Re: Advice for new analogue project

Maverick wrote on 9/18/2003, 2:51 PM

Hi

I am about to compile a couple of DVDs from VHS. Unfortunately the tapes were recorded at LP (PAL) speed and are now 18 years old.

What advice can any give so that I may be able to improve the quality before burning to DVD?

Any particular points I shoild look out for?

I will be using V4 and DVDA

Cheers

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 9/18/2003, 2:56 PM

You will probably have to futz with the tracking control on the VCR a lot while capturing. You may have to watch the capture window on the computer screen while adjusting the tracking to get a clear stable image, then back up and recapture the scene. It's possible you may have to do this individually for each scene.

Renting (or better yet, borrowing) a Time Base Corrector may be well worth the trouble and expense. This will give you a much more stable transfer.

Maverick wrote on 9/18/2003, 3:07 PM

Thanks but this is a personal project of some 16 hours worth of VHS stuff (the entire Live Aid concert from 1985). I'll be cutting a great deal but it will still be a long project which I will do in sections.

I know that colours on a PAL system when recorded at LP always seemed rather pale should I try to correct for this at the capture stage or when editing?

Cheers

Chienworks wrote on 9/18/2003, 3:13 PM

If your analog capture hardware allows color correction then i would certainly do it there before the signal is digitized. You will lose less color resolution if it's adjusted in analog than you will if you adjust it after it's digital. As a plus, it's correcting analog is real-time. Correcting the colors during editing will slow rendering down substantially.

Maverick wrote on 9/18/2003, 3:31 PM

Cheers. I was expecting the reverse to be suggested.

The other problem I will have is going to be changing the monaural audio to stereo (maybe even surround sound) but that has been touched on in a previous subject heading.

Something I've never seen mention (maybe it can't be done) but can a menu (scene selection) be set on the first DVD of what may be three or four that will prompt you to insert another particular disc?

Thanks

johnmeyer wrote on 9/18/2003, 4:04 PM

I'm not familiar with the artifacts specific to PAL. However, I'm sure some of the problems are similar to what we have with NTSC VHS. I covered, in another thread, the use of Virtualdub filters to remove many of the artifacts, especially those that happen from slow-speed recording.

It is especially important to remove the low-level "snow" before encoding to DVD because this will be accentuated by the MPEG-2 encoding process.

Here's the link to my previous post:

Analog Tape Noise Reduction

Maverick wrote on 9/18/2003, 5:35 PM

Thank you for yet another quick, courteous and great helpful reply:-)