[WinsOBoogi]

Hey guys,

So, I'm converting my old VHS tapes to DV format, finally.

I have a G5, so I was wondering what was the best way to do this? PCI card? What's out there that's good? What program can capture for the mac, and is it included in various PCI cards? I assume I'd only need to use the AV outputs (yellow, white and red) on a VHS, into a card or whatever.

Trying to do this as inexpensively and as good quality-wise as possible. I'm a grad student (the definition of poor).

Thanks,
Brad

[Moon Potato]

The way to get the highest quality out of a VHS-to-digital transfer is to get a capture card or firewire bridge that either supports uncompressed, progressive or 60i (60 fields a second, interlaced) video. Capturing analogue video over DV (30i video) causes some annoying artifacts. Since VHS only has 240 lines of resolution, and you'll be capturing at 480 lines of resolution, it's probably worth looking into some video cleaning software to try to iron out the noticeable interlacing you'll see in the captured video.

[travisimo]

http://www.canopus.us/US/products/AD..._selection.asp


Personaly i have the 300, it actually enhances the analog input before is encodes it digitaly. The work it has done for me is amazing. You can also use to output Video on an external monitor from FCP or After Effects which is also what i do.. If you're looking for something less expensive they have the 50 which will do that you need it to do..

[Helmling]

What sort of video and how much quality do you need?

I did a whole bunch of pre-digital home movies via a simple DV bridge. The unit was $300, but that was years ago. Given the low quality of the footage off the old camera we'd had, the degradation wasn't noticable.

[WinsOBoogi]

It's old home movies. Old birthday parties, etc. Somple VCR-like quality is all I need. DV bridge is referring to taking a VCR, hooking it up to someone's DV camera, and importing it in iMovie?

[WinsOBoogi]

It's old home movies. Old birthday parties, etc. Somple VCR-like quality is all I need. DV bridge is referring to taking a VCR, hooking it up to someone's DV camera, and importing it in iMovie?

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by WinsOBoogi

It's old home movies. Old birthday parties, etc. Somple VCR-like quality is all I need. DV bridge is referring to taking a VCR, hooking it up to someone's DV camera, and importing it in iMovie?

No, there are actual products solely for converting analog to DV and they're called DV-bridges (I don't know why). What you describe would have the exact same result though, and wouldn't cost you $250.

Despite DV being much higher quality than VHS, you will probably still get a better picture using a non-DV product (like AlchemyTV). This is because DV has an annoying feature of dropping half the color data (and a different half than things like MPEG-2 drop), so you really end up losing significant color fidelity when you go through it. It's really a dumb spec now that I think about it. That might be just for the NTSC half, I'm not sure.

[robby818]

if you borrow someone's Mini DV camera w/ a digital pass through capabilities you can get very good results. i used this method for a couple of vhs tapes and it worked fine. a lot of sony mini dv camera have digital pass through. what seemed to hurt was that my vcr and just about all vcrs only have composite video out, s video would prob. really improve image quality.

[vmarks]

I use http://www.miglia.com 's Director's Cut Take 2 product. It's a dv bridge and works very well. You can go the camcorder route with someone's miniDV camera. I've not noticed any interlacing issues doing either method.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by robby818

if you borrow someone's Mini DV camera w/ a digital pass through capabilities you can get very good results. i used this method for a couple of vhs tapes and it worked fine. a lot of sony mini dv camera have digital pass through. what seemed to hurt was that my vcr and just about all vcrs only have composite video out, s video would prob. really improve image quality.

Yeah, I've just used a digital camcorder, they're nice to have anyway, so if you can afford one, get it rather than a stand alone digitizer. And you really don't need passthrough - it's nice, but you could just record what's on your VCR to your camcorder, and then play it into your computer. It's an extra step, but that's what I've done.

[kkorn4325]

I used a Formac tvr which was $300. I imported it into imovie and went from there. The result i was impressd with.