Help me transfer VHS to DV?

[JFrancisco]

Hi. 7 years ago, I started working with matrox Product Support with a Millenium II / Rainbow Runner Suite. Never got anywhere.
I foolishly upgraded to a G-400/Rainbow Runner G-Series combo and wasted more time with them. I now have an Intel D845EBG2 board, Pentium 4 (2.3Ghz), 1GB DDRRAM, and an Ultra DMA, 80GB hard drive with 8MB cache piloted by the Windows 2K Pro system.
I have yet to successfully capture, edit, or produce a single video from my VHS collection I want to convert to Digital Video DVDs.

Can anyone help me before I migrate to either Nvidia or ATI?

Saludos de
JFrancisco

[Tjalfe]

Check this page for new and improved drivers, not created by matrox.

http://adis.szm.com/

Apparently they work well, so they should be worth a shot

[junkmalle]

I have yet to successfully capture, edit, or produce a single video from my VHS collection

So what's not working? Capture? Edit? DVD burn?

[Brian Ellis]

There is a simple foolproof (I'm not implying you're a fool ) way of capturing VHs, editing it and burning to DVD, but it will imply spending a couple of bucks or so (a big so!).

Hardware: Canopus ADVC-100 and an IEEE-1394 card (you could use the ADVC-50, if you don't need video out)
Software: Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7

You can consider the ADVC-100 as if it were a breakout box from the IEEE-1394 card.

If you wish, you can still keep your Matrox G-400 card, but forget Rainbow Runner: it is obsolete and, to say the least, hairy with anything other than Win98SE.

With the combination I recommend (which I use every day), you will be capturing your VHS as if they were from a DV camcorder (except that you have no control features from the software). It's as easy as falling off a log and you have no codec worries, audio hesitations and your video files will be quite modest (~13 Gb/h) despite the excellent quality (the VHS itself is the quality criterion: I've put in high quality analogue into this system and it is still superb).

I've seen many posts in the forums from people with problems with capturing from NVidia and ATI cards.

[JonH]

Brian suggested the Canopus ADVC-100 to me some time back and it works great. I have converted several VHS tapes to DVD. Also have used it to create VHS tapes from DV.

Jon

[JFrancisco]

Thank you all for the helpful info. I will be using Ulead's Media Studio Pro 7 for video editing; any history on problems with this editing software and Canopus 100 converted files? Also, I've been reading about a "similar" product, ADS Pyro A/D (@ well over $100.00 less in price); any history on performance from it?

[junkmalle]

I haven't used either of those DV capture devices -- but I've seen many messages at dvdrhelp.com about problems with the ADS version. Most issues revolve around audio sync. Just about everyone with the Canopus ADVC-100 raves about it. I've seen many people who originally bought the ADS card, had problems, bought the ADVC-100, and then said they should have bought the ADVC-100 in the first place.

In case you haven't given up on the Rainbow Runner, here's what I do with a Marvel G450 eTV under Windows XP:

Matrox's PC-VCR application works well for me but it's highest resolution (720x480) MPEG capture only captures one field. It interpolates the second field from the first to create the full 480 line image. This means you loose half the picture, but I suspect they did it to avoid interlace issues.

For better captures I use a program called AVI_IO and capture in YUY2 mode with HuffYuv compression. The captured files are very large -- about 30 GB/hour. Matrox's drivers capture the fields in the wrong order. The HuffYuv codec has an option to swap scanlines that fixes this.

I then take those YUY2 files and edit them with either VirtualDub or Media Studio Pro 7. MSP7 sometimes has audio sync issues with mp3 audio and xvid or divx video. I find that I HAVE to use 48Khz and the "recompess" option to keep the audio in sync.

VHS tape is pretty noisy. You'll get best results if you use a noise filter before MPG compression. I use the "Smoother" filter in VirtualDub.

VirtualDub has a capture funtion but drops a very large percentage of the frames.

[colinbr]

G450eTV ... Matrox's drivers capture the fields in the wrong order. The HuffYuv codec has an option to swap scanlines that fixes this.

I'm not sure what you mean by the *wrong* order, but I have examined the fields closely from my G45eTV and found that they were top-field-first which is just *different* to DV's bottom-field-first.

I can't recall the settting you mention in HuffYuv but if it does actually swap the scanlines within a frame then you do NOT want this. It will make the top field the bottom field and vice versa but will do this by effectively spacially scrambling the image .... imagine trying to view very small text on your PC monitor if every other horizontal line had been swapped with its partner!

If you want to change the field order of the captured footage then you need to reframe it by effectively shifting the frame boundary by 1 field. Probably better still would be to shift all of the lines in each frame up (or down) in unison by 1 line - you will lose a single line of image in the overscan region but that hardly matters.

The former is easy to do in AviSynth - not sure about the latter.

[junkmalle]

Colinbr,

Well, your card or drivers must be different than mine. Mine ALWAYS captures with the lines in the wrong order. And as you surmised, this is not the normal field order A/B problem (which is just a flag in the header indicating which field to play first on an interlaced display), the lines are actually in the file in the wrong order.

Without any of these fixes, if I record a single pixel thick, nearly horzontal line where it's obvoius the scanlines are in the wrong order -- exactly as you described in your message. I'd post some samples images but I guess they don't accept them here.

I've only found two codecs with fixes this problem: HUFFYUV and Pic Video's MJPEG codec. Both indicate they are for cards with "Broken capture drivers".

I've only found one capture program that can handle this (without the fix in the codecs), VirtualDub. Unfortunately, VirtualDub drops too many frames to be useful for me.

I have even confirmed this by writing my own VFW capture program (capturing YUY2) and swaping pairs of scanlines before saving them (no compression). Without the swap the image is messed up (the same thing that happens with Matrox's PC-VCR program), with the swap the image is restored.

I'm using a G450 eTV that's several years old with the latest drivers from Matrox's web site. I've seen the problem with all the other drivers I've used over the years. Maybe they fixed the hardware somewhere along the way?

[Debbie]

A few days ago I have been trying-out varios capture cards from Pinnacle, Asus, and MSI . Asus have both Nvidia based cards and NTI (Radeon) based cards.

I have been rarther disappointed with the Nvidia based cards since while using Ulead capturing software I kept getting intermittent computer resets. Other capturing software appeard to have no ill effect. I have also tried MSI Nvidia based but had the same result. Fiding the same symptoms discribed in a thread in an other forum, convinced me that Ulead and Nvidia apparently are not compatible.

I then installed an Asus NTI (Radeon) based card and worked like a charm. Capturing for almost 90 mins. full PAL (720 X 576) in .mpg is no problem without droping a single frame using various capturing software including Ulead.

Debbie

[JFrancisco]

Hi guys. Thank you so much for the great info on this subject y'all have been swapping here, but you're just confusing the living daylight out of me! I don't know a Huff from a Yub, and my video card is a Matrox G-400, not a Marvel G450 eTV. I've just bought the Canopus 100 unit and the Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7 software because I understood that the 100 unit would convert my VHS video into DV all by itself and then I'd just use the MediaStudio 7 video editing software to put the Canopus-generated MPEG files into DVD format. Did I just spend over $600.00 just to have the same "different" problems I've had forever with Matrox again?
Saludos de
JFrancisco

[JFrancisco]

Hello there (again). This is for Super & mini MURCers Brian Ellis & JonH. Since you both raved about the Canopus AV/CD-100 and its wonders, I have bought one, and also bought the Ulead Media Studio Pro 7 to go with it. Now I need some help because the "Tutorial" I bought along with the software is telling me NOT to capture in ANY of the MPEG family formats. Can you tell me how do you go about converting your VHS video to DV? I had planned to just let the Canopus convert my VHS tapes into VD files directly sent to my slave (separate/internal) hard drive and then use the mediaStudio software to edit the footage and then produce into DVD formats. Am I being just a tad naive, thinking that my problems are over and that this is going to be a "snap"?
Saludos de
JFrancisco

[junkmalle]

JFrancisco,

The Canopos ADVC 100 is a great device. Pretty much the best choice for converting VHS to DVD.

It sounds like you are on the right track, but just to be sure you are understand, DV refers to a specific data format used by DV cameras. When you capture (really more like a file copy) DV to your PC an AVI will be the result. It's possible to have the capture program automatically convert the DV to MPG format while capturing but this isn't advisable. DV is a much better format for editing and the extra work of converting to MPG while capturing makes it more likely you'll drop frames.

Once you have the DV AVI file(s) on your computer you can start editing them to produce your final MPG file for burning to DVD. You should have no problem using Media Studio Pro 7 to edit DV AVI files and produce DVD compatible MPG files.

[JFrancisco]

Thank you Junkmalle, I appreciate your help; it eases my worries a bit. I now need help deciding whether or not to just send the video output from the Canopus unit (DV AVI files?) out to my C:\ drive, or to my second (slave/internal) drive. I got me a second hard drive because I've been told that's the best way to capture video files to disk (using Ulead MSP7). Which begs the question:
is it better to just store the Canopus 100 output directly, or is it better to use MSP7 to "capture" video from the Canopus 100?
Saludos de
JFrancisco

[JFrancisco]

All: I'm a bit confused. What's the difference, if any, between MPEG, JPEG, and MJPEG (I may not have all those spelled right).

All I know right now is that I need to convert my VHS video signal
into MPEG2 digital video file format so I can burn them into DVDs.

Maybe I'm just a bit dense. Can anyone out there guide me with a procedure to make VHS go from analog video to MPEG2 video?