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.
This a tutorial for beginners to transfer analog video tapes. The Oldskool PC makes it clear that this isn't for archival quality transfers.
Hello! I am just starting to look into the world of VHS conversion so this video will help massively, thank you! 🙏