Answers.Body: <p>I did this a few years ago, digitized dozens of my family's old home videos. </p>
  
  <p>The way I did it was, as at the time I was doing it from home and didn't have a IO device such as a DeckLink, I simply used a MiniDV Portable Recorder I got off eBay; which allows composite, component, and S-Video In. </p>
  
  <p>Once the VHS tapes were transferred to my "Digital Intermediate" so to speak, I simply did a standard FireWire Capture using Premiere. </p>
  
  <p>This also provided me with a set of DV Master Tapes as a backup. </p>
  
  <p>You can likely get a used MiniDV HDV Record Deck off eBay for a few hundred dollars now that tape is dead; and just flip it when done (basically no cost if you can sell it for what you pay for it). </p>
  
  <p>Going straight from Analog Tape, really requires a real IO device such as a DeckLink card to get good results, and a DeckLink card with analog IO will be much more expensive. </p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-12-28T10:09:40.527Z
Answers.Text: Going to DV means copping quite a big loss of quality due to the fairly heavy compression in that codec. How important this is depends on the user, but it's worth noting.
Answers.UserDisplayName: stib
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2017-01-10T05:47:43.673Z
Answers.Text: I recommended going to HDV. While still compressed, from VHS which at best will produce in the neighborhood of 210-230 lines of resolution, using HDV, which has a horizontal resolution of 1080; should not, to any eye, be noticeable.  On a scope, at high magnification, I'm sure there would be a bit of loss in under limit and over limit (0 and 100) luma and chroma, but for what he is describing, not even the best trained eye on a reference monitor would likely see the difference between the HDV and an uncompressed capture of a 20 year old VHS tape.
Answers.UserDisplayName: McFlySoHigh
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-12-27T20:19:53.853Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-12-27T20:19:53.853Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: McFlySoHigh
Answers.Body: <p>I may have found the answer ... I tried a different tape, and all seemed to work well. Stupid me did not check if the error is already on the tape :D</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2017-09-26T15:07:58.330Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2017-09-26T15:07:58.330Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Pythoneer
Body: <p>I am trying to record all my old VHS tapes. I bought a video grabber, usbtv 4-1.2:1.0: Fushicai USBTV007 Audio-Video Grabber, but somehow that does not work well. I tried using VLC, but that has some strange effects. Often it shows past frames while running. Maybe some buffering is needed? I also tried ffmpeg, but that gives me a lot of errors, and also those past frames in between. Maybe the driver is not that good? I also tried in Windows using the software that came with it, called honestech vhs to dvd. That appears to not show the flickering/past frames issue, but it barely has any configuration options, so I would rather not use it.</p>
  
  <p>Does anybody have any experience with this?</p>
  
  <p>Thx.</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2016-12-26T09:56:43.283Z
Comments.Text: Could you maybe upload a sample video somewhere which shows the problem ? What OS / OS version are you using (Windows, Linux..) ? If you're using Windows, you can try [VirtualDub](http://virtualdub.org/index.html), which I've used successfully for video capture.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Jonas Czech
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2016-12-26T17:26:43.407Z
Comments.Text: To @JonasCz questions, I'd add: What controls are missing from the honestech software that you'd like to use?
Comments.UserDisplayName: Michael Liebman
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2017-09-24T12:32:58.567Z
Comments.Text: USB devices are not really fast enough for video work, even something as low bandwidth as VHS. see @MartinAndrews answer below.
Comments.UserDisplayName: pojo-guy
Tags: <video><capturing><vhs>
Title: capturing video from VHS flickers
UserDisplayName: Pythoneer
ThreadText: # capturing video from VHS flickers
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-12-25)
  
  I am trying to record all my old VHS tapes. I bought a video grabber, usbtv 4-1.2:1.0: Fushicai USBTV007 Audio-Video Grabber, but somehow that does not work well. I tried using VLC, but that has some strange effects. Often it shows past frames while running. Maybe some buffering is needed? I also tried ffmpeg, but that gives me a lot of errors, and also those past frames in between. Maybe the driver is not that good? I also tried in Windows using the software that came with it, called honestech vhs to dvd. That appears to not show the flickering/past frames issue, but it barely has any configuration options, so I would rather not use it.
  
  Does anybody have any experience with this?
  
  Thx.
  
  **Tags:** video, capturing, vhs
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Could you maybe upload a sample video somewhere which shows the problem ? What OS / OS version are you using (Windows, Linux..) ? If you're using Windows, you can try [VirtualDub](http://virtualdub.org/index.html), which I've used successfully for video capture.  
  > **username_2**: To @JonasCz questions, I'd add: What controls are missing from the honestech software that you'd like to use?  
  > **username_3**: USB devices are not really fast enough for video work, even something as low bandwidth as VHS. see @MartinAndrews answer below.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 2 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2016-12-27. Score: 2
  
  I did this a few years ago, digitized dozens of my family's old home videos.
  
  The way I did it was, as at the time I was doing it from home and didn't have a IO device such as a DeckLink, I simply used a MiniDV Portable Recorder I got off eBay; which allows composite, component, and S-Video In.
  
  Once the VHS tapes were transferred to my "Digital Intermediate" so to speak, I simply did a standard FireWire Capture using Premiere.
  
  This also provided me with a set of DV Master Tapes as a backup.
  
  You can likely get a used MiniDV HDV Record Deck off eBay for a few hundred dollars now that tape is dead; and just flip it when done (basically no cost if you can sell it for what you pay for it).
  
  Going straight from Analog Tape, really requires a real IO device such as a DeckLink card to get good results, and a DeckLink card with analog IO will be much more expensive.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_5**: Going to DV means copping quite a big loss of quality due to the fairly heavy compression in that codec. How important this is depends on the user, but it's worth noting.  
  > **username_4**: I recommended going to HDV. While still compressed, from VHS which at best will produce in the neighborhood of 210-230 lines of resolution, using HDV, which has a horizontal resolution of 1080; should not, to any eye, be noticeable.  On a scope, at high magnification, I'm sure there would be a bit of loss in under limit and over limit (0 and 100) luma and chroma, but for what he is describing, not even the best trained eye on a reference monitor would likely see the difference between the HDV and an uncompressed capture of a 20 year old VHS tape.  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_0 on 2017-09-26. Score: 0
  
  I may have found the answer ... I tried a different tape, and all seemed to work well. Stupid me did not check if the error is already on the tape :D
  
  Thanks!
  
  
  ---
  
  