I'm looking for expert perspectives on capturing analog to digital.
Mission: To get my VHS tapes to an archival format I can use for non-linear editing and making DVD's and other formats.
Method #1: VHS to (miniDV) camcorder
Advantages: Very easy, don't have to worry about what format to capture in, no dropped frames, already stored for archiving (miniDV tapes), all the tapes can be edited without downloading the huge files to computer (although I've not tried this yet, I usually just download the entire tape).
Concerns:
1. Concerned about wearing out my $1000 3CCD panasonic camcorder.
2. The format is 720x480 29.97i, which is ok, but I'm concerned about interlaced video. I understand how to de-interlace, but a lot of times I still get poor results and can still see lines in my video on fast movements.
Method #2: VHS to Capture Card
I guess the only thing to say here is you have more control over the format you capture in, which can be good and bad. You get dropped frames if your hardware can't handle the realtime conversion. You can easily crop that bottom VHS noise. What's interesting is you can capture to progressive and remove the interlace.
Is there any reason interlace should be preserved???
why are you worried about interlaced?, beacause its all a question of what is your target output?
is gonna be TV?, maybe PC ? maybe projector?
well if its TV then leave it as interlaced beacause even if you make a progessive video when played back on your TV you will have interlaced picture, now progessive DVD's played back on TV looks stunning, but considering that you are gonna be capturing VHS and or HI-8 stuff which is orgonally interlaced and is gonna be displayed on interlaced format(assuming that your gonna playback on a tv) coverting to Progressive is just pointless, you aint gonna get any more resolution outof it,
If how ever you wnat to display on non interlaced medians suchas PC then progresive is the way to go,, i've caotured lots of 8mm stuff (RAW uncompressed full 720*576) then deinterlaced and TMPgenced it into Mpeg2 DVD compliant video and it likes DAMN HOT, but it is sooo time consuming and you can only work on small chucnks ata time say 5 minutes max.
any way, everone has there owm style and levels of quality, just experiment untill you find what you like
Well I'm trying to capture all my VHS tapes one last time and destroy them. I want to be able to use the video for whatever may lie for the future.
True I'm capturing interlaced video, and maybe that's fine for my archiving purposes. But when I go to create DVD's, I'll surely be adding other media to the mix, resizing, cropping, and lots of cheasy effects, so wouldn't I need to de-interlace any interlaced clips before I start mixing?
Capturing to RAW, ya I suppose it gives you BEST possible quality, because you can do whatever in the post processing, and tweak that de-interlacing filter. MiniDV is a compressed format (crazy JPEG AVI I think), but it produces good fast results that is more portable than RAW. I guess miniDV is still my best choice...
Yes captureing through your Camcorder will Probably produce better Quality than useing an analogue Capture Card..and Like My Learned colegue said there is No Point in Deinterlaceing because your TV Can only Display interlaced Content, even Progressive Video is broken into Fields when Played on your TV set and deinterlaceing has a Tendancy to Blurr the Image which can be compensated for a Bit by useing a sharpen filter But whats the point as the interlaced footage will only Look Bad on your Monitor because you Monitor is Not made to display interlaced Footage.....
