Newbie setup for VHS capture

[zibon]

Hello, I am new to OBS and the forum. I am attempting to capture some VHS and have questions about the settings. I am using a 1080p upscaler into a USB3 capture device. I have a 2020 M1 Mac Mini.

I have successfully recorded audio and video. The video is fairly blocky. I've been referencing many various online suggestions for settings and they're a bit all over the place. Video is set to 1920x1080 (base & output) and 59.94 fps. Also in the capture card properties deinterlacing is set to Yadif 2x. I've attached the output settings.

The goal is to have the VHS captures available as files. I am doing this for someone else, so I selected mp4 for compatibility. Any suggestions with other settings (bitrate, encoder, etc) to get the best looking output? If file sizes need to be large for the best capture, I have experience editing and compressing. Thank you!

 

[AaronD]

I am using a 1080p upscaler into a USB3 capture device.

It's not a cheap USB capture, is it? Those are deceptively-marketed garbage.

Perhaps the most blatant deception is a cheap USB 2 chip behind a genuine USB 3 connector (the additional pins for USB 3 are indeed present, but not connected), and advertised as USB 3 with all of those benefits, when that is absolutely false.

That then, leads directly to a practical problem of picture quality. You can't cram HD video through USB 2 (which it actually is, despite all the hype about USB 3), and so it has to compress it, hard, in the card itself before it even gets to the computer at all. And it uses a dirt cheap method to do it too: MJPEG, which is just a JPG still image of each frame, with no knowledge of the other frames so as to take advantage of their similarity. So the quality is even worse than that bitrate might be otherwise.

And there's the usual haphazard design and/or manufacturing at such a low price point for something that usually costs several times that, which leads to random things not working or only partially working...and it's too cheap to be worth returning.

---

If you must capture true HD video on USB, stick with the name brands that actually care about customer loyalty, and thus have some accountability to those customers. And expect to pay around $80 to $120 for a single input.

But, since your original source is not HD, you don't need that. Nor do you need the upscaler. Get a good Composite and/or S-video to USB capture - those CAN work on USB 2, but still use the same caution about manufacturer accountability - and set OBS to use a suitable canvas and output size. Probably 640x480 at 59.94fps, and use the Yadif 2x deinterlacer.

(S-video is slightly better if your VCR supports it. Technically the same specs as Composite, but it separates the brightness, color, and sync signals so there's less interference/crosstalk between them.)

---

Also use MKV for recording, even if your finished file is going to be MP4. Then have OBS remux it afterwards. No loss of quality that way - it just shovels the data across exactly as-is, into a different container - but it makes the recording more resilient to crashes and other sudden stops. If you record directly to MP4 and something happens, you lose the entire file. If you record to MKV, you still have everything up to the crash point.

 

[zibon]

It's not a cheap USB capture, is it? Those are deceptively-marketed garbage.

Perhaps the most blatant deception is a cheap USB 2 chip behind a genuine USB 3 connector (the additional pins for USB 3 are indeed present, but not connected), and advertised as USB 3 with all of those benefits, when that is absolutely false.

That then, leads directly to a practical problem of picture quality. You can't cram HD video through USB 2 (which it actually is, despite all the hype about USB 3), and so it has to compress it, hard, in the card itself before it even gets to the computer at all. And it uses a dirt cheap method to do it too: MJPEG, which is just a JPG still image of each frame, with no knowledge of the other frames so as to take advantage of their similarity. So the quality is even worse than that bitrate might be otherwise.

And there's the usual haphazard design and/or manufacturing at such a low price point for something that usually costs several times that, which leads to random things not working or only partially working...and it's too cheap to be worth returning.

---

If you must capture true HD video on USB, stick with the name brands that actually care about customer loyalty, and thus have some accountability to those customers. And expect to pay around $80 to $120 for a single input.

But, since your original source is not HD, you don't need that. Nor do you need the upscaler. Get a good Composite and/or S-video to USB capture - those CAN work on USB 2, but still use the same caution about manufacturer accountability - and set OBS to use a suitable canvas and output size. Probably 640x480 at 59.94fps, and use the Yadif 2x deinterlacer.

(S-video is slightly better if your VCR supports it. Technically the same specs as Composite, but it separates the brightness, color, and sync signals so there's less interference/crosstalk between them.)

---

Also use MKV for recording, even if your finished file is going to be MP4. Then have OBS remux it afterwards. No loss of quality that way - it just shovels the data across exactly as-is, into a different container - but it makes the recording more resilient to crashes and other sudden stops. If you record directly to MP4 and something happens, you lose the entire file. If you record to MKV, you still have everything up to the crash point.

Thank you very much for the reply. The capture device is a Guermok. It’s HDMI and I already owned an upscaler, which is why I was going this route. And I also watched an in depth video of the process and the Guermok was one of the suggested capture devices (yes, could’ve been a sponsor, I don’t recall).

Here is the product site. I don’t know if you can tell if it is any good. I have gotten prompt and thorough replies from customer service I will add.

GUERMOK Video Capture Card, USB3.0 HDMI to USBC Capture Card, 4K Full 1080P60FPS Capture Devices for Gaming Live Streaming, Capture Video for PC Mac OS System OBS Zoom PS4/5 Switch Xbox1 (Gray)

【New Chip, Faster Speed】 This HDMI game capture card uses a newest chip technology, lower latency compared to the old model, faster transmission speed, better meet the needs of high frame rate video capture. USB3.0 high-speed transmission interface, support 4K 30fps input, perfectly adapted to...

www.guermok.com

My VCR does have S-video. If I end up getting another capture device, do you have a recommendation? And if the end result is that my friend will be probably casting these files to a tv, should I leave them at 640x480? I was thinking to avoid him having to make adjustments on his end and just have these files already upscaled. If it’s ok to upscale, should I do that post capture? Thanks again. I really appreciate it.

 

[AaronD]

Thank you very much for the reply. The capture device is a Guermok. It’s HDMI and I already owned an upscaler, which is why I was going this route. And I also watched an in depth video of the process and the Guermok was one of the suggested capture devices (yes, could’ve been a sponsor, I don’t recall).

Here is the product site. I don’t know if you can tell if it is any good. I have gotten prompt and thorough replies from customer service I will add.

GUERMOK Video Capture Card, USB3.0 HDMI to USBC Capture Card, 4K Full 1080P60FPS Capture Devices for Gaming Live Streaming, Capture Video for PC Mac OS System OBS Zoom PS4/5 Switch Xbox1 (Gray)

【New Chip, Faster Speed】 This HDMI game capture card uses a newest chip technology, lower latency compared to the old model, faster transmission speed, better meet the needs of high frame rate video capture. USB3.0 high-speed transmission interface, support 4K 30fps input, perfectly adapted to...

www.guermok.com

Not a brand I've heard of before, and the price says "cheap garbage". If they're selling them at a loss, then it might make sense...except for the loss on their end.

My VCR does have S-video. If I end up getting another capture device, do you have a recommendation?

Not really. I got mine from a friend at work who had moved to other things, and it "just happens" to work for me. Don't know what his process was to pick that one, or whether it's actually good or just works by accident.

But if you're buying one yourself, do remember what I said above:

• Stay away from the cheap ones.
• Research some brand names, by name, to see which ones really care and which are more like well-spoken scammers.

And if the end result is that my friend will be probably casting these files to a tv, should I leave them at 640x480? I was thinking to avoid him having to make adjustments on his end and just have these files already upscaled. If it’s ok to upscale, should I do that post capture?

The signal coming out of the VCR has about that many visible lines and no real horizontal resolution. To make the pixels square, you end up pretty close to 640x480, and that may in fact be what the capture device gives you anyway.

You're not adding anything by upscaling, though some upscalers look better than others. If it's displayed on a bigger screen, then there *will* be upscaling, *somewhere*. TV's are usually pretty good at it, but if you feed the TV from a computer, then it's actually the computer that upscales and not the TV...
The decision of whether to upscale yourself or not, depends on how much you trust your friend's rig to do it well, and on storage space. The original resolution will be a much smaller file for the same content.

And yes, I would record raw to a file, probably "Indistinguishable" or "Lossless", and then post-process that file if needed. It may or may not be needed.

Try a few, "Indistinguishable", on your friend's rig or equivalent, and see. If that works, check the actual file size. If that's okay, then do them all like that and call it done. If something's wrong, record "Lossless" instead, post-process as needed in a video editor (not OBS), export that, and when you really are *completely* done, you can delete the intermediate files if you want.

 

[zibon]

Not a brand I've heard of before, and the price says "cheap garbage". If they're selling them at a loss, then it might make sense...except for the loss on their end.


Not really. I got mine from a friend at work who had moved to other things, and it "just happens" to work for me. Don't know what his process was to pick that one, or whether it's actually good or just works by accident.

But if you're buying one yourself, do remember what I said above:

• Stay away from the cheap ones.
• Research some brand names, by name, to see which ones really care and which are more like well-spoken scammers.

The signal coming out of the VCR has about that many visible lines and no real horizontal resolution. To make the pixels square, you end up pretty close to 640x480, and that may in fact be what the capture device gives you anyway.

You're not adding anything by upscaling, though some upscalers look better than others. If it's displayed on a bigger screen, then there *will* be upscaling, *somewhere*. TV's are usually pretty good at it, but if you feed the TV from a computer, then it's actually the computer that upscales and not the TV...
The decision of whether to upscale yourself or not, depends on how much you trust your friend's rig to do it well, and on storage space. The original resolution will be a much smaller file for the same content.

And yes, I would record raw to a file, probably "Indistinguishable" or "Lossless", and then post-process that file if needed. It may or may not be needed.

Try a few, "Indistinguishable", on your friend's rig or equivalent, and see. If that works, check the actual file size. If that's okay, then do them all like that and call it done. If something's wrong, record "Lossless" instead, post-process as needed in a video editor (not OBS), export that, and when you really are *completely* done, you can delete the intermediate files if you want.

Thank you again for the information!

 

[zibon]

Not a brand I've heard of before, and the price says "cheap garbage". If they're selling them at a loss, then it might make sense...except for the loss on their end.


Not really. I got mine from a friend at work who had moved to other things, and it "just happens" to work for me. Don't know what his process was to pick that one, or whether it's actually good or just works by accident.

But if you're buying one yourself, do remember what I said above:

• Stay away from the cheap ones.
• Research some brand names, by name, to see which ones really care and which are more like well-spoken scammers.

The signal coming out of the VCR has about that many visible lines and no real horizontal resolution. To make the pixels square, you end up pretty close to 640x480, and that may in fact be what the capture device gives you anyway.

You're not adding anything by upscaling, though some upscalers look better than others. If it's displayed on a bigger screen, then there *will* be upscaling, *somewhere*. TV's are usually pretty good at it, but if you feed the TV from a computer, then it's actually the computer that upscales and not the TV...
The decision of whether to upscale yourself or not, depends on how much you trust your friend's rig to do it well, and on storage space. The original resolution will be a much smaller file for the same content.

And yes, I would record raw to a file, probably "Indistinguishable" or "Lossless", and then post-process that file if needed. It may or may not be needed.

Try a few, "Indistinguishable", on your friend's rig or equivalent, and see. If that works, check the actual file size. If that's okay, then do them all like that and call it done. If something's wrong, record "Lossless" instead, post-process as needed in a video editor (not OBS), export that, and when you really are *completely* done, you can delete the intermediate files if you want.

Hello, I just wanted to follow up on this and ask a few questions after having done a lot of tests.

I am still using the same setup (because its what I have). My friend that I'm doing this for has a lot of tapes. So I want to hopefully keep these to one step - capture and that's it with no post precessing.

I have been capturing at both 640x480 and 720x480 and they seem the same quality-wise (I am casting these from my phone to my TV to check). The upscaling looks pretty good on my TV. I of course will have my friend check some sample clips on his. I'm fine going with 720 to make sure I get the entire image. Do you think there is an issue with leaving the black on the sides? I've read some people capture at 720 and crop later to 640. Again, I'm trying to just to do one capture pass and be done.

I've included my current settings, but not much has changed. I changed the bit rate and a few of the options after gathering an average from articles I've read. Please feel free to comment on any of that if you would have suggestions.

Also, as a reminder of my setup, although I am capturing at 720, I am still running into the HDMI upscaler, then out HDMI to the capture card. So I am upscaling to 1080 and capturing 720x480, which I may change. I am considering getting a used BlackMagic Intensity Shuttle so that I can use the S-video and also because this generally seemed to be rated as a great USB capture card. All that said, I still think the samples have looked fine when cast to my TV.

Thanks again for the help.