Analog video capture follow-up

After watching the first video I bought a composite -> hdmi and hdmi capture device from aliExpress and the results are really good and so easy. I can convert my old VHS tapes to digital too since the device totally ignores macrovision. Thank you Alec for the really useful tip.

Don't feed the trolls!

Great series of videos! (I finally became a Patreon after watching these ones. Having just messed around with a Chinese HDMI "EZCAP" capture device to record from a PVR, I'm keen to try your method. I totally agree with you regarding the online rabbit hole that is VHS capture eg doom9/ videohelp forums and avisynth scripts etc etc. I aint got time for that. It's funny when Googling VHS cleanup techniques, that a lot of results are for plugins to make your new HD video look like old VHS recordings! Currently I'm still using a Canopus capture card that converts the analog inputs into firewire / DV .avi under Win7. It works fine (when the drivers like to play nicely and actually show the video) and I've recently been messing around with Neat Video Premiere plugin to reduce/cleanup the noise in the captures.

*sips coffee* Didn’t complain about the first video, watched this entire incomprehensible rant anyway... Edit: I think “Outlandish and a Little Pedantic” should be your new slogan.

The last 6 seconds of this video deserves to be its own meme. I'm going to go giggle some more over that cut-in and cut to black. Toodles!

Thank you for that video. Really, you should not let those comments pull you down... let them produce their own videos and if they reach your quality of content, they may complain :D One thing though: You said the vast majority of people in your audience will have composite only. That may be the case in the USA, but here in Europe, where we used to us the SCART standard, many devices indeed used composite, but others used RGB or S-Video, all through the same cables... and I guess your non-US-audience is not that small.... Nevertheless your video first of all is a good suggestion on how to make such things simpler, and thus is very much appreciated.

I thought it was a good video. I hope you don't let the nonsense bother you too much. Although, if you didn't do this response video, you wouldn't have had the awesome shot of you with the frown holding a composite cable :P

[Insert excitement note about timezone insert]

About 13 minutes into your video: "It's the only way, if you want it just right!". - This is pure genius, and made me laugh! Thanks!

Even as a software engineer, I feel your pain. Like most people, I just want things to work. This is main reason why I use Ubuntu when I use Linux any other "it-just-works" solution. In fact, as an engineer... I've come to realize, there isn't much excuse for IJW to exist after time has been spent on a product.

I;m the idiot who mentioned component, but that was in context to laserdiscs, many of which had component out. But if the laserdisc stores as composite, then I'm going to use that as output since I want the least amount of mucking around with the signal while it's analog. Thanks for your diligence on this! Keep up the good work!

I think if you hadn't used the word 'best' in your previous video's title I think you might have avoided some turmoil in the comments there. People have been chatting in forums for *decades* sharing tips and tools with which to eek out every last bit of detail from an analog capture. I don't think its as active a community today as it once was, but anyone who's spent a great deal of time lurking the Doom9 forums and tinkering with things trying to get that last little bit of detail out of an analog source for archival purposes will instantly assume 'best' to mean highest quality, NOT what you meant which was just the simplest way to get 'good enough' quality for most purposes. I didn't even notice the word 'easy' in the title until I'd read it a few times, only taking in 'best ... way' which is just about the worst kind of claim to make on the internet guaranteed to incite argument between people who's definitions of 'best' do not agree.

It's a (not so) fine line between telling you "you're wrong" or helping you to do it another way. It's all relative when you're talking about quality. My wife thinks 128k MP3s are fine, but I hear noise so I encode at 256k vbr. Personally I would have never thought you could get video capture results that good from the hardware you used and it makes me wish that equipment existed back when I was using my ATI TV card to capture analog videos in mpeg2 format. I have a few VHS tapes that I would like to recapture to get better quality than mpeg2 could give me and you have shown how to do it inexpensively. Thank you!!

Question for you about this capture method. With my old Firewire capture device, every time tracking was lost for a moment, like on cuts done in camera long ago), it would take more than a second to reacquire the signal - losing everything during that second. Have you seen that before, and how well does the converter you used deal with those tracking transitions?

Don't let the comments get to you... I totally agree with your take (I'm guessing people who agree with you don't feel the need to post, so you only hear from the 2%'ters...). I tried doing VHS capture a while back, and well... the results were as good as you would expect... I'll probably try again with your method... Regarding difference of opinion: If anybody disagree with you, I think they should post a video about it so that we can comment in it :-)

Morning! To you as well

[Time Zone Appropriate comment of amusement]