PC capture card for S-Video and older recording devices.

[Robert T.]

Hi,

I am not in subject at all, so any suggestions I have not thought about are appreciated.

Been tasked with getting footage from older video cameras to a computer file. Devices have s-video output port and some sort of micro-DV port of sort..?? Not sure about what does it do etc..
So - external or internal capture card with S-Video input is requred. Since I am buying it anyway, it would be appreciated if it can act as streaming support - if it's a thing with them..?

Price - my ideology is that I prefer to spend more on device that will be flexible, sort of like second best in class - I always prefer function over form, so not looking for budget options here, but for one that will give me really good final results.
As per platform to run it on - main PC is [email protected] with 64 (soon 128) GB of RAM, but would prefer to put it into i7 3770 3.5GHz (4cores/8threads) with 32 (may go to 64 if need be) GB RAM - would that 3770 be capable of capturing video without dropping frames/deteriorating quality of of output file?

Thanks for any input..

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Welcome to an absolute minefield !

Can you be a bit more specific about what type of source your capturing ? VHS, 8mm camcorder, miniDV camcorder etc etc.

When you say you want something flexible, I think you need to accept that tape devices and modern video (DVD onwards) are quite distinct genres to deal with when getting them into a computer format for editing. I.e. Your going to struggle to to get a single device that will do old analogue from VHS / tapes etc and also do HDMI capture for streaming etc. I’d recommend treating them as separate projects.

So concentrating on VHS / 8mm tape stuff:

Dont get a cheap USB s-video device.

I have an Avermedia CE310B PCIe card. Has S-video and the red/white/yellow connectors on it too. Works in Windows fine, and can set to run capturing for hours without loss of sync between video and audio ( a common complaint of the USB ones ). Look around, their price varies a lot between different sources. There are more expensive cards out there but youre beginning to jump sharply in price towards pro stuff. I’d say the Avermedia card is about 90% on the way to pro stuff and not too hard to source. With that card, the simplest method would be to plug the source devices directly into the s-video input and capture away. I think I used it with a Ryzen 2400G initially … if not that, then a 2400G + 1080ti GPU. Either way, never a dropped frame, and barely stressed the PC at all. You could happily do other things whilst it was capturing.

But

This is where it begins to deep dive…. The quality of what you have captured is only ever as good as what you feed it with, and that depends on the hardware you use to read the tapes and generate the s-video signal.

Video tapes are read by spinning heads passing across the tape. This means that on each pass there may be slight variances when each head physically starts passing the tape each rotation, this will also be affected by the tape speed varying slightly as its moving along as well. The net result are those classic wobbles and bends you see on the vertical aspects of VHS tables etc.

To counter this, time base correction can performed on the signal. Basically a frame buffer which grabs a whole frame, aligns it and then sends out the vertically aligned signal. TBC can make for a much cleaner, neater picture. Not all tape players have TBC. However, a fair amount of the old VHS/DVD recorder devices do. Panasonic and Toshiba being some of the most common. There is a very knowledgeable (but old) thread here about some devices which can do TBC:

DVD Recorder to use as a pass-thru TBC? Need HELP

Can anyone tell me a decent (perhaps a few model #'s/brands) DVD Recorder or combo unit that I could use as a pass-thru TBC? I'm playing back tapes on

forum.videohelp.com

(I have a Panasonic unit which was my father in laws which I nabbed before he threw it out.)

So with that in mind, to give you an idea of my setup, I have captured a variety of VHS tapes, 8mm, digital8 tapes and things.

I use a Sony 8mm camcorder to playback the camcorder stuff.
Connect that using s-video cable to the Panasonic VHS/DVD/HDD unit
Connect the Panasonic to the capture card in the computer using another s-video.
This way, the footage from the camcorder is cleaned up by the TBC in the Panasonic unit.

Then you have what format to capture it in … and what to edit it with etc etc etc As I say, its a minefield.

Feel free to ask any questions. I’m no expert, but have gone through the process and it worked well for me.

edit:
Looking round, knowing more than at the time I looked, I see there are a few more options in terms or capture cards which are more flexible to include pal all the way through to hdmi in one device. but the comments about the source being the issue still stand.

 

[Robert T.]

Wow,

That's a fairly comprehensive reply, if I see one..

Streaming - just dropped it to indicate I can spend some more for more feature-rich device, but wasn't hopeful TBH . So that's out of way.
Cheap USB devices - as mentioned, they were out of question, I know what 'efficiency' they would offer.

I will be capturing from miniDV camcorders and I do not have any supporting intermediate VHS unit at ready (see below). I knew about reading heads positioning issue from times when I had to adjust my Commodore64 tape drive, so maybe not directly but was aware of that, was just not aware of implications of TBC for this purpose, so thanks for explanation.

Regardless - cannot find your card anymore, cannot see any similar in fact and for those few tapes I was hoping for something less expensive than several hundreds of pounds worth of equipment..
Will skip that subject for now, maybe will get back to it once I will get my hands on a VHS/DVD combo I have at location 2000km from my current location.


EDIT:
Just got back from my holidays, so not been watching any Youtube, and not realised that Linus made a video about just that topic less than 2 weeks ago.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Yeah. If its DV video, your easiest option is to capture that DV source. ( which is basically just old firewire connections ). DV is built has a lot of compatibility still around. You would only need a FireWire card into the PC for it to work basically. The card simply captures the data stream from the DV out of the camcorder, it doesnt have to do any signal analysis.

The slight downside is that DV can arguably lower quality than s-video, but considering how old tapes are now, its not really going to make that much difference.

I would 100% just buy a FireWire card and capture the DV feed directly. Storage wise will be about 12Gb / hr IIRC.

 

[Grimley]

I have slight experience with this if its any help. Sony Released video 8 camcorders in the 90's, then released digital 8 camcorders towards the end of that decade. my dad owned both. the later camcorder played back the older format and could output that video 8 analogue footage via firewire. I managed to capture all the footage of my nephews recorded via firewire with both formats. I think the format captured was DV but it wasnt too much of a problem to edit and convert to .mp4
even in linux, apart from the fact all the linux video editors I tried were unstable.