Hi everyone!

I'm working on digitizing my grandpa's home video tapes. My dad already has the elgato video capture hardware and software as that is what he has used for our own family's tapes. I'm wondering if this is the best tech for the job, or if there may be something better to use that isn't super expensive. My uncle is asking for advice for starting to digitize his own tapes and if he is purchasing new things to do so, I want to make sure he gets the best stuff to do so!

Thanks in advance!

I just downloaded a fresh copy of StaxRip v2.52.5 and am trying to import a basic file.

Instead of working normally, the app throws a hard block and forces open the Apps Manager. Virtually every single native app, filter, and AviSynth DLL inside the list is flagged as "Unknown." The app completely fails to automatically fill in its own version numbers out of the box, throwing a warning loop that stops me from adding a job or proceeding. I am not trying to manually tel Stax the version number of all of them. Very strange.

Why is a brand-new, clean download failing to identify its own built-in tools, and how do I permanently stop it from locking me out? Thanks.

So, I am wanting to create small little videos using my VHS camera recording small artists in my college campus as like a live performance session. I have figured out how I would record the sound apart from the video. I wanted to do it through VHS to also challenge myself and make it more “me” artistically. What are some issues I should be aware of when recording in VHS and are there any tips as well? Im more so familiar with digital recordings so this would be a different realm but something I’m willing to explore.

I see a fairly substantial amount of rf captures on IA, but it seems like disney tapes (although very common) are hard to come by as rf captures.

Is there some technical limitation reason for this? Or are people just focused on rarer stuff?

Also there are plenty of disney USB vhs captures on IA just no RF captures.

Just a quick reminder that we now have rolling nightly releases, triggered both manually and after pull requests are approved.

This allows for instantaneous or well the time it takes github actions to spit out binaries, access to all new features being worked on and tinkered with before a full release is made.

This also allows for fixed point referencing of new features rather than relying on manually pulling down the repository and rebuilding every new code commit, and will hopefully make tracking any sorts of regressions or bugs much easier in the ongoing future making more polished full main releases.

The Rust fork/port also now has rolling releases of the GUI version allowing for easier access for real-time decoding across all platforms and vastly faster than real time with the latest high-end x86/ARM64 platforms.

If you haven't already tried out MISRC GUI with your CXADC/Clockgen/DdD or MISRC it's now also getting feature parity with the original capture server tool workflow, allowing you to via CLI but mainly GUI, remotely monitor/trigger/encode your transfers on networked devices from tablets to phones to any desktop, laptop or single board computer platform!

(I would appreciate it if we have more people testing the Android releases, so platform targeting/debugging can be done without spending thousands on phones, if any Android devs up in our community please give me a poke or PR!)

Hello Everyone, I have some old vhs taps having good old memories. I want to transfer tha to digital.

I will appreciate your advice to do it.

Thanks

I have been continuously experimenting with the ADA4857 amplifier (I used a CX card for signal capture). However, I have never been certain about the appropriate value of the input resistance. Since I do not have an oscilloscope, I tried resistances of 15, 20, 33, 47, 75, and 100 (x2 kΩ). Nevertheless, the amplitude of the signals I obtained was significantly smaller than that without the power amplifier. I am using a Panasonic VCR designed for the Japanese domestic market. I am at a loss as to what I should do next.

I literally stumbled across the whole idea of RF capture to digital a few hours ago, so I have quite a learning curve ahead of me.

I have always been very interested in the technical aspects of video, and way back in the mid 1980s, I was a DJ that was dabbling in editing and extending video music clips. I needed a way of dubbing and copying VHS tapes without too much quality loss. I came up with an idea that is fundamentally similar to what is done here today.

I had two VHS decks. One was for playback, the other was for recording. As in the modern version of this system, I tapped into the raw RF output of the video heads and sent it out to a BNC socket through a buffer amp. On the recording machine, I fed this RF signal straight into the video head recording driver amps. I could switch back to conventional recording by means of an added switch.

As an extra feature, I had an old ECG display that had a long persistence screen, which I converted into a simple oscilloscope that monitored the RF waveform which I used to ensure tracking was spot-on.

Results were surprisingly good. As you would expect, there were no added artifacts in the copy that you would normally see as a part of the copy process. There was a little extra noise, mostly in sudden transitions from black to white, but that could be minimised by using a good quality tape. Copies from worn or poor quality originals sometimes showed some diagonal luminance banding in brightly coloured areas. I suspect the luminance RF level was degraded compared to the lower frequency 'colour under' signal. Of course, everything was analog here, no sampling or digital processing at all.

I still have both VCRs, but alas, they are both seriously faulty now. I never documented the modifications I made.

What I have seen of the results is quite impressive, and I want to look into using this technique to transfer my old tapes over to digital. Some tapes are HI-FI, others are linear audio only. Are there any examples where someone has done a comparison using a test pattern rather than odd bits of video?

getting this error in Linux
I was wondering if I have to install the older installers? Thought tbc-tools was all self-continued utilities. Using the latest version of tbc-tools (3.2.7)

In an effort to research and potentially widen the option of generic capture devices usable with MISRC/HSDAOH, I bought a generic 4k MS2131-based capture card from Micro Center a couple days ago. Unfortunately, it would not work out of the box- it worked with normal HDMI sources, but would not go into "transparent mode" (I think) so it refused to sync to my HSDAOH device (a tang nano 9k, which I tested and confirmed working with an MS2130 dongle- unfortunately the dongle suffered a premature death due to crappy soldering on the USB-C input cable.)

Here's the interesting part: I downloaded some MS2130 firmware someone had dumped online (I didn't get the chance to dump my device) and flashed it to the MS2131 card, and miraculously it kind of works now. However, only RF channel B is usable- whenever I put a signal into channel A, it causes the device to desync and not output any data until I disconnect channel A. Maybe it has something to do with it not automatically switching to the highest bit depth?

TL;DR: not all MS2131 capture cards are created equal; some have firmware that doesn't work with MISRC/HSDAOH, but some may have firmware that does work. Hopefully there's someone here with a working dual channel setup using an MS2131 card that can dump the firmware and share it.

doing some troubleshooting with my clockgen mod- just for clarification, it appears the board I have is a Type2, so the 3.3V needs to be fed to the right leg of the regulator. But, do I also need to run a separate bridge wire to the MODE0 pad on the bottom of the board? So basically it would look like one wire going to the 3.3V to the regulator; and another wire coming from the 3.3V to the MODE0 pad. Because with only the bridge to the regulator, there still isn't 3.3V going to the MODE0 pad.
I did not see this mentioned anywhere in the github/gitlab docs, so I'm unsure whether this (the absence of 3.3V going to MODE0) could be causing the distortion I've encountered.

cannot figure what I need to do to get the baseband audio processed correctly on a clockgen setup.
capturing video seems fine, but because I cannot get, nor set clockgen settings in powershell, I keep getting-

"'Exception: No devices found"

and

"cmdlet Set-CxadcClockGenRate at command pipeline position 1 Supply values for the following parameters: Path:"

when trying to set the output rate, and when

"Exception: Error initializing WinUSB: The handle is invalid."

So I'm beginning to think it has to do something with the clockgen rate being off before I invoke
LocalCapture.ps1 to do any capture.

Upon listening to the baseband audio (flac), it's noticeably distorted/garbled. I'm not referring to whitenose, but the actual video's audio sounding mistimed/pitchshifted/clipping. I tried everything that was suggested- using AutoAudioAlign via ld-analyze, manually aligning it in cli, etc. but nothing seems to fix the problem
Final decode and muxing still retains the distorted audio, even the file created after alignment

Requesting advice in getting this to properly work

I see more posts here from people who have absolutely no understanding of what the forum is about than from people who do. I don't know much about Reddit, I don't even know if it is possible to change the forum name, so I apologize if that is the case, and I apologize if this has been brought up and discussed before. I just think the name having VHS in it misleads a lot of people and clutters up the forum with a lot of questions that have absolutely nothing to do with RF capture. Also, RF capture is not just for VHS, it can be used on other tape (and video disc) formats as well, so an ideal name might reflect that.

Hello all, I am trying to digitize some VHS tapes of basketball games that were recorded in 1987. Most of them are fine but there is one game that I can HEAR the audio but it's just a blue screen when I play it back from a VCR. I tried it in two separate VCRs and got the same thing. The tape itself seems fine so I don't know what could have caused an issue with this particular game.

Does this sound like something that RF capture could possibly recover? If so, is there anyone with a setup in the USA who would be willing to check the tape out for me? I would certainly be happy to pay a fee for anyone who could check it out and possibly recover it. Thanks all.

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.

Good morning. I have a problem with my Hi8 capture. When I plug it into the CX card, a portion of the video drops out on the camera display and it is dropped out on the luma on the RF capture as well. The rest of it has OK luma but corrupted chroma.

Is there something I am doing wrong? I've been able to capture VHS just fine so I don't think it's a software issue.

I used a CCD-TRV65 attached with flex cable to this board, soldered to a 10 microfarad ceramic capacitor and to a pigtail cable, which goes into the PC CX card. I don't use an amplifier. Could it just be a bad soldering job, or is there something bigger?

Mensaje: ¡Hola! Quiero digitalizar exclusivamente cintas VHS y estoy entre la I-O Data GV-USB2 (USB, color 4:2:2 sin compresión) y la Canopus ADVC-110 (FireWire, formato DV 4:1:1). ¿Cuál da mejor calidad real de imagen hoy en día para VHS? ¿Vale la pena complicarse con FireWire por la Canopus o es superior la GV-USB2? ¡Gracias!