Overview
This page is intended to be an educational piece, it does help a LOT to understand at a fairly simplified level, what equipment might fit your particular requirements, however it is an extremely complex topic fraught with subjective opinions. Therefore, this page will show typical differences only, if you want to see REAL comparisons of each type of equipment done in-house, have a look at our mega post on the topic: Comparing various analog capture methods and devices in a consistent environment (currently unpublished).
Where everyone starts and why
Because it’s easy, and there are readily available options, probably almost everyone, myself included starts down this path by choosing one of two methods:
- Using a combo VHS / DVD recording deck to convert VHS to DVD
- Using a VHS player in combination with a readily available USB to Analog Video / Audio adapter and its included software
This is entirely logical. The claims made by manufacturers aren’t false, they just don’t mention quality.
In the case of option 1, this isn’t actually a bad option, certainly better than option 2, provided that you get a good quality unit and know how to then rip the resulting DVD into a media file such as mkv to fit modern viewing methods. Not many people have DVD players these days and when they do, they’re often unplugged or unused.
Unfortunately option 2 is fraught with issues and if you’re like me, you would just assume that this is a symptom of the poor quality VHS format. Thankfully, this is false. VHS can be as good as DVD, provided the right conditions, though in reality if you’re doing this to archive ageing personal media that hasn’t been stored in a dehumidified environment, there will almost certainly be some quality loss that you’ll need to accept or find a way to edit out digitally.
Below shows three typical examples from three different types of setups. The first is via a standard VHS player plus a typical type of USB capture device you might pick up from PBTech.co.nz, ebay.com or similar. In this setup there is not really any correction of the image happening, depending on the tape you’re using you could see very bad (or even no) image. In particular the Elgato has terrible compression artefacting which is not adjustable and absolutely destroys the image quality. There is not TBC in the player to resolve picture issues such as the jagged lines you can see in the top 3rd of the image and there is no frame sync to stabilise (and therefore make clearer) the image. On top of that, despite selecting PAL as the output format, the Elgato refused to export at 576i and instead outputs pal content to the American NTSC resolution standard of 480i. This is a huge loss of resolution as you will see by the size difference in the following image.
Other artefacting you are likely to get includes subjects that are not square / straight (i.e. distorted faces) with a sort of shimmering effect and an annoying leaning image angle along the tops of images and other picture disintegrations. Most people will just assume this is normal for the ‘rubbish’ old VHS format and wonder how we ever managed to watch it like that. However, when watching VHS on old TV’s, that technology took care of all this for us, the problem is caused by needing to convert to digital.
If you’re lucky (or perhaps unlucky), you will have done an internet search on the topic and found out there are ways to solve this. Then you would likely have reached a point of despair multiple times like I did, trying to come up with a modern, purchasable solution that suits your needs, only to find out or be told it doesn’t exist in the way you hoped.
The below image is after I upgraded to an S-VHS deck with in built TBC, connecting that via S-Video out (instead of the limited composite connection only available in a standard VHS deck) to a Canopus ADVC-100, which in turn connects to my Mac via a firewire adapter. You can see clearly how the TBC in the player cleans up the image a lot. We have better colouring, removal of jagged edges, and increased resolution compared to what the Elgato was exporting, proper compression settings reducing the blockiness and artefacting all resulting in a lot more detail.
The below is captured by what is arguably the most expensive (but not necessarily the best) method. Utilising the same S-VHS deck as above, but this time connecting the player into a BigVoodoo TBC 10 frame sync device, then into a BlackMagic Analog to SDI converter, along with a Blackmagic SDI to thunderbolt adapter. Note the extra dark look is only due to my adjusting (in the Proc Amp of the BigVoodoo) for contrast and brightness to ensure I don’t capture the blacks and highlights improperly. I then typically fix this to personal taste for the specific clip in post processing later on. You can see that the clarity in the paving stones has come out even more due to the External Frame sync (TBC10). I didn’t understand for a long time what ‘stabilising the image’ meant and now you can see for yourself. A nice way to think about it is that it aligns or overlays the frames accurately to maintain a sharp image. With this setup you’re in the 85% and higher quality arena – and this is where all the opinions will come in and give you a headache.
The below is the result of many hours of soldering, reading, more soldering, ordering parts, ordering more parts, cursing a bit, disassembling VHS players, more soldering and you get the idea. I haven’t quite mastered this process yet, but you can already see some of the extra detail and depth coming out in the dog fur which is excellent. However the extra detail also brings out a bit of extra ringing in the image, which I am so far unsure how to deal with.
Don’t worry too much about the above images, they are just examples, they’re not perfect and there is behemoth comparison article coming up to compare not just these devices but others as well.
Solution Detail
Primarily the better solutions that do exist in one form or another use two solutions to fix the image when capturing into the digital realm:
1 – Something called a Time Based Corrector (some people call it a line sync which is to say it corrects the lines that make up the image).
2 – A frame sync which is to say it ensures the frames come out in order and in a stable predictable fashion, some people call this a time based corrector also, which is unfortunately confusing.
Ideally, you need both types. Though it’s impressive what the type 1 TBC can do on its own. It took me a long time to understand what the second one did, which I go into in the article What’s the difference between a Line TBC and an external Frame Sync device?. But in simplest terms:
- The first device, (the line TBC) will make the image straight and fix up a lot of geometric issues caused by timing problems not resolvable by readily available modern digital capture devices. Analog TV’s worked differently and thus these issues were not present and resolved within the old analog technology architecture. It’s only when you understand that it’s a problem of compatibility between analog and digital that one begins to understand the importance of TBC’s.
- The second device, (The Frame Sync device, or some call it an external TBC) essentially makes sure that the number of frames being sent to the capture device equals the number it expects which in effect stabilises the image. If frames are off time or missing without this device, black frames can appear in your output or jumping frames that appear to be jumping up and down on the screen. Some capture devices handle this fairly well internally (such as the Canopus), creating the argument that you don’t need an external frame sync at all (though there are strong opinions on this) whereas some capture devices will exhibit frequent errors (such as the Blackmagic devices do, if paired without the FrameSync, making the content unwatchable. Even if you accept that the Canopus device above does not create black frames (I can confirm it doesn’t) you can plainly see it is not resolving detail like the BigVoodoo does, or in other words, stabilising the image.
Once you understand the above methods and their differences, you’re on your way to understanding what YOU can do and what choices YOU might make when purchasing your own equipment. Because with the exception of one (very expensive $4k NZD) unit, the external frame sync devices are no longer made and are traded almost in secret like a conspiracy. And like conspiracies, there are good ones and bad ones.
Eek! $4K what can I do, surely I don’t need to spend this kind of money?!
And this is exactly the point everyone interested in a quality output gets to, when they first find out about these. And it get’s worse, because if you do care about quality, you need a line TBC as well, and while the above $4k unit includes a line sync feature, it doesn’t really cut the mustard. Ideally you need to buy a dedicated player with a line TBC in it, which generally means an S-VHS player which again is old antiquated and much rarer equipment than even VHS is. Paying NZD$1400 for an old S-VHS deck to get a line TBC (and that’s on the cheaper end) sounds like crazy talk now doesn’t it! And even this is fraught with opinions.
So this is where choices come in. Because there are some different methods of hacking this together.
- The most cost effective option (80-600NZD) for the best quality is FM RF Archival today. It’s a relatively cheap solution depending on which hardware route you choose to take with it. However it’s not as off-shelf setup as its legacy couterparts, so be prepared to fabricate or just buy some pre-made, solder some wires, drill holes and solder connections into your player. Then it requires a fair amount of disc space (325MB ~ 1GB per min FLAC compressed) and requires the captures to be decoded into quite large 4fsc S-Video data files before they are usable as video files (with audio being decoded to direct flac), but between the TBC code and the whole tape being saved in the digital domain, it outperforms any legacy workflows for capturing analouge media and then presenting it in the digital domain, but is also the only way to practically preserve VBI space data.
- Another option is to get just the S-VHS player and use a proxy Frame Sync. A proxy frame sync is a device that wasn’t intended solely for this task, but happens to have a form of the functionality built it. Typically the device will be some kind of video mixer, or video recorder made in the previous millennium. Myself I have a Datavideo DVK-100 which adds quite a bit of noise, even after I replaced the capacitors for new ones. The DVK-200 is meant to be a lot better for noise but I don’t have one of these at present, though they do come up on second hand sites from time to time.
- In a pinch the Panasonic ES10 and ES15 are another two famous devices that sort of do this if you daisy chain them into the signal. I have had to use this once for an NTSC source I just couldn’t get to work any other way. They make the picture look a bit digital for my liking but they are a valid option and have excellent stable frame output.
- Another option I see people doing a lot is to use a camcorder / video camera as a pass through device. Because these camcorders have circuitry that stabilises the signal so you can play it into a TV. The Hi-8 cameras seem to have this kind of functionality. While none of these proxy frame sync devices are going to be perfect, you may find that other options are simply not available, not in your budget or not going to play nice with your patience levels.
- Finally, while an S-VHS player with TBC is recommended as the top end of the analogue play and record route, some of these proxy devices have a sudo line TBC built in. The $4k BrightEye 75 claims to and the Panasonic ES10/15 sort of does a similar thing, though neither are perfect. In these scenarios it’s possible to get a better image from a plain VHS player without in built TBC, provided you use this device and have reasonable quality tapes. It won’t be as good, but perhaps it meets your needs. Again see our article Comparing various analog capture methods and devices in a consistent environment for examples to see what might fit your needs.
