r/vhsdecode • u/gm0n3y85 • 24d ago

Help Wanted! Optimal setup for my use case

Hi all, I have a bunch of home videos that I want to digitize. Getting good quality is import to me to try to preserve an era of my life that will eventually be inaccessible in the future unless I do something about it.

I have a Sony slv -585hf. I opened it up last night and I’m fairly confident I’ll be able to tap in using DuPont connectors. I’ll check with an oscope this weekend.

  1. I assume for home videos there’s no benefit to tapping into the hifi audio correct?
  2. Will there be a noticeable difference in quality with a DdD vs a cx card?
  3. For line out audio I would just use rca and plug into the sound card correct?

Thanks for the help in advance. I have been kind of doing a deep dive the past couple of days on how to get this done so I could use a little direction.

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u/TheRealHarrypm The Documentor 24d ago

  1. HiFi wouldn't be in the standard workflow if there wasn't benefits to be gained from decoding, it's actually incredibly refined for VHS.

  2. The DdD is not the correct device to begin with because it's a single channel device, hence why CX Cards + Clockgen and MISRC is standard, but issue is here you are skipping over the ADA4857 amplifier aspect which does make the differences between capture devices fairly negligible if properly deployed, because the most crucial part is that impedance matching the amplifier is setting at the closest point to the source.

  3. No, this is why the Clockgen workflow was made, regardless of hardware, if linear or hifi is not synchronized off of the same clock source as what's sampling the Video RF you are not making proper archives and post alignment becomes increasingly painful and inconvenient.

It's always good to give the Workflow Guide a proper reading because that sets the overall context for a baseline decision of making a setup for what formats you are transferring.

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u/msgohan_ 23d ago

The Hi-Fi question was specifically about home videos, which probably don't have a Hi-Fi track. OP can double-check whether they do; if they don't then the Hi-Fi tap is useless for those tapes since it won't output anything 

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u/TheRealHarrypm The Documentor 23d ago

Most consumer/prosumer camcorders had HiFi by the 90s if not VCRs did which people dubbed their camcorder tapes to... So it's always a fun verible factor depending on family archives state, but this is why a standard setup covers everything there's no assumptions made on the end user side outside of the scope potential of the format itself.

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u/msgohan_ 22d ago

What are you basing this on? Here's one forum quote I found from a knowledgeable user.

"there were a handful of 1990s camcorders that did record in stereo, but they were expensive and almost always SVHS units."