New to Vegas-editing years of home videos

DosWasBest wrote on 10/1/2024, 9:37 AM

I own Sound Forge and Nuendo, Cubase, Spectralayers etc, but am thinking about buying Vegas or Resolve or Power Director etc to edit 30-40 years of accumulated vhs camcorder home movies....I used to simply burn copies directly to dvd. I only use Windows 11 pro.

What lossless codec shall I use in, say virtualdub2 to capture vhs....that Vegas can for sure open for editing/whittling down scenes etc?

I've experimented with a few 1hr tapes just to experiment with Virtualdub for the capture process itself..huffyuv.....prores....Lagrith...couple of others....but then it dawned on me....video editing programs are apparently picky on avi types/compression codecs. Ie ...Vegas?

Ssd space isn't an issue. I have unlimited numbers of ssd drives and can buy more.

I don't have a time base corrector, use a fairly inexpensive Roxio vhs usb capture (which works well considering we're talking vhs home movies). The actual Roxio software...which saves/exports in choices such as mpeg2 h264 etc....is...as I understand...not lossless....so, I'm using the interface with virtualdub2 testing.

Hence, my research on approaching the captures lossless via virtualdub2 (for the past week or so)...with the necessity of my codec choice not being rejected when I open in video edit programs.

Vegas is always in my radar as it's been around for years.

A lot of web tutorials seem to focus on vhs capture...upscale...and immediately shoot out onto the internet or whatever......with no discusion of guys like me who plan to first edit the movies down.

As you can tell, I'm new to this....maybe Vegas is overkill for my projects.....but I'm a pretty serious audio guy with cubendo ....and would like to approach my video projects with the same care.

Particularly as realtime captures themselves are so time-consuming. I want to settle on a longterm workflow.

Thanks!

Comments

rraud wrote on 10/1/2024, 10:41 AM

If you are serious about audio, Vegas Pro has a substantial DAW built in, in fact the initial Sonic Foundry versions of Vegas was an audio only DAW, and basic video support was added later on. Sound Forge can also be integrated to Vegas. There are similarities in Sound Forge, Acid and Vegas software so will not be starting in a totally unfamiliar environment. Vegas has many video codecs built in and third party codecs can be added, for instance Voukoder is highly regarded by the video experts here.

btw, welcome to the Vegas users community @DosWasBest.

EricLNZ wrote on 10/1/2024, 5:51 PM

Vegas also has a free trial available. Whilst it has limitations it would enable you to get its feel to see if it meets your needs.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/vegas-pro/

johnny-s wrote on 10/1/2024, 7:27 PM

I appreciate that u may think it's necessary to save in lossless but capturing in say DV.avi not lossless has been used by many for vhs capture.

Since vhs is so poor to start with saving in DV with intra compression is still not bad.

The typical method was VHS machine >> Camcorder >> PC firewire card >> DV.avi file.

This would be superior quality to most usb capture devices. However, if u have a camcorder that can support copying the DV codec to PC using USB ports then u can dispense with the firewire capture card. You will still get the same DV.avi codec.

This used to be supported in VP AFAIK up to VP18 but the vidcap app is not in later versions.

You can use the free sceneanalyzer app though.

The DV.avi codec is easy to edit in VP and includes PCM audio.

Tons of info on the videohelp forums on this topic. https://forum.videohelp.com/

mark-y wrote on 10/1/2024, 10:56 PM

VHS does not require a lossless capture; I find that MPEG-2 has more latitude, detail, and chroma retention than consumer videotape source can provide. No need to take up extra disc space with videotape noise ;?)

3POINT wrote on 10/2/2024, 2:58 AM

I'm wondering that there are VHS players and VHS tapes who still give an adequate/usable output signal after 30 years...

paul-marshall wrote on 10/2/2024, 4:32 AM

I agree that MPEG-2 at a high bit-rate is adequate for VHS capture. Having made that capture the next thing to consider is wether recent advances in AI processing can improve the subjective picture quality. Vegas has AI assisted upscaling which helps reduce visibilty of pixels on a big screen. VP22 has added AI sharpen, soften and dehaze. There are other third party programs too with big claims but AI processing can take a very long time.

I myself have just started to explore wether there are real improvments to be had in a reasonable time scale. Upscaling is worthwhile but beyond that I have no conclusions yet.

johnny-s wrote on 10/2/2024, 4:59 AM

A mistake to avoid (guilty) in VP or whichever NLE you choose to output your 4:3 video is to make sure that your render settings will only result in outputting black bars on sides, not top and bottom also. Test first clip on modern TV early on.

Since my stuff was all finished a long time ago, before VP had Ai upscaling, I did Topaz 2x upscaling to the finished clips. I know, another render, but I had done the initial SD render overkill re: data rate.

Upscaling is really worth it if u are looking at it on say a laptop, it's simply bigger. A TV however will do it's own upscaling anyway.

It depends on what devices it will be viewed on whether upscaling is a good idea.

Candive wrote on 10/2/2024, 4:59 AM

@DosWasBest

What lossless codec shall I use in, say virtualdub2 to capture vhs....that Vegas can for sure open for editing/whittling down scenes etc?

To answer your specific question, I imported a Lagarith file with no problem into Vegas Pro 19. As for the other lossless codecs, you can download a trail version of Vegas Pro 22 and evaluate them yourself or provide a couple of samples to this forum and I'm sure someone with Vegas Pro 22 will be happy to test them for you. The members of this forum have been very helpful to me in the past with my newbie questions.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 10/2/2024, 5:23 AM

I have done a lot of digital transformations from SVHS tapes - and my findings are:

A TBC is critical for stabilizing the signal. Can be a digital harddisc recorder, of - better if available - cards like the Canopus NX (what I prefer for some reasons)
I would NOT capture my (S)VHS tapes to DV-avi, since the color sampling is 420 only. I have good experience with the Canopus HQ codec (with the instalation of the free codec package), that allows 422. Why?
Capturing is only the first step. Typically, you have the need to denoise the footage (what is no issue with an Canopus NX), to correct luminance and color (why 422 is here a good idea).
Importing the footage in Vegas in a HD project is a nice idea - and that in 1080 50p/60p. With deinterlace settings of smart adaptive (GPU only), Vegas generates a great upscaling to HD and deinterlaces the footage too.
For denoising, I have good experience with the filters AI soften and then AI sharpen. Acts as a fast denoiser, what is nice, especially since the other tools in the market like Neatvideo render very very slow (but make a great job).
But for sure, it could also be uncompressed, what has been a credo in the community of digitalization for a long time.

mark-y wrote on 10/2/2024, 10:09 AM

I myself have just started to explore wether there are real improvments to be had in a reasonable time scale. Upscaling is worthwhile but beyond that I have no conclusions yet.

Good to see you on the forum, @paul-marshall. I still have your standalone meters and use them from time to time.

I too have been upscaling with AI a lot of MiniDV / DVCAM tapes as well as some I have only on DV. I've found they are well received on Youtube and Facebook; I don't think they would even be noticed at native 480p.

The thing that takes up the most time upscaling in Vegas is adding a "Model" to the output; for that reason, I use the upscale feature with minimal processing, just adding a light Unsharp Mask before Vegas Upscale filter. This gives a little noise reduction and nondestructive sharpening, without pushing render times into next summer ;?)

I tested Vegas Upscaling vs. Topaz earlier, and found the longer render times in Topaz not to be worth it.

DosWasBest wrote on 10/2/2024, 2:44 PM

Thanks everyone so far.

My main initial concern has been selecting a capture codec so as to not run these old tapes multiple times.

As these are home movies shot on various cameras to vhs and camcorders 1980-1998, averaging 1-2hrs each in length, my thought was to get them safely captured, and then secondarily...load a copy of a particular capture into an editor...do some shorter edit versions for the family to watch....maybe dabbling with color correction upscaling etc (which I know zero about) AFTERWARDS..on the pieced-together exported edit projects.. Which then brings in using editing software.

A lot of youtube tutorials approach as if....capture 1hr video...upscale the 1hr video....colorcorrect the 1hr video...and then place on youtube...no discussion of where/when/how the (imo) critical step of "editing" should land before/after other processes like upscaling/color correction....by the way....no way are my home videos going on youtube...although I'll figure out how my kids prefer the edit versions sent to them...later :)

I asked one guy with a youtube capture/upscale/correct tutorial..."what if someone is cobbling-together an edited version after capture...do you really upscale/color-correct the whole thing (as in his tutorial) and THEN create an edited version?....His reply is he would capture....edit....then do all the other stuff "on" the edited version.

Which is what my intuition tells me....but isn't addressed in tutorials...imo.

So many terms regarding appropriate captures....prores....dnxhr, dnxhd, huffy, Lagarith....don't use my mpeg2 older captures in editors....do use them in editors....use uyvy...don't select rgb...use lossless....don't worry about lossless :)

I do happen to own a couple of never-opened-the-boxes Panasonic dmre75v units I bought years ago (among other vhs players I still have) ...figuring at the time...I'd just do direct vhs-to-dvd on those. Did a few back then....nowadays...I get thumbs-down opinions on those. At least, I'm using the Panasonics as gentle playback of the rapidly-wearing vhs tapes (I've even had to splice a few lately) since they're essentially new machines.

As to tbc, I did buy a new advc300 years ago, thinking it would be useful in that area...but only tested it for a short time..and nowadays....apparently that unit is a thumbs down. Considering everything, I'm not going to cobble a tbc together for this project....plus...for what it's worth...I'll still for sure keep the original tapes....even though I'm trying to keep the situation atm as fewest plays as possible.

I never had the time to dive into this project when my kids were little.....which is probably a good thing as, among other things....I certainly didn't have hundreds of terabytes of critical ssd storage like I have now.

At any rate, I'm deeply thinking about every response and appreciate you all. I will grab a trial of Vegas once I get a few captures to get my head around.....I REALLY cringe at playing any of these precious memory vhs tapes multiple times :)

No doubt, I'm probably overthinking the process, considering the source material tech.