VHS
Equipment
This is some of the equipment I use.
Capture
I use Leadtek PCI and PCI Express capture cards.
Leadtek WinFast PxDTV2300 H mainly for the component YPbPr input.
Leadtek WinFast DTV1000 S for digital TV, composite and s-video.
Leadtek WinFast DTV2000 DS Plus for digital TV and DAB+.
Playback
General Use
Sharp VC-H710X (manufactured 2001)
Sharp VC-H726X (manufactured 2002)
Spares
Panasonic DMR-EZ48V for its component YPbPr output (manufactured 2010)
JVC HR-DD857MS
Panasonic NV-HV60GL-S (manufactured 2003)
Panasonic NV-VP33GL (manufactured 2003)
Panasonic NV-VP33GL (manufactured 2005)
Panasonic NV-HD620MK2A
Sharp VC-H730X (manufactured 2002)
Hitachi VT-FX768E (AU) (manufactured 2002)
AWA W800S
A remote is needed to turn the on screen display (OSD) off for grabbing.
I clean the VCRs when they start to struggle with tracking or pops and clicks on the Hi-Fi audio which can be between 10 and 30 VHS cassettes depending on the condition of the cassettes played.
When linear audio is muffled I adjust the tracking head.
Some of my older recordings were with a Samsung DVD-V7000 (manufactured 2002) and LG DC593W (manufactured September 2002).
Audio
I use audio mixers to balance the audio as I am recording. Many VHS tapes loose signal over time and so one side can be quieter. I have also had tapes where the volume of the source was turned down and so the lower audio setting was recorded.
Using a mixer at the time of digitisation is much easier than trying to fix the audio in post editing.
Mixers
Behringer XENYX 502
Behringer XENYX Q1202USB
Behringer XENYX 802
USB Sound Cards
These are only used for the Behringer XENYX 502 and 802 as it does not have built in USB.
Behringer UCA200
Behringer UCA202
Behringer UCA222
Software
VirtualDub2 is used for all grabbing, filters, encoding and final output.
Capture is grabbed lossless for easy post editing.
Filters such as deinterlace are used when needed and a final encode is produced. A separate job is made for all YouTube versions to work around YouTube's strange processing.
VirtualDub2 is also used in distributed mode as a Beowulf cluster for larger job lists.
VLC media player is used for some digital television transport stream conversion to ease post processing.
PotPlayer is excellent for playback of VirtualDub2 raw captures with deintrlace processing turned on.
Older captures were made using WinFast PVR2.
Handbrake is excellent but has never been required for this type of work.
Other Equipment
Speed Winder SF-2000 Video Cassette Winder.
Good for moving stuck film and winding cassettes without wearing out any VCR.
Speed Winder VHS cassette times.
E180 = 3m 41s
E240 = 4m 34s
E300 = 5m 40s
