* I borrowed a good quality VHS player with SCART connector because it sends RGB in separate channels, improving quality considerably. Don't use the single channel composite video.
* Then I bought a cheap SCART to HDMI convertor and used a borrowed HDMI capture card.
* I recorded it with OBS studio and the resulting video looks very good.
So my total costs were about 20$ (for the adapter).
From my understanding this is the "bottleneck" in quality for older systems (at least in gaming consoles), converting Analogue to Digital. Which is why "RetroTink" sells different converters from ~$100 up to $750 (RetroTINK-4K Pro). I've seen a few videos comparing cheap generic USB converters with more expensive upscalers and there is a noticeable difference in image quality
This also worked for me. Crucially, the cheap composite capture devices are rubbish and have terrible drivers as well, while the cheap HDMI capture + OBS Just Works.
The best solution for "normies" is to get a Panasonic DVD player with HDD recording ability. That thing has a circuit which synchronizes all scanrows, i.e. it completely removes all tearing of the image.
Then proceed with something to digitize the analog output from SCART2.
SCART carries RGB but that only comes from DVD players, computers, and other digital sources. At no point in a VHS player is the signal in RGB form - generally not even in ones with digital "trick play" modes.
It doesn't make any sense to move the Y/C to RGB conversion into the VHS player.
Never seen one which converts to RGB, must be rare. And then what do you use to digitize from RGB? Most SCART to HDMI converters use the composite video in the SCART connector.
Me too, but I've used a good VHS player with HDMI output. So it's one transformation step less, and maybe the end quality is the best possible (I hope).
If you have a lot of Video8 or Hi8 tapes to digitise, get a Digital8 camcorder. It will most likely play them back quite happily and emit DV over its Firewire port. Digital8 is just DV on a different tape!
I still use DV/DVCAM tapes because I like shooting with old cameras, and I capture the same way I have for about 25 years when I used a VX2000 to shoot DV for a commercial digital streaming company that did all sorts of training videos.
Cheap crappy PCIe Firewire card (back in the day it was PCI, but no-one has that now), and dvgrab to get a raw DV stream off tape, then ffmpeg -i dvgrab-001.dv -c copy whateveritscalled.avi to rewrap it in something the editing software can read. These days I use DaVinci Resolve on Linux, in the olden days I used Premiere 5 on Windows 2000.
Even back then I used to capture on Linux and then bring it into Windows 2000 because only Linux had reliable Firewire support.
Can vouch for this trick - Digital8 cameras with Firewire is perfect transferring analog Video8 / Hi8. The analog to digital path in the Digital8 cameras is way better than what you can likely scrounge up yourself.
Can be expensive to get but if the camera doesn't break during use you can resell them easily.
What is the value for meaning for keeping home photos or videos? Does anyone provide meta tags, detailed information or narration? How is the photo or video meaningful unless you add your detailed memories to it for others to understand?
If the relevant relatives are still around but don't have the ability to play tapes anymore but want to watch them from time to time, you don't need any of that.
I had a similar set of tapes, and ended up collecting a chain of connectors – firewire cable, firewire to thunderbolt2 adapter, thunderbolt2 to usb-c.
Instead of cobbling together an impressive array of tools though, I just got a trial of Final Cut Pro and pulled out everything with that. You can get what I think is a three month trial? Anyway, it was plenty for this one time effort of digitizing old Hi8 tapes.
I think I did end up using Handbrake to take the raws down to a reasonable size to give to family members, but the raw footage and project files I stuck on a couple of 1TB Sandisk drives to keep in physically separate backup locations.
Important archival work - much appreciated! However some links on the page are not working. Also, it seems like the author has made a Web app to make conversion easy, but I don't see a repo link or otherwise a way to access it.
I don't think there's going to be a better way than "find high quality player and decent capture device (e.g. Behringer), then press play a lot". It's possible that a truly dedicated process would capture off the tape head and then de-Dolby in software, but ultimately: it's a tape.
How I digitized my family VHS tapes:
* I borrowed a good quality VHS player with SCART connector because it sends RGB in separate channels, improving quality considerably. Don't use the single channel composite video.
* Then I bought a cheap SCART to HDMI convertor and used a borrowed HDMI capture card.
* I recorded it with OBS studio and the resulting video looks very good.
So my total costs were about 20$ (for the adapter).
> cheap SCART to HDMI convertor
From my understanding this is the "bottleneck" in quality for older systems (at least in gaming consoles), converting Analogue to Digital. Which is why "RetroTink" sells different converters from ~$100 up to $750 (RetroTINK-4K Pro). I've seen a few videos comparing cheap generic USB converters with more expensive upscalers and there is a noticeable difference in image quality
This also worked for me. Crucially, the cheap composite capture devices are rubbish and have terrible drivers as well, while the cheap HDMI capture + OBS Just Works.
There is the ultimate solution https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode , but that requires modifying your VCR.
The best solution for "normies" is to get a Panasonic DVD player with HDD recording ability. That thing has a circuit which synchronizes all scanrows, i.e. it completely removes all tearing of the image.
Then proceed with something to digitize the analog output from SCART2.
A couple of models with this feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XW_-16Vo4E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaH73rhBHbk
> I borrowed a good quality VHS player with SCART connector because it sends RGB in separate channels
I'd be surprised at that - normally they'd emit Y/C or at best YUV.
Scart can carry RGB and Composite. And good VHS players do RGB.
SCART carries RGB but that only comes from DVD players, computers, and other digital sources. At no point in a VHS player is the signal in RGB form - generally not even in ones with digital "trick play" modes.
It doesn't make any sense to move the Y/C to RGB conversion into the VHS player.
Never seen one which converts to RGB, must be rare. And then what do you use to digitize from RGB? Most SCART to HDMI converters use the composite video in the SCART connector.
Me too, but I've used a good VHS player with HDMI output. So it's one transformation step less, and maybe the end quality is the best possible (I hope).
If you have a lot of Video8 or Hi8 tapes to digitise, get a Digital8 camcorder. It will most likely play them back quite happily and emit DV over its Firewire port. Digital8 is just DV on a different tape!
I still use DV/DVCAM tapes because I like shooting with old cameras, and I capture the same way I have for about 25 years when I used a VX2000 to shoot DV for a commercial digital streaming company that did all sorts of training videos.
Cheap crappy PCIe Firewire card (back in the day it was PCI, but no-one has that now), and dvgrab to get a raw DV stream off tape, then ffmpeg -i dvgrab-001.dv -c copy whateveritscalled.avi to rewrap it in something the editing software can read. These days I use DaVinci Resolve on Linux, in the olden days I used Premiere 5 on Windows 2000.
Even back then I used to capture on Linux and then bring it into Windows 2000 because only Linux had reliable Firewire support.
Can vouch for this trick - Digital8 cameras with Firewire is perfect transferring analog Video8 / Hi8. The analog to digital path in the Digital8 cameras is way better than what you can likely scrounge up yourself.
Can be expensive to get but if the camera doesn't break during use you can resell them easily.
What is the value for meaning for keeping home photos or videos? Does anyone provide meta tags, detailed information or narration? How is the photo or video meaningful unless you add your detailed memories to it for others to understand?
If the relevant relatives are still around but don't have the ability to play tapes anymore but want to watch them from time to time, you don't need any of that.
I had a similar set of tapes, and ended up collecting a chain of connectors – firewire cable, firewire to thunderbolt2 adapter, thunderbolt2 to usb-c.
Instead of cobbling together an impressive array of tools though, I just got a trial of Final Cut Pro and pulled out everything with that. You can get what I think is a three month trial? Anyway, it was plenty for this one time effort of digitizing old Hi8 tapes.
I think I did end up using Handbrake to take the raws down to a reasonable size to give to family members, but the raw footage and project files I stuck on a couple of 1TB Sandisk drives to keep in physically separate backup locations.
Got me thinking of a previous post regarding digitalizing VHS tapes
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24839848
Important archival work - much appreciated! However some links on the page are not working. Also, it seems like the author has made a Web app to make conversion easy, but I don't see a repo link or otherwise a way to access it.
i do not have videos but i do have audio cassets which needs conversion to digital.
If someone knows a faster and good way pls share.
thanks
I don't think there's going to be a better way than "find high quality player and decent capture device (e.g. Behringer), then press play a lot". It's possible that a truly dedicated process would capture off the tape head and then de-Dolby in software, but ultimately: it's a tape.
If you want more pain, you can correct for wow and flutter after capturing.
https://github.com/HENDRIX-ZT2/pyaudiorestoration
Key IMHO is "Speed matching to hum frequency".
There are also commercial products which does similar things.
https://www.celemony.com/en/capstan
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/digitizing-tapes/62996/2
I do not have any good advice, only pain.
It turns out that a lot of old tape players have either failed completely or else add excessive background hissing.
Most tapes don't record all the way to the end so you will have to cut it digitally regardless.