Have to mix some GH1 footage with old school DV and even... VHS

Blackout

Blackout

Veteran
I have a project coming up which is sort of a documentary thing where I have to mix GH1 1080 24p footage with DV and even god help me... VHS.

Few questions here.... what's the best way to do this.. I am assuming I edit on a 1080p timeline of some sort and upscale the other stuff.... should I do the upscaling in after effects or something or should I just all slap it into vegas 9e and let it auto resample upscale.

Also... what's the best way to bring in VHS footage? I don't have any analog inputs on my newer ultra windows 7 64 box.... is there a cheap card with analog ins that does a good job... I actually have a brand new 4 head vhs player / dvd recorder sitting in a box from a couple years ago that I used to use for quick transfers from vhs to DVD, but while the VHS playback is very good for.. well... VHS.. the encoder to mpeg2 is not. I would rather encode it to DV.

Or.. I have an old machine from around 2002/3 that has a Canopus DVStorm II in it with a breakout box with every sort of i/o... but the machine is nearly dead and falling apart... should I / could I pull the dvstorm 2 out of the old pc and throw it into my new box? It's a massive card the size of the video toaster and I doubt there is even support for it anymore so I don't know if I would be able to get it to work on the new machine or find the drivers... it was really good for its day.

Thanks,

- Blackout
 
I digitized some video from a VHS tape recently. I used my old (circa 1989) Panasonic PV-535D camcorder to play the VHS tape. The AC power adapter for that camera also doubled as the battery charger and the AV I/O. So I adapted its RCA video and audio outs into the AV I/O cable of my Panasonic PV GS200 MiniDV camcorder. The GS200 has the ability to digitize incoming analog signals.

If you can get your hands on a digital camcorder with the same capability, that should do the trick (however, not all of them have this capability).
 
You know, when high-end production houses preserve old analog sources, they run them through a TBC (Time Base Corrector) and a proc-amp to try to eak out as much usable signal as possible. You might want to send the VHS stuff to a professional preserver. Just a thought, I used to work at a facility like that, and the end product, while still limited by the original format, was essentially the best that format could produce. A concern, I think, if your end target is 1080p.
 
Blackout said:
Also... what's the best way to bring in VHS footage? I don't have any analog inputs on my newer ultra windows 7 64 box.... is there a cheap card with analog ins that does a good job... I actually have a brand new 4 head vhs player / dvd recorder sitting in a box from a couple years ago that I used to use for quick transfers from vhs to DVD, but while the VHS playback is very good for.. well... VHS.. the encoder to mpeg2 is not. I would rather encode it to DV.
Click to expand...

My preservation activities had pretty much stalled, but I have a analog to DV Firewire digitizer that I bought some years ago. About 6 months ago I bought a U-Matic, well, 2 of them, to 'play' some od 3/4 tapes that I have and use the digitizer to convert.

The only thing I may send out, is some 45 year old 8mm film that the Wife's father took of her and her sisters when they were young...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
My preservation activities had pretty much stalled, but I have a analog to DV Firewire digitizer that I bought some years ago. About 6 months ago I bought a U-Matic, well, 2 of them, to 'play' some od 3/4 tapes that I have and use the digitizer to convert.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't happen to be a DVMC-DA1, would it?

Geez...you're showing your age with the 3/4 stuff. Haven't used a U-Matic since the days when I had a Diaquest Animaq hooked into a Truvision NuVista+ and a Mac IIci with all of 128MB RAM to digitize footage frame-by-frame. Then had to work with 160x120 proxies in Premiere 1.0. Now those were the days!
 
Yeah I sold my DVX to a lady who wanted one immediately and offered me $1100 cash... for an ORIGINAL.. not an a or a b. So didn't hesitate to let it go for that price. The dv i/o was dead on it and my other camera that has analog in the DV io is dead. I had a lot of problems with the dv jack frying on my old computer. Is there still that prob now? I have a DV in and I suppose I could by a cheapy camcorder with s video and composite in for the job... it's not really important enough nor high budget enough to send off to someone else... just some clips that need to be in there. I think I may even have an old TBC laying around from a newtek flyer I had when I was 8 years old. Expensive toy for an 8 year old.

3/4 inch umatic.... those were the machines before beta sp that were as big as refrigerators right or at least as heavy?
 
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