Why doesn`t he use a TBC ? My experience is the Premeire always stops capturing without a TBC between AD converter and VCR. btw the svhs with tbc is not usefull to solve it.

@@mjlwm23 I said it in the video, my player has a TBC built-in.

You can do it with some MiniDV cameras, but the video is technically converted to DV digital through the camcorder.

colors will look of, since DV cameras transform 4:2:2 into 4:1:1 so its going to look washed out

@@iVTECInside But wouldnt it do that anyways if your using a capture card on top of that process?

@@norcalpacific there are a couple variables here and I assumed one of them. I have a MiniDV camera that I can use as a passthrough, run video into it and straight firewire to PC. In that case I'm converting VHS as an example into the DV format which as sos mentioned has a different color space. In practice VHS is so crap I never really noticed a difference the few times I did it. If you were playing back a MiniDV tape over SVideo/Composite into a capture card, you are 100% correct, it's already in 4:1:1 on the tape so you won't hurt anything (aside from capturing analog vs the pure digital output). Law of diminishing returns though. Capturing over firewire is your best bet for quality in the case of a MiniDV tape but then you have to compress it after the fact. It's not too bad these days with faster PCs, but I'd still lean towards just capturing it straight to higher bitrate MPG to save time. I use a rate just over double what's technically necessary when capturing VHS fwiw. Is it archive quality? Nope, don't care. Not spending way more money on capture equipment, way more time in post process, for MAYBE subjectively 5% better looking captures.

I just did a capture on MacOS Sonoma, so yeah, as long as you download the latest software of Blackmagic Media Express, it’ll work.

@@ArguingMeadows Thanks for the response back, you might have just helped me a lot. 👍

@@ArguingMeadows Hello again, I had a problem initially, originally when I managed to get the equipment that you showed in your video, it seems that the latest version of blackmagic desktop video set up was not be compatible anymore with the intensity shuttle, I had to download an older version of desktop video 12.1 which is the version you showed in this video in order for the device to be recognised. But once I did manage to recognise it along with a few tweaks, I was finally able to capture a VHS tape in its original native resolution and framerate, all thanks to you. 👍 I have been waiting for some time to do that. Once again, thank you so much. you’ve made me a happy bunny. 😂

Running Monetrey which is newer and it's still working just fine. Have no compatibility issues to speak of.

@@ArguingMeadows Oh wow, I will update to Monterey and see if that helps! One more question: I find that when I try to capture from a camera, the image flickers and is unusable. Seems like this is due to unstable timecode from the camera (and why I assume you recommend the DVD/VHS combo) - have you ever run into this and do you know of a workaround? VHS/DVD deck won't work for me since I need to capture hi8 tapes.

@@ArguingMeadows interesting! I had the same question:)

Blackmagic devices seem to be very flaky without some form of TBC type effect, for example I played tapes from a combo VHS+DVD recorder which always digitizes the video, then converts back to analog(it can also output vhs via component etc because of this), so the tape effectively passes through a basic tbc-ish device. Recording to an intensity pro worked fine this way, no problems over an entire 3 hour recording.

@@DoubleMonoLR Was STOP at dropped Frames switched ON ? The "Factory Setting" of the Software is STOP at dropped frames OFF😉

Yep

There is no black bars on 4:3.

@@AussieTVMusic Thank you for the reply. if you place a 4:3 aspect ratio in a 16:9, or any other screen aspect ratio, your 4:3 has vertical black bars on the side. This is what I was referring to.

What kind of player are you using? VHS/DVD combo or regular VHS? If it's the latter you're going to need a time-base corrector.

⁠@@ArguingMeadowsYup, I have one of those time-base correctors as well and it’s still not working. I might try and down convert.

There's not much info on it at the moment. It's called VHS Decode and there's a Github page that can be found in the description for this video. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qLmHgst7nrmxmmQ.html

Are you on MacOS or Windows? Do you have 525i (not 525p) selected? If the video signal is incorrect that could be why you're not seeing a picture? Are you using a similar VHS/DVD combo deck or just a regular VHS deck?

I've never heard of this. I would like to learn more about it too.

Look up "vhs-decode" and you'll find lots of info, it's far from a user friendly option when I last read up on it though.

There is a lot in here, so I will attempt to break it down. ProRes 4444 has the ability to encode an alpha channel but as consumer tapes and laserdiscs don't have alpha channels, that's unnecessary. I don't think it changes the file size drastically. Also, ProRes 4444 is still going to give you a huge file, you're looking at 15 GB for a half-hour SD capture. It just happens to be way smaller and more manageable than straight uncompressed, where you might be looking at double the GB compared to ProRes 4444. I do not use Windows often enough to tell you how to work with ProRes, but I do know that the Adobe products do support ProRes in Windows. Adobe has an official license and encoder to the codec. Uncompressed is fine too, and is technically better quality than ProRes 4444 since ProRes is a lossy codec unless it has an alpha channel (but I seriously doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference between a ProRes file and an uncompressed master). If ProRes is too much of a hassle on Windows, alternatives like Cineform and DNx are available. FFV1, Lagarith, HuffyYUV and other lossless codecs are great too, but they tend not to open in most editing programs like Final Cut, Avid, Premiere or Resolve. If you plan on editing or manipulating the video in editing software, you might be better off just using uncompressed, make your edits and send it out uncompressed again if you need to retain the quality that badly. My experience with unofficial ProRes encoders like FFMPEG's implementation has been fine frankly. Never had an issue with it, BUT I would not deliver it to a client without first running it through an official encoder just to be safe. As for keeping the interlacing, I can't imagine the lossless codecs not keeping that. Anyway, if you're using uncompressed, I don't think you have anything to worry about from a quality standpoint. Transcoding it to FFV1 might save you some space but that's about it. At the end of the day, it's VHS, what we're doing is totally overkill. You could probably get away with a well-done HEVC or H264 file after the capture and have it preserve everything. This is just my way of doing things.

@@ArguingMeadows for half hour at 171mbps, that is ~38GB for reference, so you are right, not as huge a difference as I thought, but would be noticeable when storing many tapes. That is 4:2:2 though and 8bit. For ProRes 4444 equivalent it would be 362mbps and around 81GB per half hour, so it would have more of an impact. (Assuming ProRes 4444 is also set to 10bit) I'm going to keep studying the technicals of these codecs and their bitrates, thanks for getting me interested in looking at them again. Several of them have been updated since I tried them before in the past, so more capable than my last tests.

@@TriforceofShadows ProRes is always 10-bit. 4444 goes up to 16-bit. That's kind of why I like ProRes, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation and just encodes the video. Feel free to read the ProRes white paper: www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper.pdf

@@TriforceofShadows I'm using the same setup with ProRes422LT which is also enough.

Yes, a good option also, better then an easycap device, the converter digitizes the analog signal, you could also capture to a HDMI recorder, and don't a pc at all to capture.

It's on private along with my old AMV's. I did them when I was an edgy high-school kid without taste and I'm not really proud of having my name on them anymore. I'm taking the channel in a different direction so I wasn't comfortable having them out there. They're not gone, I still have the masters for them and think they're worth preserving in a different space with context but that's for another time. Sorry.

@@ArguingMeadows Ah okay, I understand. Best of luck my man!

why would you be sorry for asking

No, NTSC color video 59.94 interlaced fields per second. What happens later with the video is that people tend to deinterlace it to 30 progressive frames per second.

Still supported on Monterey. I haven't upgraded to Ventura yet but I would think that it still works since Blackmagic has updated the software that drives it.

DMR-ES35V

@@ArguingMeadows Great machine i also have this model, (PAL version + scart(s)) it stabelizes the video of the VHS deck, but it does not mention any thing about TBC but it does a great job in doing it, shame the BMD software does not support the progressive mode for NTSC with me (PAL) this works perfect, and defeats Macrovision when needed, in progressive mode. The Intensity Shuttle is normaly a very picky capture device, but has no problem at all with the DMR-ES35V, I love this machine. otherwise you have to use a scaler/converter that digitizes to HDMI and use HDMI to capture, the scaler/converter then acts as TBC.

@@eric-janvandenbogaard9415 yeah the Panasonic does arguably the best job of delivering a stable corrected signal to the BM, their AD chip is the best when it comes to handle lossy signals

I didn't capture via composite though? I specifically said component. I also made a point of saying that ProRes 4444 was overkill, but I like to do it anyway.

@@ArguingMeadows correct, the ES35V is a great machine, i use ProRes422LT in that same setup, with PAL even progressive… so easy :)

@@ArguingMeadows The component output is almost certainly just converted from composite. Composite out from the VHS deck -> analog composite signal is digitized inside the VCR -> digital signal converted back to analog for Component(& other) outputs. Capturing Component will help reduce further quality loss during re-digitizing with the capture device, but it's not extracting higher quality video from the tape signal. The s-video signal isn't being put out over the component outputs, that's not possible as they're different signals, and there was almost certainly no s-video signal prior to digitizing inside the vcr. The image quality just looks pretty much the same due to coming from the same source, and neither losing much in the capture process. It's technically possible they could've used a modified VHS deck that internally converts the rf signal(directly from the tape) to s-video instead of the standard composite, but it's unlikely. S-Video out from an S-VHS deck *starts* by extracting a bit more image quality from a standard VHS tape recording, as both VHS & S-VHS are recorded in a format that is somewhat similar to s-video. Because of this modulating the raw signal from the tape to s-video instead of composite can retain a bit more image quality.

good, but remember, the ES35V stabelizes the video, a "normal" vcr won't do this.

Hardware scalers have to work in real-time and usually are nowhere near as good as a software scaler. If you modify the video while capturing in real-time by adding a hardware scaler or a deinterlacer, you are stuck with whatever the hardware did. If you capture the video plainly as it is in a high-quality format, there's a ton of room to play with filters that can make the video look even better after the fact. It all really depends on how much work and time you'd like to put into capturing the video and improving the quality.

That's not quite true, luma & chroma is stored semi-separately on VHS, in "colour-under" format. It seems it's effectively the equivalent of being in-between a composite and s-video signal. It may technically be a "composite" video recording, but not the same type as is passed over composite cables. S-VHS recordings use the same colour-under method, but with a higher luminance carrier frequency and luminance bandwidth. From my own testing, with some equipment at least there it can definitely improve video quality using s-video. I recorded composite & s-video from a plain VHS tape/recording played in an S-VHS source(a full size SVHS camera in that case) recorded to an ADVC-300, and the s-video recording immediately looked better. Less noise, and a bit smoother and slightly more detailed, all presumably due to reduced chroma noise. This is likely going to vary depending on the deck, capture device etc, but it does seem like the most reliable way to consistently get good quality captures.

@@DoubleMonoLR I realized my goof on that just a couple weeks back. You are correct. A tale of two "composites".