Question: Digitizing miniDV, VHS, DVD media to HDD in 2018? (Archiving)

[Ronald Lee]

Hi there,

I have a bunch of content in old legacy format and I'm looking at putting them all onto hard drives to save space. What I'm specifically looking to do is:

1) Transfer miniDV and DVCAM tapes to hard drive in their native AVI format.
2) Convert analog VHS into the highest quality digital file (MP4?)
3) Convert DVD movies to the highest quality digital file (MP4?)
4) Convert Music CDs into MP3s

What is the easiest way to do these? I've looked online for information (including The Long Black Line forum) and surprisingly there isn't really a definitive how-to guide for the first 3.

For the miniDV/DVCAM I can get an old camcorder or deck to play them and I've seen firewire-to-USB converters, but is that as good as putting a fireware card into my computer? (don't want to drop frames, is USB 1.0 or 2.0 stable enough?).

For the VHS conversion, is there any recommended software for best quality files?

And for DVD movies, same question, some of these are even commercial movies that I'd like to keep but don't want the DVD taking up space, how would I rip them to get perfect HD quality (I tried with some software and the quality of the rip looked compressed.

And of course, what to do with the media after I digitize them?

And I am also afraid about what will happen in 10 years, if whatever format these are on, on the hard drives, will be readable (remember MJPEG? DVCAM? I used both and neither are easy to view today without the right gear).

Any advice is appreciated.

Ronald

[Cary Knoop]

Assuming you want to maintain quality for the VHS tapes I would capture them interlaced with correct procamp settings to minimize any clipping. You could use H.264 but you must explicitly encode it interlaced, 5Mb/s should be more than enough.

For DVDs the best is to keep it in the VOB format or remux them to an mpeg2 capable container.

Originally Posted by Ronald Lee

And for DVD movies, same question, some of these are even commercial movies that I'd like to keep but don't want the DVD taking up space, how would I rip them to get perfect HD quality (I tried with some software and the quality of the rip looked compressed.

DVDs are not HD to begin with, so obviously you can't make them into HD.

For best quality simply keep the original VOB files.

If you do want to convert them you could convert them to H.264 (or H265) but then I would either deinterlace them for TV material and do an inverse telecine for movies.
It's definitely some work and if you do not want to do that just leave them in the original quality.

The worst thing to do is to get some free gee whiz all-in-one converter tool that you do not know how to operate, chances are you wind up with a very bad quality result.

[Ronald Lee]

I see. For the DVD's just copy and past the folders from the DVD into folders on my hard drive? (the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders).

Or is there a software that will make an image of the DVD onto my harddrive?

Will commercial movie DVDs copy over and be able to be viewed (I have a bunch).

In both scenarios, what player(s) would I use to view the movie files on my harddrive? I guess this way I can also get the benefit of being able to turn subtitles and other options on or off.

Thanks!

[Cary Knoop]

Originally Posted by Ronald Lee

I see. For the DVD's just copy and past the folders from the DVD into folders on my hard drive? (the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders).

No, typically the content is encrypted, you need a ripper.

Originally Posted by Ronald Lee

In both scenarios, what player(s) would I use to view the movie files on my harddrive? I guess this way I can also get the benefit of being able to turn subtitles and other options on or off.

Most players will support ripped DVDs. Take a look for instance at VLC.

[Boyd Ostroff]

I'm using a Mac, so there will be some differences, but I think the theory is still the same. I have around 300 legacy DV, DVCAM and HDV tapes and have captured over 200 of them over the past couple years. I got a used Sony HVR-M15U tape deck that can read all these formats and have it connected to my computer with firewire. Not sure if this would be possible with USB. I felt that a professional deck would be more robust than a camcorder, and have been very happy with it. I also picked up the recommended Sony head cleaning tape and am using it according to instructions.

I began this project using legacy Final Cut Pro and just saved the files in the format the FCP captured them. I subsequently switched to Final Cut Pro X and now save the captured tapes as ProRes 422 files.

For DVD's, yes, you can save them in their original format. On the Mac, this can be done as a Disk Image that you can double-click to mount, and then it will behave just like physical disk inserted in a DVD drive. I'm sure there's some way to do this on Windows, but don't know how. This does not work with copy protected commercial DVD's. You would need special software for that, not sure what exists.

I have settled on using Handbrake, which is free and works really well. For a US DVD, choose Super HQ 480p and also use the de-interlace settings for older interlaced disks. I suggest you experiment with this for starters, the results may not be perfect copies of the originals, but they're pretty darn good and the software is free. And I can just drop them into iTunes, which I use on a media server to make my whole library of about 600 ripped movies and 600 ripped TV shows available on my computers, mobile devices and Apple TV's. There is also other software you can use for media servers, such as Plex, if you aren't an iTunes user.

Copy protected commercial DVD's require that you use an add-on called libdvdcss with Handbrake. A Google search should tell you how to install that.

For CD's, well I have ripped those all into iTunes long ago which is really simple. :-)

For VHS tapes, I have a few boxes up in the attic of old commercial tapes. A couple years ago I dug out an old deck, and after a half hour of nostalgia decided it would be a total waste of time to rip those. VHS quality is just horrible, it's amazing how far we've come since then!

I do have a couple VHS tapes with home video, such as a visit with my 97 year old grandmother from 199,, that I'd like to digitize. I figure the best approach for that is to send them somewhere. Does anyone have a recommendation? The quality is not going to be very high, but there's a lot of sentimental value.

I also have a handful of old Hi-8 tapes, shot with a couple different consumer level camcorders. If I decide to do something with them, I'd just send them out also.

I use a bottom of the line Mac Mini as a media server, it just runs iTunes 24/7 on my network. I have about 1.5TB of media on a fast external disk, and it's automatically cloned to a second external drive nightly. I then rotate the backup drive with a second one periodically. This machine is also continuously backed up to the cloud with BackBlaze. You could do the same kind of thing with just about any inexpensive Windows computer. I know that many people like the Plex media server software, but I have not tried it.

Another method that would work is to just store all the media on a server, NAS or shared disk and use the SMB protocol. The VLC app (available on every platform) can directly access your media in almost any format, and it is also free.

All my captured DV/DVCAM/HDV tapes plus old and new video projects are stored on two 5TB hard drives connected to a computer that I only use for video/audio editing. I have a pair of identical hard drives for backup, and everything is also continously backed up to the Cloud with Backblaze.

[Ronald Lee]

Guys, do you think VHS SD quality video can go to the computer at USB 1.0 speed and not drop frames in the capture? My system is pretty good and recent but I ask because it so happens that my analog converter is an ION VCR2PC from....2009. I don't think it's USB 2.0.

Thinking about it, if I play my VHS from a S-VHS machine, does it actually double the scan lines? I think I remember that S-VHS did that.... I not sure if it did that only for tape recorded in S-VHS or for all VHS.

If VHS is only 720 x 480 then I should be ok with mpeg2 or MP4.

I've seen some devices say they will be able to record in 1080 but I'm not sure if they meant the VHS footage (could be from DVD's) or it they have a way to uprez the video to 1080.

Thoughts?

[Jeff Donald]

If it’s from 2009, it would have to be USB 2. Are you confusing USB 2with 3? USB 1.x was only for keyboards, mice, etc.