Hi All
At present I'm recording VHS to DVD via my scart to capture card (Hauppauge 150)using audio mini jack and composit video. Would I get a better quality pic if I wired the scart to a 4 pin mini din(s video)? I have the wiring diagram, but not sure if the benefits would be worth the work. Anyone tried it? The capture card obviously has s.video in.
Cheers Vomog.
Composite is by far the worst quality option. Anything is better, even s-video. That being said, VHS is poor quality to start with. You can't polish a turd, so don't expect miracles. Did you clean the heads, get the tracking spot on etc?
Cheers for that Indochine. I used the co-axial from vhs to card before,but I could never get stereo.At least I get it with present system. Surely composit is better than using the antennae cable?
Vomogs
Yes, composite is (just about) better than using the RF output from your VCR, but only just. You'll still get all the same colour shift, dot crawl etc due to the signal being PAL encoded. I presume you're in a PAL country, since you have a SCART socket on your VCR. If not, substitute "NTSC" there. (Even worse!)
However you may find that when you wire up your SCART-to-mini-DIN cable, you only get black and white results. Like I did with my Sony VCR.
This is because S-Video was not part of the original SCART standard, and not every SCART-compatible device supports it for this reason.
quote from another forum
Quote: Scart to video connectors only work if the scart is S-Video capable they only convert the wiring not the process .In other words if your scart is S-video enabled (check your manual) it'll work if it is'nt it wont .The easiest way to get vhs into the pc is beg/borrow/or steal a dvd recorder
Quote: Also, S-Video and RGB are mutually exclusive through SCART, due to the S-Video implementation using the pins allocated for RGB. Most SCART-equipped televisions or VCRs (and almost all of the older ones) do not actually support S-Video, resulting in a black-and-white picture if such a connection is attempted, as only the luminance signal portion is usable.
If you are successful, S-video is still an encoded signal as composite is, so considering the source material is VHS tape, don't expect miracles.
If you are happy with Avisynth, there is a VHS tape filter which is supposed to clean up video files captured off VCRs. Also VirtualDub has a VHS filter.
