resolution that analog video has. Big thumbs up for that.
Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, hardly anyone gets deinterlacing correct. I was inspired to make the video after I saw someone proudly proclaim they had archived all seasons of a 30i TV show only to see they had botched it *and* had already destroyed their tapes :-(
I have to agree with the other commenters on this vid. THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST CLEAR AND INFOMATIVE VIEDOS ON UA-cam! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, extremely helpful for those wanting to convert video footage from analogue to digital. Hats of to you!!!
About 30GB per hour, assuming very noisy videotape. So 50 * 4 * 30GB = 6TB. However, you don't keep the giant captures around forever, you encode them to .MP4 which is way smaller.
The Oldskool PC best advice is to keep those interlaced 6Tb forever too right? For future projects with better codecs/filters (?) How does one save 6Tb 😭.. Im in the exact same boat.. maybe even more videos
What are you using? How did you set it up? I could potentionally help you out through a 1-on-1 chat. I know how frustrating it was for me, but I got it down.
Thanks mate! Best de-interlacing explanation I ever had. Video description is also great info! I feel like I have been waiting for this for 20 years or something. Also makes me hate even more when I see badly de-interlaced videos with killer stripes.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate this video. I'm a magician, and often I come across rare magic tutorials on VHS. I have quite a few and have been wanting to digitize them. I have started now and have completed 3 so far, and your instructions are impeccable!!! Thank you for creating an excellent useful video about a timely subject.
Fantastic. I used your step by step on my hi-8 dance films from the 90s and got rid of horrible bouncing combs. Now my film comes out smooth as if I was looking at it through the viewfinder. Well done!
5 years later and I stumbled across this excellent tutorial. This should be required viewing for anyone (even "professional" editors) who are trying to incorporate older SD analog video into modern production work flows. I have seen Documentaries on Netflix, Amazon Prime, even broadcast television networks that incorporate video with interlacing artifacts, blown out or crushed blacks, and horrible color rendition. Unless they know what they are doing and INTENTIONALLY doing this, I think it shows the slow reduction in skill of the craft of video production, at least legacy production technology. Thank you for shedding light on this process. Kudos, Sir!
A massive thank you for this!! I wasted a whole day trying to figure this out and was about to give up when your video appeared in search result. Was testing it along with your demonstation - and it works!!
Thank you so much. This was so helpful...I was losing my mind with quality and timing issues. Thanks to this guide I have all my stuff backed up and looking amazing.
Thank you for taking the time to teach this task. I see there are very many basic steps, all useful to get the best results on a great improved video that will be preserved and remain preserved as new tec applications can be used to continually upgrade the video viewing., MP4 ect.
Thank you so much :) This is the perfect tutorial for what I want to achieve. A couple of years ago I started to convert some old cam tapes to digital format. I got about halfway through, but after seeing this video I realise I'll have to start over to get the best out of my old tapes! There is so much I was throwing away without realizing it. Thanks again!
I just want to thank you SO MUCH! I have started converting all my vhs tapes and this made it so easy! I appreciate the advice for the free downloads and the step by step walk through!
Thank you very much for your video tutorial and the Q&A you posted in the video description! It helped me a lot in recording my old VHS tapes. I was not satisfied with the recordings of the video software, that came with the capture stick. I did not know you could simply use a 3rd party, free software like Virtualdub!
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge in this tutorial. Very pleased to finally be able to keep the smooth, live-like, action captured in the old video's. Really great. This tutorial should be the first thing to educate to editors of video, be it professional or amateur. (Though in Europe, where I live, we use PAL 50 interlaced, the process is very clear. We just use other parameters). You've done a great job! Greetings from the Netherlands!
Thank you very much for this excellent and comprehensive tutorial. As a side note for others if you get a black and white image, you need SECAM filter to do so in virtual dub : -> « Capture Filter » choose standard SECAM-L
Thanks for this I found an old video tape from 1989 when I was in preschool. I bought a vcr on ebay and grabbed a cheap capture device from amazon. I couldn't get anything working correctly until I found your video. Thanks a lot!
Excellent video, I constantly use Handbrake to convert my drone, dashcam and Canon Camcorder videos so we can watch them via Plex anywhere. This VideoDub software is going to be a great addition to my video editing, I will now be able to make all my old home videos look much better from this tutorial. Thank you very much, you speak very clearly and your video is right on, I can't say that about a lot of people who post DIY videos.
I am quite satisfied with the combination of the elgato video capture + handbrake with the constant frame rate and the conversion of 59.94 fps . no more audio out of sync ! thank you
I used "Easier Cap" adapter and Virtualdub can detect it as "AV TO USB2.0" but for some reason Virtualdub cannot detect any video sources, and when i open capture pin the video standard is set to "None", why is that happening? the preview is working just fine but it captures the footage with stutters and bad quality
I guess I bought the same one as you "AV TO USB2.0" for $12 on Amazon. It seems to internally deinterlace to 30p. I was not able to eek out of it neither interlaced video nor 60p video. Also, it does not properly report its capabilities, so I could not choose YUV with 720x480 frame size in VirtualDub, and could not encode it to anything but MJPEG. Piece of garbage.
There are many videos out there on this topic, but this video is the best one. It addresses technical gotchas that aren't even on the radar of the other well-meaning youtubers. You discuss things like frame order, the proper framerate frequency, and the best way to de-interlace that wasn't even possible ten years ago. These methods appear to be very best way to transfer VHS to digital. I have yet to apply these methods but thanks to your detailed discussion, I'm confident I'll have good results. I have one more thing that I believe will contribute to that. I have an HDMI output on my VCR!
Thanks for this very well made tutorial. One important thing to note is that there are apparently several different types of these EZCAP devices that physically look the same but have difference electronics. Sadly the one I bought uses a Macrosilicon MS2106S chip, and 80% of the settings mentioned here are not available. E.g. the de-interlacing is done by the chip itself and there are hardly any configuration options to improve the picture quality of the capture.
Thanks for the comment. I thought I was losing my mind! The easy cap looking device I have works with OBS but not Virtual Dub for some reason. Let me know if you find a device that allows proper deinterlacing as shown in the video!
This is my second sortie into digitizing my VCR tapes. It seems to be going much smoother for me this time. I actually got everything to work just as in your video. Thank you.
This has to be the absolute BEST video on UA-cam that walks you through the process. You are an awesome teacher. Thank you so much. I have my weekends cut out for me for what I have been putting off for so long. Thank you a billion times!!
Gads! And I thought I knew it all ... Ok, just kidding, and you found answers to questions I had. So, THANK YOU! Very well done, especially because you're doing this with no "assistance."
Wasn't here to convert analog to digital, just wanted to peep this vid 'cause I stumbled across it, I stuck around till the end though because you are a great teacher. Simple and easy to understand, informative, and perfectly handles technical details, not a lot of tutorials on here are as thorough and informative. Just my observation. I may want to do this some day and I'm glad I know exactly how, thanks haha. You're very knowledgeable, I'm gonna check out some more of your vids. Liked and subbed btw, you deserve it.
Now if we only had decent internet in South Africa I could watch this video smoothly....LOL Great video. Exactly what I was looking for. I only needed to see the first device (USB 2.0).
First off...I hope you and your family are still doing well with the Covid-19 pandemic. Man...I have to give you a huge THANK YOU for this video. I have a few questions too...but I have it at the end. I started down this path 7 years ago and ran into the audio-sync issues. Tried capture card to PC, tried USB and Firewire devices...all had issues. I researched and gave up. I started copying everything to a DVD recorder and now that device is failing. Went out and started researching again, learned copying to DVD was not a good idea. Amidst all the research...I was getting confused again and was ready to give up yet again. Then I found and watched your video....wow...it all makes sense now!! I pulled out a capture device I purchased back in the day and went through this video and all is perfect. I ran into a couple hiccups (even with audio again)...read your FAQ's and some of your comments...and bam...all is working. Thank you...thank you. First question(s). I skipped the first version of VirtualDub and started with VirtualDub2. I noticed in some of the comments that I actually do not need to use Handbrake. i'm unclear at that point with VirtualDub2...as I'm just not full understanding compression. Do I still go through and set the compression with the UtVideo YUV422BT.601VCM as normal from the video? When I'm ready to save...do I just simply save as mp4 instead of the avi file type or do I need to change the compression in the file to something different if I want the mp4 format? Also...which one should I choose: MP4(Mpeg-4 Part 14) or MP4 +faststart? Finally...from an archival perspective...what is a "best practice"? I will eventually save everything off on MP4 (which sounds like is still the best option). For archival, should I keep the original AVI, or should I keep the processed avi file...or should I keep both? I hope you can get back to me at some point...not in a major rush though as I'm just going to start to just get the videos digitized first. I am so glad I found this video. Stay safe...and again...thank you!
Glad you found it helpful! Virtualdub2 is what I now recommend and has a link in the description. VD2 allows saving directly to MP4 so that's how you can remove the handbrake step. You still capture to UTVideo for the best quality raw capture, but after that you can save directly to mp4. Either mp4 option is fine as long as the bitrate is high, like 8mbit/s or more. As for archival best practices, I recommend saving the original interlaced .AVI raw capture. That way you can re-process it long after the tapes have failed. A 4TB portable drive is about $100 as of right now, which is a small price to pay for keeping them around IMO.
@@TheOldskoolPC I'm sorry to bother again. I decided to give this a quick try after your speedy response and now have a few more questions. I took the de-interlaced filter version after the raw capture and tried both mp4 settings. I received an error "pcm_s16le: codec not currently supported in container mp4". I noticed the audio compression from the Save File screen was defaulted to No compression (PCM) with sample layout being 48000Hz 16-bit 2 ch. I did some digging and discovered that under the Audio section, that I could change it from Direct Stream Copy to Full Processing Mode. This allowed me to get access to Compression. At this point, there are now 13 compression options. I found two that were 8 bit: CCITT A-Law and CCITT u-Law (both showing 48,000kHZ, 8 Bit, Stereo - 94KB/s). Tried both...and received similar errors about XXXX not supported in container mp4. Questions: What audio compression should I be looking for to get the best audio from these recordings? Is audio compression like video...where I should be looking for lossless audio compression? Some compressions allow me to show multiple formats that have various kHz, bits, and KB/s...what should I be targeting here? Thanks again...and if there is a more preferred way that I should ask you questions...I'm happy to ask in another forum. Take care - Jason
How does it feel to publish something on the internet that is EXACTLY what people were looking for? Easy to understand. Explained things I would have never have realized I could do to video. The only problem is now I need a bigger hard drive for all the videos my wife wants me to convert. AMAZING. TEACH US MORE! TEACH US MORE!
Thanks for the kind words! (I'm the channel owner)
Ditto, you have done a really good job Jim.
is there a way to make the vhs look almost HD quality?
The advice in this tutorial is about 90% of the way there and should serve for most purposes. There's no way to turn SD into true HD -- you can't add detail that isn't in the original signal.
Jim Leonard thank you
I'm a professional video archivist and have to say that this video is not only very informative, it also handles a few technical issue's perfectly. Hat's off to you, sir!
well you say you are a proffessional video archvist, and I want to trouble you, but I am curious about 30p o 60p archive from tv news or even hi8 videotapes. What I want to know is if there is a way of mixing them together with 24fps video withouth having to slow down the archive files.
I'm just an student, it would be awesome if you can help me :D
Bram Walraet hey i was wondering if you could video archive DEEZ NUTZ
@@asuperswaggyguy fuck off twat
I have vhs brazil
I'm so glad I found this video. I've been searching for 20 years to find my old Hi8 video tapes and just found them a week ago, so I've been searching YT 24/7 to learn how to properly digitize them. You have addressed a very important and pretty complicated subject (for most of us over 70) and made it a pleasure to learn how to do it. Not all teachers can teach. You are an incredible teacher.
One of the best comments I've gotten all year, thanks so much :-)
Hi8 is digital video, isn't that a different ballpark #oldskool_PC?
@@ifn_media Hi8 is analog. Digital8 is digital.
Yes.. frames!
My mother-in-law gave me 85 videotape some VHS 8 mm. All of my husbands childhood is documented, your instructions are so easy to follow, now for the next 90 days or so I will be doing this digital conversion thank you so much for taking the time. And for saving us a buttload of money versus sending it out to be digitized.
im going through 20 sony hi8 tapes not sure what the best bitrate or settings to upscale for best quality for a 55 inch tv. I assume 720 resolution should do. what bitrate or setting and anyone suggest. thanks in advance!
skykid2, how did it go for you?
skykid2 "for the next 90 days or so"...lolol! I hear ya skykid2, goin' through this for the 2nd time in 2 years....it would be a perfect hobby for a 3-toed sloth!
Wow excellent tutorial :) The deinterlacing filter is really a necessity when converting VHS, so thanks for explaining.
*A quick update for 2019* VirtualDub2 is now available, which supports Save-as to MPEG-4, Quicktime MOV or any FFMPEG format. So with VirtualDub2 it is possible to do the deinterlacing and/or resizing plus compression in one go, instead of re-compressing with Handbreak. This saves time and requires less diskspace, especially when converting long videos or lots of tapes. :)
Thanks for noting the deinterlacing talk -- that was the primary motivation for this video. Too many tapes are being converted into 30p videos, unfortunately. As for VirtualDub2, that is indeed a worthy successor and you can use it for this tutorial too.
Is it available for MAC yet? :)
@@shade221 Thank you so much!! :)
Hello, I am trying to use VD2 to save as Mpeg-4. I have tried multiple lossless codes. I get this error" pcm_s 16le: codec not currently supported in container mp4". Please help
Where can I find VirtualDub2?
WOW!! Thank you so very much for this tutorial! I would have been absolutely lost without it. I was given a yuuuuuge box of old home movies that my parents had left for me and I didn't have any place for them. I'm a total beginner and I had no idea where to start or what to do. Thanks to this tutorial I've already captured one full VHS tape and it looks amazing and is a good size to boot! Thanks again! Very very very very helpful!
Glad it could help you save your tapes in good quality!
A tip, after doing "Set capture file" in the file menu, you can also select "Allocate disk space". For example you can set it to 20Gb if you expect like a 15Gb capture file. And also in the menu Capture -> Disk I/O, I set the Chunk size to 16MB instead of the default 256KB.
I've found that this helps to get a better video capture, with less dropped frames.
For slower drives, this is great advice -- thanks!
I have a ssd in my capturing laptop, and it works well with the 16 resulting in a lot less dropped frames. Like almost non existent.
im not expert at all but digging and see frame by frame (firewire vs capture card) using one those old sony cameras for transfer through firewire port you get a better video for edition later.
can you use this method with fire wire?
Thank you SO much for this tutorial, you won't believe how long I held off backing up my VHS tapes for years bc I had no clear way..but you did this tutorial perfectly!
Wow, we just bought an elgato capture card and their software converts Analog tapes to digital to an unwatchable quality. So glad I found you and your impeccable video!
This is the absolute best videotape conversion tutorial vid on UA-cam. Thank you very much for taking the time to share your knowledge. I think it would be fantastic if you made an updated 2020 version of this video using VirtualDub2. Don't want this video and knowledge to slip into obscurity.
An update for 2020 is definitely due, although the lack of consistent hardware capture devices that will work with Vdub2 and windows 10 is highly variable, which is what is preventing me from doing it.
@@TheOldskoolPC hey does the elgato video capture card work with this?
Superb work!
I shall now attempt to clear the 35,422 VHS tapes I've stored inside my special storage pouch.
Many thanks. Mr J
An excellent tutorial and one of the most clear, concise, and thoroughly understandable ones which I've seen... Thank you for taking the time and effort to produce it!
This tutorial is by far the most comprehensive yet succinct video on how to capture/convert video tapes that I have seen on UA-cam. I can't thank you enough for answering virtually every question I wanted to ask about the subject. Kudos!
Your video is exactly what UA-cam was suppose to be all along. An informative, factual presentation of procedures that provide a guide path for others. I am so very glad to have found your channel. I am now subscribed and look forward to whatever you have in your content. Thank you for posting.
Great tutorial. Loved the pace and clarity of subjects covered. Really nice.
this what i need even in 2020 with all the technology.
The issue is precisely "all the technology."
I'm about to embark on converting several videos to digital format, I thank you for such a perfect video that I can understand. Cheers!
This is a top notch instructional video! Really enjoyed it. Perfect teaching pace and great information. Thanks for making this available! ~ Mark, at CHAP
I have dabbled with dubbing analog NTSC video over to the computer with mediocre results prior to viewing your video! You get a thumbs up because I learned a few new things from this video. Kudos to you! 👍
It might be an old vid, but it certainly helped me get my head round converting old VHS tapes to MP4 using both apps in the vid. Great tutorial - clearly spoken with no noisy music or flashy sfx to distract things.
Thank you SO SO SO SO MUCH! This has really helped me. Ive been messing around with VDUB for the last 48 hours and was missing the step where you can deinterlace and double the frame rate. FINALLY MY VIDEOS LOOK LIKE THEY SHOULD! YOU ROCK!
Absolutely Fantastic Tutorial Jim! Had no idea how to do this before. Very clear video with instructions that were easy to follow. Thank you very much for this, appreciate the effort! Watched this video multiple times and this helped me get an understanding. It was great with the amount of detail and depth into which you went! Liked the video and Subscribed. I have digitised many VHS tapes with different capture devices and software settings but none of them were this smooth and crisp. Thanks again! :)
Understanding interlacing is the key. Glad you liked the tutorial, hope it helps you.
Definitely has helped, thanks a lot. Had so many home videos that i can finally digitise and enjoy, thanks to this tutorial. Keep up the good work! :)
Jim, I have recorded several videos with the settings in the video, only to realise that the audio is losing sync being delayed when capturing with Virtual Dub. This is a problem which occurs on longer recordings. I am using the Elgato Video Capture device, and it is perfectly in sync when using the elgato software, but the quality isn't as good as Virtual Dub. I am unsure of what the problem could be. I would appreciate any assistance or ideas, thanks.
See this video's description for a possible fix.
Agree that this is an awesome tutorial - For those who get an Easycap, make sure the one you get is compatible with your version of Windows
OMG! The best video I ever saw on UA-cam with the most simplified way! I have converted my all VHS and Hi8 videos to hard disk but never satisfied with it. So I hung on to those original tapes thinking someday there will be a better technology or tools will be available. Gosh, it's was never the tools issue but rather lack of knowledge for what settings needs to be used for the best conversion. Thank you so much for publishing this video. I will be looking for all of your publications.
hah this technology has been available since 2003 at least, but it was a pain to tackle all this time-consuming processing and compression...
The best explanation I have seen in years, especially the part about the deinterlacing. The are so many people that can't tell de difference (in fluidity terms) between properly deinterlaced footage, by doubling the frame rate, and bad deinterlancing, by blending frames only (as many cheap VHS to digital do by default). But I do see the difference and the blending was hurting my eyes all the time :-). Thank you!
This is exactly what I needed as a refresher after walking away from my vhs projects for 2 years.
Thanks so much! Have long known that I needed to use some sort of frame doubling intelligent deinterlacing process to get the best out of old NTSC footage, but until now had a hard time finding an easy way of getting that done. Now it almost looks as good as it did 20 years ago on a CRT. Also, I improved my footage by messing with the proc amp settings: lowering the contrast a tad and boosting the saturation a little bit.
I can understand why UA-cam doesn't bother. yadif, frame doubling, and 720 upres took 24 hours to process for a single 2- hour home video... 20 more hi-8 tapes left to go!
also despite following these instructions the audio fell horribly out of sync. Any idea what I can do about that?
Was the audio out of sync before you started processing? Load the raw capture into virutaldub and seek to the end, then play it. Is it out of sync? If so, it's getting out of sync during the capture phase and you should probably go to the Capture->Timing menu while in capture mode and select Resync mode: "Sync audio to video by resampling the audio to a faster or slower rate". This will fix audio drift by resampling the audio while you capture.
It shouldn't be taking that long; what processor does your computer use? If it has multiple cores, you might want to go into the configuration dialog for the codec you're using (in virtualdub, this is video->compression and then you pick your codec and choose Configure) and make sure it's using multiple cores. In any of the UT codecs, there is a field "Frame Divide Count", where you tell it how many cores to use, or optionally check a box "Same Number of Logical Cores". Check that for a big codec speedup.
Thanks for the suggestions. It's a fairly recent thinkpad laptop, so it's not cutting edge, but should be plenty powerful. It was indeed using all the cores, it was at 95% CPU the whole time. Maybe the problem was compressing it directly to x264... maybe that's what was slowing it down.
As for the audio, yeah, I had done that as per your advice in the video, but it captured it out of sync nonetheless. Perhaps the cassettes themselves have fallen out of sync -- I think Hi-8 maybe used analog for video but a digital soundtrack -- I wonder how that holds up as the tapes degrade and stretch. I'll try to figure this out.
Jim, Thank you for this extremely informative and well presented video. It has inspired me to start on a long overdue project. I had an Easycap kicking around for years and had yet to open it. It turned out I couldn't find any drivers for Windows 10 so I ordered vidbox and cannot wait to get started. Cheers!
Sad if those capture devices don't work with Win 10.
Bummer you couldn't use what you already had, thanks for the save on purchasing though. I'm curious, once you get your new hardware, will you let us know if it successfully transferred your media (home videos)? And maybe quality expectation vs reality? I know I'd appreciate it!
EXCELLENT PREVIEW. PRO VIDEOGRAPHER AND PHOTOGRAPHER FOR MANY YEARS. HAVE USED THE SAME SETUP BEFORE. THANK YOU
Can't wait for the updated tutorial! :D
Great tutorial. A couple things I'd like to add are:
- analog video often has black bars on the left and right sides, it can be cropped off with the crop filter in virtual dub, then resized for the correct aspect ratio. Same thing if there's a lot of video noise at the bottom of the video, it can be cropped off too.
- the analog recorded audio often will be recorded too loud or quiet, I like to extract it from the captured file as wav using virtual dub, and I edit it in Audition (The free Audacity program should work well too). I make sure the levels are correct (normalized to -0.1 dB, crop any noise peaks using a noise gate filter) and that background hiss is removed using noise reduction. Also, often the left/right audio channels will be imbalanced, normalizing will fix this too. It's important to edit audio using headphones so you can distinctly hear it. I save the edited wav separately, and load it as the audio source along with the edited video in the encoder like handbrake.
Did you also use premiere to capture?
Just remember to use an RCA Y-adapter or encode the audio to mono if your audio source is mono, so you get the audio coming through both speakers, instead of only in the left channel. Besides bad de-interlacing, that is the second most common -- or maybe even *the* most common -- mistake I see when people convert old analog video sources.
Agreed, but it is not nearly as heinous as throwing away half the temporal information, hence the tutorial.
I've been wanting to do a "split the fields apart" animation for a while. If I had seen that in the late 1990s, it would have saved me a lot of heartache in the early 2000s.
Jim Leonard BTW, Handbrake can convert 60i to 60p as well if you use bob deinterlacing (its name for Yadif mode 1), but it doesn't support upscaling -- which is unfortunate, because otherwise Handbrake is a very useful tool.
+vwestlife I think you are mistaken; bob != yadif. Last time I used it, it line-doubled and I never checked it again.
The advantage of doing the deinterlacing in virtualdub is that you can visually check if you have the field order correct. I don't believe you have field order control in handbrake.
Jim Leonard I was going by this thread, in which it was claimed "Bob in HandBrake is indeed yadif mode 1": forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=170093
I stand corrected, but Yadif still needs correct field cadence to work properly, and I didn't see that option in handbrake.
This video is a gift of education.. Thank you.. Rally appreciate it... I'm in a PAL regio.. so I must go and find out about PAL..
hi Sergant Crow, were you able to come up with equivalent PAL configs? Appreciate you sharing them if you can, Thanks Martin
@@martindevilly7010 Forgive me for not seeing your question and replying Martin.. I'll have to watch again !
Awesome lesson. How to set up your video capture so the recording will be STABLE!!!! This is exactly what I have
to do to my old home videos! Video Interlacing!
Ok. So I'm 4 years late in seeing this, but doesn't prevent me from commenting on your wonderful and easy teaching style. Really fabulous.
I am a teacher in UK.
Brilliant, best ever tutorial!
Wow, thank you so much! :)
Whoa crazy seeing you here!
AGAIN.. wanted to share and ask... HOW DID THIS PROCESS GO... SOME THINKING
'" EVEN A WOMAN CAN DO THIS.. " come on share with us
PLAYING 10 /20 YEAR OLD VIDEO TAPES ON A 30 YEAR OLD VCR.. DOES'T GO WELL
NOT FOR ANYBODY.. FOR MORE THAN ONE TAPE OR 20 MINUTES
DEGRADED TAPES LEAVE MASSIVE RESIDUE ON THE VCR'S HEAD AND YOU LOSE
Very good instructive video! But I have a a problem that I'm not sure if it can be solved. I have some VHS tapes that have been recorded on a camera was brought to me (in Greece) by uncle from States. So its NTSC. I have a Mitsubishi M1000 VHS player and a cassette adapter for the tapes. When I'm connected to TV I can see picture and everything is fine. When I m connected to pc I have no colors. I'm using an DVD EZMaker USB Gold video Capture device with Veedub64. I have tried also an Intensity Hustle from Blackmagicdesign with OBS software.I could receive colors but loosing frames every now and then. Image going totally black for a sec very often. If I change to Pal B I get only sound. Could you think something else I can try? Thanks alot!
The tutorial ive been looking for, really appreciate it
Thank you. This the best instruction video I have seen not only on subject matter (increased my knowledge by 200%) but the quality of your production. No loud distracting music, no garbled speaking, clear and concise screen shots sharp in focus and easy to read. A thousand thanks for your effort oh forgot no annoying advertisements.
One of the BEST Tutorial Videos on UA-cam . Thank You OSkool !
This is the Rosetta Stone of VHS tape conversion! Now to go do it... :)
Thank you for this!
Easily one of the best, detailed, informative videos on the subject.
Helpful tip! First, use VirtualDub2 so you can directly save out to an MP4 instead of needing to use handbrake.
If you go to save and you get an error looking like this (pcm_s 16le: codec not currently supported in container mp4) This happened because you didn't choose an audio compression type.
Make sure Audio/full processing mode is checked. Then Audio/compression and then choose FFMpeg AAC.
Assuming you have your video compression set to x264, you should be able to save now. Happy converting!
Correct advice, and if I were to re-do this video for 2020, I'd say the same things. Thanks!
@@TheOldskoolPC Awesome, thanks for the really helpful video! I'm able to archive my parent's vhs collection because of it!
Wait, I can combine the second and third step of deinterlacing and converting straight to mp4???
@Nikolai Domek I followed your advice and the video saved as MP4 (thanks!). However, when I tried to play the video with VLC, I got this error message: "Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "ULRA" (Ut Video)." Windows Media Player also could not play it. After the error, both played the audio but no video.
@@TheOldskoolPC I was able to save as MP4. However, when I tried to play the video with VLC, I got this error message: "Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "ULRA" (Ut Video)." Windows Media Player also could not play it. After the error, both played the audio but no video. Any help is appreciated!
EXCELLENT Tutorial!! Your explainations are flawless (considering this video was totally ad lib) and simplified enough for anyone to understand. I've been looking for a while now for a good layman's tutorial on these conversions of analog tapes to digital and this couldn't be a better demonstration. Even your voice is soothing. Lol. Thank you sir.
Thank you very much for your video. I've read a lot about video capturing but you are one of the few people out there that knows how to do it correctly without throwing away all that temporal resolution that analog video has. Big thumbs up for that.
Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, hardly anyone gets deinterlacing correct. I was inspired to make the video after I saw someone proudly proclaim they had archived all seasons of a 30i TV show only to see they had botched it *and* had already destroyed their tapes :-(
I love VirtualDub. It's how I made my Ocarina of Time, FF7, and FF8 playthroughs.
Excellent tutorial! So if I'm going to do the same with PAL I'll use the settings: 720x576 25fps, and output at 50p?
That's correct.
Thank's. This is far the best tutorial on the subject online :-D
Fått testa det ut? Åssen converter brukte du? Og funka alt som det skulle med PAL? :)
Jim, I can't seem to change it from NTSC to PAL, as I have a BBC tape I want to convert. Any suggestions?
Ikke hatt tid til å teste ut enda dessverre :-p
Premium quality tutorial, thank you!
Excellent tutorial, as a beginner trying to digitise a few old videos, it's just what I needed.
I have to agree with the other commenters on this vid. THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST CLEAR AND INFOMATIVE VIEDOS ON UA-cam! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, extremely helpful for those wanting to convert video footage from analogue to digital. Hats of to you!!!
How many gb do I need when I want to convert 50 video tapes (VHS), each of 240 minutes in a good quality(or the best)?
About 30GB per hour, assuming very noisy videotape. So 50 * 4 * 30GB = 6TB. However, you don't keep the giant captures around forever, you encode them to .MP4 which is way smaller.
The Oldskool PC best advice is to keep those interlaced 6Tb forever too right? For future projects with better codecs/filters (?)
How does one save 6Tb 😭.. Im in the exact same boat.. maybe even more videos
This is an amazing tutorial! Thank you so much. You are a great VHS magician for me!
Can't select a video source someone pls help
What are you using? How did you set it up? I could potentionally help you out through a 1-on-1 chat. I know how frustrating it was for me, but I got it down.
@@shade221 Hmm, weird. Did you try doing both "keep top field" or "keep bottom field"? Maybe your footage isn't 60fps?
This is what all UA-cam tutorials should be like. Fantastic job!
Thanks mate!
Best de-interlacing explanation I ever had.
Video description is also great info!
I feel like I have been waiting for this for 20 years or something.
Also makes me hate even more when I see badly de-interlaced videos with killer stripes.
Absolutely the best video out there with the most information. Thank you
I can't tell you how much I appreciate this video. I'm a magician, and often I come across rare magic tutorials on VHS. I have quite a few and have been wanting to digitize them. I have started now and have completed 3 so far, and your instructions are impeccable!!! Thank you for creating an excellent useful video about a timely subject.
GREAT VIDEO! Well Done and Very informative!!!! Not many can sound as good as you without a script!!!! I'm highly impressed! Thank you!!!!!
Fantastic. I used your step by step on my hi-8 dance films from the 90s and got rid of horrible bouncing combs. Now my film comes out smooth as if I was looking at it through the viewfinder.
Well done!
5 years later and I stumbled across this excellent tutorial. This should be required viewing for anyone (even "professional" editors) who are trying to incorporate older SD analog video into modern production work flows. I have seen Documentaries on Netflix, Amazon Prime, even broadcast television networks that incorporate video with interlacing artifacts, blown out or crushed blacks, and horrible color rendition. Unless they know what they are doing and INTENTIONALLY doing this, I think it shows the slow reduction in skill of the craft of video production, at least legacy production technology. Thank you for shedding light on this process. Kudos, Sir!
I Have watched dozens of tutorials on video editing.. this is one if not the the best I have ever seen!.. Congratulations !
Thank you for making this video! Sharing your knowledge in such a concise manner is a wonderful gift to all! Respect!
Its 2021 and this video so far is the most useful!!
A massive thank you for this!! I wasted a whole day trying to figure this out and was about to give up when your video appeared in search result. Was testing it along with your demonstation - and it works!!
Thank you so much. This was so helpful...I was losing my mind with quality and timing issues. Thanks to this guide I have all my stuff backed up and looking amazing.
Over 4 years later this tutorial is quality. Making for happy memories. Thanks!!!
Thank you for taking the time to teach this task. I see there are very many basic steps, all useful to get the best results on a great improved video that will be preserved and remain preserved as new tec applications can be used to continually upgrade the video viewing., MP4 ect.
Thank you so much :) This is the perfect tutorial for what I want to achieve. A couple of years ago I started to convert some old cam tapes to digital format. I got about halfway through, but after seeing this video I realise I'll have to start over to get the best out of my old tapes! There is so much I was throwing away without realizing it. Thanks again!
This is EXACTLY what I needed to know. Been searching for years for this information!
I just want to thank you SO MUCH! I have started converting all my vhs tapes and this made it so easy! I appreciate the advice for the free downloads and the step by step walk through!
Clear and to the point, no filler or self promotion. Great instructional video!
Thank you very much for your video tutorial and the Q&A you posted in the video description! It helped me a lot in recording my old VHS tapes. I was not satisfied with the recordings of the video software, that came with the capture stick. I did not know you could simply use a 3rd party, free software like Virtualdub!
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge in this tutorial. Very pleased to finally be able to keep the smooth, live-like, action captured in the old video's. Really great. This tutorial should be the first thing to educate to editors of video, be it professional or amateur. (Though in Europe, where I live, we use PAL 50 interlaced, the process is very clear. We just use other parameters). You've done a great job! Greetings from the Netherlands!
If the NTSC frame rate should be 29.97, vhat shoud be the PAL frame rate?
@@carlsdarvin 25 fps I guess. And 50 fps progressive to keep the live-like action.
Thank you very much for this excellent and comprehensive tutorial.
As a side note for others if you get a black and white image, you need SECAM filter to do so in virtual dub : -> « Capture Filter » choose standard SECAM-L
Thanks for this I found an old video tape from 1989 when I was in preschool. I bought a vcr on ebay and grabbed a cheap capture device from amazon. I couldn't get anything working correctly until I found your video. Thanks a lot!
Excellent video, I constantly use Handbrake to convert my drone, dashcam and Canon Camcorder videos so we can watch them via Plex anywhere. This VideoDub software is going to be a great addition to my video editing, I will now be able to make all my old home videos look much better from this tutorial. Thank you very much, you speak very clearly and your video is right on, I can't say that about a lot of people who post DIY videos.
been searching for something as informal as this! thank you bro!
I am quite satisfied with the combination of the elgato video capture + handbrake with the constant frame rate and the conversion of 59.94 fps . no more audio out of sync ! thank you
I rarely comment, this video after 7 years is still working flawelesly. Amizing
Awesome....so many tutorials leave IMPORTANT stuff out.... You did a great job for an old schooler to grasp. Thank you!
I had absolutely no problem transferring PAL VHS to DVD. Brilliant result.
I used "Easier Cap" adapter and Virtualdub can detect it as "AV TO USB2.0" but for some reason Virtualdub cannot detect any video sources, and when i open capture pin the video standard is set to "None", why is that happening?
the preview is working just fine but it captures the footage with stutters and bad quality
I guess I bought the same one as you "AV TO USB2.0" for $12 on Amazon. It seems to internally deinterlace to 30p. I was not able to eek out of it neither interlaced video nor 60p video. Also, it does not properly report its capabilities, so I could not choose YUV with 720x480 frame size in VirtualDub, and could not encode it to anything but MJPEG. Piece of garbage.
Uh oh! Thanks for the warning!
This video couldn't have been more straightforward. Thank you. Instant great results.
There are many videos out there on this topic, but this video is the best one. It addresses technical gotchas that aren't even on the radar of the other well-meaning youtubers. You discuss things like frame order, the proper framerate frequency, and the best way to de-interlace that wasn't even possible ten years ago. These methods appear to be very best way to transfer VHS to digital. I have yet to apply these methods but thanks to your detailed discussion, I'm confident I'll have good results. I have one more thing that I believe will contribute to that. I have an HDMI output on my VCR!
Excellent. My first comment ever on a U-Tube video. Says a lot about your explanation. No uh-ms and ahs
Thanks for this very well made tutorial.
One important thing to note is that there are apparently several different types of these EZCAP devices that physically look the same but have difference electronics. Sadly the one I bought uses a Macrosilicon MS2106S chip, and 80% of the settings mentioned here are not available. E.g. the de-interlacing is done by the chip itself and there are hardly any configuration options to improve the picture quality of the capture.
Thanks for the comment. I thought I was losing my mind! The easy cap looking device I have works with OBS but not Virtual Dub for some reason. Let me know if you find a device that allows proper deinterlacing as shown in the video!
This is my second sortie into digitizing my VCR tapes. It seems to be going much smoother for me this time. I actually got everything to work just as in your video. Thank you.
You deserve a medal for this video. Thank you very much and for also updating links to the 2020 versions!
This is some very interesting and important information. Also, you perfectly explained the what's and why's, not just the how's. Thank you.
Absolutely Useful! Excellent, Clear, Detailed Enough, Nice Work!
You're amazing!!! Also with PAL!! Thx to you my mom get's a really unique gift for her 60's birtday
This has to be the absolute BEST video on UA-cam that walks you through the process. You are an awesome teacher. Thank you so much. I have my weekends cut out for me for what I have been putting off for so long. Thank you a billion times!!
Gads! And I thought I knew it all ...
Ok, just kidding, and you found answers to questions I had. So, THANK YOU! Very well done, especially because you're doing this with no "assistance."
well done! Even though this is several years old (now 2021) the basic concepts are well explained for non-tech people like me. Thanks very much.
thanks for your content you got a new subscriber waiting for the updated video for 2022
Wasn't here to convert analog to digital, just wanted to peep this vid 'cause I stumbled across it, I stuck around till the end though because you are a great teacher. Simple and easy to understand, informative, and perfectly handles technical details, not a lot of tutorials on here are as thorough and informative. Just my observation. I may want to do this some day and I'm glad I know exactly how, thanks haha. You're very knowledgeable, I'm gonna check out some more of your vids. Liked and subbed btw, you deserve it.
Now if we only had decent internet in South Africa I could watch this video smoothly....LOL
Great video. Exactly what I was looking for. I only needed to see the first device (USB 2.0).
wonderfully complete and understandable for the novice. Thank you soooooo much!
Thanks man! I was struggling to get decent de-interlaced videos. Great tutorial!
First off...I hope you and your family are still doing well with the Covid-19 pandemic. Man...I have to give you a huge THANK YOU for this video. I have a few questions too...but I have it at the end. I started down this path 7 years ago and ran into the audio-sync issues. Tried capture card to PC, tried USB and Firewire devices...all had issues. I researched and gave up. I started copying everything to a DVD recorder and now that device is failing. Went out and started researching again, learned copying to DVD was not a good idea. Amidst all the research...I was getting confused again and was ready to give up yet again. Then I found and watched your video....wow...it all makes sense now!! I pulled out a capture device I purchased back in the day and went through this video and all is perfect. I ran into a couple hiccups (even with audio again)...read your FAQ's and some of your comments...and bam...all is working. Thank you...thank you.
First question(s). I skipped the first version of VirtualDub and started with VirtualDub2. I noticed in some of the comments that I actually do not need to use Handbrake. i'm unclear at that point with VirtualDub2...as I'm just not full understanding compression. Do I still go through and set the compression with the UtVideo YUV422BT.601VCM as normal from the video? When I'm ready to save...do I just simply save as mp4 instead of the avi file type or do I need to change the compression in the file to something different if I want the mp4 format? Also...which one should I choose: MP4(Mpeg-4 Part 14) or MP4 +faststart?
Finally...from an archival perspective...what is a "best practice"? I will eventually save everything off on MP4 (which sounds like is still the best option). For archival, should I keep the original AVI, or should I keep the processed avi file...or should I keep both?
I hope you can get back to me at some point...not in a major rush though as I'm just going to start to just get the videos digitized first. I am so glad I found this video. Stay safe...and again...thank you!
Glad you found it helpful! Virtualdub2 is what I now recommend and has a link in the description. VD2 allows saving directly to MP4 so that's how you can remove the handbrake step. You still capture to UTVideo for the best quality raw capture, but after that you can save directly to mp4. Either mp4 option is fine as long as the bitrate is high, like 8mbit/s or more.
As for archival best practices, I recommend saving the original interlaced .AVI raw capture. That way you can re-process it long after the tapes have failed. A 4TB portable drive is about $100 as of right now, which is a small price to pay for keeping them around IMO.
@@TheOldskoolPC Awesome. Thank you so much.
@@TheOldskoolPC I'm sorry to bother again. I decided to give this a quick try after your speedy response and now have a few more questions.
I took the de-interlaced filter version after the raw capture and tried both mp4 settings. I received an error "pcm_s16le: codec not currently supported in container mp4". I noticed the audio compression from the Save File screen was defaulted to No compression (PCM) with sample layout being 48000Hz 16-bit 2 ch.
I did some digging and discovered that under the Audio section, that I could change it from Direct Stream Copy to Full Processing Mode. This allowed me to get access to Compression.
At this point, there are now 13 compression options. I found two that were 8 bit: CCITT A-Law and CCITT u-Law (both showing 48,000kHZ, 8 Bit, Stereo - 94KB/s). Tried both...and received similar errors about XXXX not supported in container mp4.
Questions: What audio compression should I be looking for to get the best audio from these recordings? Is audio compression like video...where I should be looking for lossless audio compression? Some compressions allow me to show multiple formats that have various kHz, bits, and KB/s...what should I be targeting here?
Thanks again...and if there is a more preferred way that I should ask you questions...I'm happy to ask in another forum. Take care - Jason