[NEWS] Digitizing VHS in 2021

[Tom Speirs]

I recently digitized a very cherished 21 year old PAL VHS tape into a 60 fps 4K MP4. I was very impressed with the end result but I had to do a lot of research and experimentation to get it there and I thought it might be useful to share the workflow. This applies to both NTSC and PAL VHS.

Note: This is a high end solution in terms of kit required for best possible results at home

AVerMedia SD PCIe video capture card CE310B (new)

Corsair Elgato Game Capture 4K60 Pro MK.2 (new)

Refurbished Super vhs player from ebay (need one with TBC and SVIdeo output).

RTX 2080 super or better (already had so did not get scalped). For 1080p can use less.

Capture to avermedia card at highest resolution in 422 from svideo with cropping to x264 lossless and pcm audio with ffmpeg

Deinterlace with avisynth QTGMC preset very slow to x264 lossless and pcm audio with ffmpeg

Encode again lossless but with aspect set to 4:3 (only set meta data, don't resize)

Playback with potplayer (x86) with madvr plugin at 4k with random noise removal and smooth motion to 60hz. (don't need smooth motion for NTSC)

Capture potplayer with Corsair Elgato Game Capture 4K60 Pro MK.2

Use VirtualDub2 to trim and with crop filter to make 4:3 and encode final result with x264.

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