How to convert VHS videotape to 60p digital video (2023)

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This a tutorial for beginners to transfer analog video tapes. The Oldskool PC makes it clear that this isn't for archival quality transfers.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Davikins 📅︎︎ Feb 08 2023 🗫︎ replies

Hello! I am just starting to look into the world of VHS conversion so this video will help massively, thank you! 🙏

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/magnetized86 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2023 🗫︎ replies
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In 2016, I made a tutorial on how to transfer  VHS to digital video. Despite this channel   being dedicated to vintage computing, that  tutorial remains my most successful video   to date. But a lot has happened since then;  there’s better software available that can   do everything necessary in one step. So, I  figured it was time to make a new tutorial.   Now, there are dozens of tutorials online  for transferring VHS, so why is it worth   your time to watch this one? Well, other tutorials  usually produce an OK result that looks like this…  …but if analog video is processed  properly, it can look like this:  If the example on the right looks better  and smoother than the example on the left,   then this tutorial is for you. I’ll cover cheap  capture hardware I’ve tested that works well,   and show you how to set up the software to  perform one-click recording. But most importantly,   I’ll explain the critical secret necessary  to preserve analog video’s true framerate. So, here’s what we’ll cover in this tutorial:  First, I’ll explain the scope of this tutorial,   and who it is for. Next, I’ll explain the secret  to transferring video properly that practically   everyone, even online streaming services, gets  wrong. I’ll show several capture devices I tested   successfully, and where to get them. I’ll walk you  through downloading, installing, and configuring   the free software we’re going to use. Finally,  I’ll go over some common troubleshooting steps   if you run into something unexpected. If you know  some of this already, use the chapter markers in   this video’s description to skip past sections  you don’t care about. Now, this tutorial is a   bit out of place on my channel, which is supposed  to be dedicated to the topic of vintage personal   computing. So to stay “on brand”, I picked  some appropriate source material to use today.   Yeah... We’re going there.   This tutorial has a very specific scope: It’s  meant for beginners who have never tried this   process before. When finished, it’s a one-step  process that creates good quality files that   work for most use cases. It also tries to be as  cheap as possible. It uses free software, doesn’t   require a powerful computer, and you should be  able to follow along spending less than $50.   To keep things simple for beginners, I won’t  be covering advanced topics in this tutorial:   Realtime conversion, such as upscaling and HDMI  output, is not covered. This tutorial is about   capturing video to digital files, not connecting  VCRs to modern televisions. Also, this tutorial   does not produce preservation-grade archival  masters. Archival masters require more expensive   equipment and a more complicated workflow.  And finally, this tutorial does not go into   video restoration, such as noise removal or 4K  upscaling. I might cover these advanced topics at   a later date if there’s interest; leave a comment  if you’d be interested in learning about them.   To produce the best quality results, we’ve got  to take a minute to explain the critical secret   necessary for smooth output, and that is the  difference between frames and fields. Analog video   is captured in frames per second. But an analog  video frame is not a single image: It actually   hides two images, captured at different moments  in time. See those horizontal jagged lines? One   image is contained in the even lines of the frame;  the other image is in the odd lines. These two   images are called fields, and they are interlaced  together in a single frame. (This is why you may   have heard analog video referred to as interlaced  video.) This property of interlaced video means   that we can create a smooth 60 frames per second  output, by separating each field into its own   image. The end result should look identical to how  a VHS tape actually looks when played on a VCR.   Capture hardware can cost anywhere from $10 to  thousands of dollars, so what should you buy?   We need both fields in our capture to get  the best quality, so the main criteria,   no matter the cost, is any capture hardware  that passes both fields through unharmed.   Sadly, most cheap $10 USB capture devices don’t  do this; their drivers only capture one field,   so there’s no way to get a  decent result using them.   Here’s two examples of devices to avoid.  On Amazon, their brand name is DIGITNOW,   but the same devices are sold under many different  names and are usually shaped exactly like this.   Luckily for you, I tested many USB capture dongles  to see which ones passed both fields through, had   halfway decent drivers, and were still available  for sale. The winners are: The IO DATA GV-USB2.   This is popular with retro console gamers who  stream over twitch. It has a great driver with   many options, and is still sold commercially for  about $50. Don’t let the Japanese documentation   scare you away; you can find a link to the latest  Windows driver in this video’s description.   The Startech – get ready for this – SVID2USB232.  This adapter works fine, but it’s the least   recommended of the bunch because it required  some tweaking of contrast levels. This can be   inconvenient, but it’s not a showstopper.  It’s available brand new for roughly $40.   The Dazzle DVC-100. Yes, this is the same device  I featured in my previous video. It’s still my   favorite because it’s more tolerant of timing  issues than other devices. It hasn’t been sold   for over a decade, but you can usually find them  on ebay for around $20. For links on where to find   these devices, check this video’s description.  And for a used Dazzle device, you can check ebay.   For software, all we need is the excellent  and free Open Broadcaster Software, or OBS.   OBS has come a very long way in the past 7 years  since I did my original tutorial, and is capable   of capturing, processing, and encoding all in a  single step. Let’s download and install it now.   okay gonna go off script here and get  things started first off let's download obs   so OBS open broadcaster software is obtained  from obsproject.com if you do a search you   may find that other websites will have it  listed but this is the official location   and once you're here you download uh  the version for what you'll be using   this tutorial is on windows so we're  going to download the windows version   okay once you've got it downloaded and installed  go ahead and start it up I'll do so here in   Windows and you'll be greeted with a multi-pane  interface and it's this isn't a full OBS tutorial   but it's worth explaining at least a couple  of sections this section up here is called the   scene and it is essentially a big canvas that you  can put multiple elements on this whole rectangle   becomes the video that you are recording or  streaming or capturing some people like to   put a little corner of themselves down here like a  little webcam or something and then the the thing   they're presenting or the game they're streaming  here and some other stuff but we're only going to   be putting uh one giant VHS capture on the scene  so we're only going to have one element in it   uh speaking of which sources are elements that go  into the scene so we will be adding sources here   most importantly video capture device but let's  get to that a little later uh and then finally   over here in controls uh we have uh settings for  setting up uh well our settings uh what we're   recording and how we're going to be saving it and  then of course starting and stopping recording   so let's start with a set of defaults first of  all if we're going to be monitoring uh how our   capture is doing we should turn on some statistics  so go to docs and pick stats and you should see   uh a docked stats window show up it will show  the capture rate it'll show uh how many frames   it has captured uh or missed or skipped and so  on and this will come in handy later but for now   it's it's enough that it's simply enabled  now we're going to create a new profile   a profile is a settings group for OBS and we're  going to create a new one because it sets a lot   of the settings to default and I want that for  this tutorial because then it's less for us to   change let's just call this a VHS capture for the  profile okay and as you'll and you'll notice that   the window got wider because it set the default  to its default which is a widescreen image   uh now let's go ahead and create a new scene  collection uh just to make things clear and   clean uh so that if you're using OBS with other  things for example that your scene won't uh   you know conflict with other scenes so again  we're just going to call this VHS it's a VHS scene   okay and you should notice down here that  uh we have a single scene which is fine   and now we can configure OBS for what we're going  to be doing we need to set the size of this canvas   to be a 4x3 canvas that is appropriate for  VHS capture a lot of people sometimes will   capture into a wide screen and they'll try to  stretch it that looks odd so we're not going   to do that but we do need to tell OBS we want a  4x3 screen to do that we're going to do settings and then video is where we define the  properties of the canvas and how it's output   for both of these we're going to pick  a 4x3 1080p resolution which is 1440   by 1080. and you're going to put  1440 by 1080 in both of these   and since we want our output to be the full  60 Fields per second for common FPS values   for ntsc we want 59.94 if you're in a pal region  you can pick 50 for pal but for us we want 59.94 and hit OK now you'll see that our canvas has  been resized to what we need at this point it's   good to start your Source playing so that you  have a signal to examine when you hook up your   capture device so go ahead and put your tape  any tape at all into a VCR and start it playing   and that will be our test signal  when we're starting the next step   so naturally at this point go ahead and connect  the video and audio leads from your VCR to your   capture device typically the video connection  if you're using composite video is yellow   and if you have a left and a right audio  lead typically the red is the right side   so red is right it's easy to remember with  everything connected up you're ready to add   a video source so go to the sources panel hit  the plus sign and pick video capture device   you can name it if you want but it's  not really necessary just hit OK and then you will be provided with a window  for your video Source now the first thing you   have to do is pick your actual capture device I  actually have several on this system so we don't   see anything so I'm going to drop down and pick  the device I have inserted which is the gv-usb2   and it should pop straight up this is our video  test Source here and hopefully it's going to look   just fine however if you need to make some  adjustments if you're not seeing something   you can configure the video and what that will  do is it'll bring up the driver for the driver   interface for your capture device and you  can adjust some properties we'll go ahead   and start with the gv-usb2 just so you can see  what it looks like and I'll show you the how the   pop-up for this for the other devices for the  gv-usb2 you generally don't have to change any   of these settings but you do have to make sure  that it is set to weave and what that means is   it will not attempt any de-interlacing it will  pass all of the fields through untouched there   are some other settings here too also such as  for example a proc amp which you can use to   try to adjust brightness and contrast I usually  just leave these at whatever the defaults are to show you an example of what that  configuration dialog may look for other   devices let's go ahead and pick the star tech  device the star tech device is shows up as USB   b2828 when you do that now I've paused the  video here so don't be alarmed it's not the   capture device is working just fine but I've  gone ahead and paused because I want to show   something you may need to adjust when  you configure the video on this device   this device for some reason has incorrect  levels you may notice that the some of these   areas are blown out and they don't look  right if you reduce the contrast level to the point where the blooming goes away and  nothing is blown out then it looks fine and this   number contrast 20 actually does match with my  own settings that I've tested before so sometimes   you have to adjust the image which you can do so  in the driver settings when you configure video   let's go ahead and check the Dazzle device so you  can see what that configuration dialog looks like   so let's go ahead and pick the Dazzle device  which conveniently shows up as The Dazzle DVC 100   we still have our paused video frame here as a  signal if you configure video on this you have   you don't have very many options sometimes on  some of these dialogues you'll see a VCR input   uh toggle which I believe is supposed to handle  either better timing or something but I've never   found this to actually do anything so it's okay  to leave it the Dazzle also has some proc amp   controls if you need to you can adjust things  however the defaults produce a perfect image   so we don't need to do anything there once you've  connected your capture device and you see that   you've definitely got an image go ahead and click  OK and that will set the video capture device to   your device and you should also see audio coming  in if it's connected correctly over in the audio   mixer section and this is good this is what we  want to see now that we have our video capture   device putting something into our scene let's  go ahead and set our recording settings our   file compression settings and do a test capture  just to make sure that everything is working as   it looks like it's working so for that we go  to the lower right to controls and to settings   and then to Output if you're not  an expert in OBS keep the output   mode simple we are not streaming so we ignore  the streaming settings go down to recording   first pick a location for where your saved  files are going to be I'm going to go ahead   and pick a temporary directory on my  e-drive you can pick anywhere you like   for recording quality we have a couple of options  high quality indistinguishable and lossless   we all we need is high quality don't pick  indistinguishable or lossless because these   create much larger files and they won't have any  better quality for our source material which is a   VHS tape so just pick high quality medium file  size for recording format the most compatible   format across all devices and software as MP4 out  of that list so pick MP4 and for encoder you may   have software only options you may also have  some Hardware options so what you should pick   if you don't have Hardware options is software  x264 low CPU preset so I don't know what kind of   computer you have if you have an old computer  that is slow you definitely need this setting   if you have a fast computer like something made  after the year 2020 you can pick software x264.   if you have uh any Intel chipset with a quick  sync video you could pick that and that will   offload it'll do the encoding in Hardware which  will offload from the CPU if you have an Nvidia   card like I do you can pick Hardware Nvidia  encoding h.264 and that will also offload   from the CPU but for this test if you have no  idea what to do pick the low CPU usage preset   and then click ok and now that we've set our  basic settings now I know that this doesn't   look correct but what we want to do is just  simply test do a test recording to make sure   that everything is working so for that we go  down to controls and we click start recording   and we are doing a recording now this should  light up blue to show you its recording   if we go down to our stats we should see these  numbers increasing occasionally which they are   and we should also have let's resize this a little  bit we can see the total data that's being output   into our file and what the average bit rate is  and that's it we just need a couple of seconds for   testing so go ahead and stop recording and then  go ahead and pull up that file and see if it works   now let's go ahead and minimize OBS real quick and  go to the location where I saved that temp where I   saved my test file and I'm going to double click  it to play it to make sure that it plays okay and it is playing just fine so we've made a  successful test recording now we need to finish   setting up OBS completely now that we know we can  record and play back correctly with OBS let's go   ahead and finish setting up this scene so that  the video looks the way we want it to remember   earlier how I demonstrated analog video contains  two Fields per frame we need to tell OBS how to   correctly interpret that so to do that go to  your video capture device setting right click   and then pick de-interlacing and you have lots of  options here because the correct de-interlacing   for any interlaced output is two times the speed  we want to pick one of these two x settings the   best one here is yadiff 2x it stands for yet  another d-interlacer it has what it does is   it tries to analyze one frame ahead and behind  and make Intelligent Decisions based on that so   use yadiff 2X and you don't have to worry about  these field settings just yet so once we do that   the output should now be a smooth 60 frames per  second to better illustrate that let's go ahead   and resize the capture to fit our entire canvas  and to do that we want to go right click again   to transform and do stretch to screen and now  there's the full stretch and then we can also   increase the quality of the stretch by right  clicking and doing scale filtering and picking   uh land shows I believe it's pronounced that way  I'm not Hungarian so forgive me if it's wrong   and what that will do is produce a nice smooth  scroll to prove that we're interpreting Fields   correctly let's rewind the tape a little  bit and go to a section with a lot of motion   well this certainly has a lot of motion in it  and as you can tell it's definitely smoother so   this is the output that will essentially be sent  directly to the file this is the full scene this   is what OBS sees and now you can go ahead and do  your full recording go ahead and start recording   and it might be good to do yet another test uh  like do a couple of seconds of recording and   then go ahead and check the file which actually  I'll go ahead and do here I'll stop recording   and once again bring up the temporary location  where I have these files now you'll see that OBS   saves these in date stamp format which is great  which means they sort naturally and you also can   see by the file name when they were recorded  let's go ahead and try this new test recording and I'll go ahead and make this full screen so we're all set to record and now you are  set to record go ahead and Rewind your tape   to the beginning go back into obs start  recording and you should be good to go As easy as that was, you might encounter some  issues along the way. Here are some answers to   common problems:If you’re dropping frames because  the CPU load is too high, you can shrink the size   of the captured video. Instead of 1440x1080, you  can choose 960x720. This won’t look as good if you   upload the result to youtube because youtube  gives less bitrate to 720p videos, but it’s   always a better choice not to drop frames. If that doesn’t help, you might need to   upgrade your PC. Any PC or Mac made  after the year 2010 should work for   this process without dropping frames. If you’re dropping frames even if the   CPU load is low, then this might be caused by  timing issues, such as an old stretched-out   VHS tape, poor over-the-air recording quality,  recordings made at the slow 6-hour SLP speed,   or dirty VCR heads. There’s not much you  can do about tape or recording problems,   but you can clean the VCR heads with a cleaning  tape to see if it gets better. There are also more   thorough ways to clean VCR heads; I’ve left a few  links on how to do so in this video’s description.   If that doesn’t help, then you might need to  introduce a piece of hardware that enforces   good timing signals, called a timebase corrector,  or TBC. Many S-VHS decks come with one built-in,   or you can get a standalone TBC unit and put  it inbetween the VCR and the capture device.   Unfortunately, both options cost a lot of money,  and are out of scope for this beginner’s tutorial.   Some combinations of video capture devices,  drivers, and operating systems can sometimes   result in no audio signal coming from the  capture device. This can be very difficult to   troubleshoot, but if your computer has another way  of capturing audio, such as an audio line-in port   or dedicated audio interface, you can use that for  capturing the audio. Just add an Audio Source in   OBS, and pick your audio capture device. OBS will  combine both sources during the recording process. If the finished video has  audio that drifts out of sync,   you might be dropping too many frames; see the  previous troubleshooting tips to address that.  Audio sync problems might be fixable by  adjusting an audio offset value in OBS.   I’ve put links in this video’s description to some  troubleshooting videos that try to address that.  OBS defaults to recording in stereo. If the  audio in your capture is only coming out of the   left or right side, there are two common causes: If your VCR or camcorder only has one output jack,   you can use a cheap mono-to-stereo adapter  to send the audio to both left and right   inputs. If the stereo playback itself is only  coming out one side, because it was originally   recorded that way, you can tell OBS to treat  the signal as mono. At the recording source,   choose Advanced Audio Properties, then check the  MONO checkbox to mix both channels into mono. If the   resulting output video looks consistently jittery  or jumpy, as if the frames are playing out of   order, then the field order might be swapped. To  fix this, right-click your video capture device in   the Sources section, go to Deinterlacing,  and try the other “field first” setting. And that’s it! I hope you  found this tutorial helpful,   especially the part about how to deinterlace  analog video correctly to a 60p target.   What did you think? Is there something I left out  that a beginner’s tutorial should have covered?   Leave your questions and comments below. If you liked this video, you might be   interested in another video I did about  how I clean videotapes covered in mold,   so that you can capture them without damaging your  equipment. And, of course, if you’re interested   in vintage computing in the early days of  the IBM PC, check out my entire channel.
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Channel: The Oldskool PC
Views: 205,170
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: vintage, computing, retro, vintage computing, personal computers
Id: tk-n7IlrXI4
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)
Published: Tue Feb 07 2023
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