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Hey everybody,
I'm trying to capture video from a VCR for a music video I'm working. I'm looking for a decently reliable usb device for capturing video out of the VCR.
It seems like there's a lot of counterfeit and incompatible junk out there. Does anybody have any experience with these and can give me some pointers? Mac compatible is a plus!
i've got one of these (though pc version)... works great, have used it both for streaming and capture
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control … ;A=details
Last edited by e.s.c. (Apr 24, 2013 10:22 pm)
I bought one of these: http://www.amazon.ca/Best-Data-Products … B000VM60I8
It's worked perfectly fine for my purposes, though I use it with Windows, recording through VirtualDub. The results look like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ez7qjbLgY4#t=1m00s
It interlaces the signal down to 30fps, but I like that it does this, since that way I don't lose every other frame when I upload to YouTube. You could probably de-interlace it to 60fps if you needed that though.
any video traveling over those type of connections is going to max out at 29.97 frames per second... and deinterlacing doesn't double your total frame count, it just converts it to a progressive scan image meaning all 720 x480 (or 756x480 for pal, iirc)pixels display every frame.. an interlaced signal alternates which pixels it displays, in rows, but only half the total pixel count at a time
No, you can de-interlace one interleaved frames (at 480i) to two progressive frames (at 240p), and this does indeed double your frame count. Yes it halves your resolution; that was implied.
Whether this is an appropriate transformation depends on the kinda source signal you're using, but from a video game system like the NES, it's a perfectly acceptable way to get 60fps video. (We're at chipmusic.org so I presume it might be a retro video game source.)
Edit: just tested it out with VirtualDub's de-interlace filter on some old footage I had from it. Looks great. Nice smooth 240p 60fps NES footage. Nicer than it looked on my LCD TV, which only does 480i.
Last edited by rainwarrior (Apr 24, 2013 11:02 pm)
and his source is vhs, which is roughly 330x 480 resolution interlaced to begin with at 29.97 fps,
It's not an optical trick at all. The NES generates new 240p frames at 60fps. The interlacing down to 30fps 480i is an undesirable artifact of the process involved in displaying or recording the signal.
you seem to be talking about line doubling or half-sizing, not deinterlacing... that would work ok in the case of NES footage which didnt use the full 480 lines of vertical resolution available... his vhs footage does use all 480, so itd significantly reduce image quality unless it happens to be pixel stuff
No, this operation is specifically called de-interlacing. I don't know why you think it isn't. There are many methods of de-interlacing, some of which attempt to blend or interpolate frames. This one de-interlaces into two separate frames. It's not appropriate for all signals, but it is very appropriate for signals from many retro game systems.
480i 30fps on the left de-interlaced as 240p 60fps on the right (doubled vertically to maintain aspect ratio).
It doesn't matter if the signal was recorded on VHS or not. What matters is what kind of source material it is. A VHS recording of an NES may be de-interlaced in the same way.
I know a lot of people who swear by Elgato for capturing footage from old game systems. Considering that it's billed for its VHS capture, I assume it'd work fairly well for that as well. I'm not sure though.
