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Author Topic: Xnsferring VHS to DVD -or- capturing to PC Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-28-2009 05:13 PM                        B&W photographic film (or Kodachrome stored in a dark place) is pretty good as an archival format, and should last over 100 years. Flash memory isn't really intended for long-term storage, and it is generally unrecoverable when it fails. Never mind that future computer hardware may not have an interface to accept current formats, or that the file formats themselves may become obsolete in the future. For SD video, Digi-Beta is probably a good choice of storage format, with respect to the ability to play it many years into the future. It's probably overkill for VHS, however. DVCAM is probably OK, although I've heard that the tape transports are so small that they can be difficult to maintain, which means that it may be more difficult to find a working playback machine in several decades. It is also pretty heavily compressed, which archivists don't like, but it is difficult to be a purist when the original material is from VHS. If the amount of material is small and the goal is long-term archival stability, a film transfer might actually be a reasonable option to consider, but that becomes cost-ineffective pretty quickly as the amount of material increases. For home video material on VHS, I'd probably pick DVCAM with DVD viewing copies as a reasonably cost-effective storage medium, with the understanding that the tapes will need to be checked every few years and transferred to new formats.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-28-2009 05:44 PM                        Wow, generation loss city! I'd digitize into a lossless format and just make viewable copies from there. Transfer the lossless data to the new types of storage that become standard in computers every so often. Perfect for those episodes of ALF taped off the air.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 09-28-2009 07:10 PM                       Thanks for all the great info and suggestions! I have probably 30 hours of video. I like the idea of using a TBC, since many of these tapes are starting to show degradation and are losing color lock. My thought is to get it stored and backed up at the highest quality possible onto hard drives and DVD, and then burn extra DVD viewing copies. Terabites of HDD storage are dirt cheap these days.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 09-28-2009 09:28 PM                     quote: Joe Redifer Well, maybe you could buy a bunch of 4 or 8GB flash cards and just store your media on there forever. What about external USB or Firewire connected EXT HD's - what catagory would this storage media fit in? True, EXT 1TB HD's are getting down to a very affordable level.. One could buy one once every other month at the prices that they are heading to.. thx-Monte  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-28-2009 09:54 PM                        Hard disks are made to spin. Thus, it would be a bad idea to put a disk on the shelf and expect to be able to take it down from the shelf in a few years and connect it to a computer and recover useful data. Also, interfaces tend to change, and the IDE disk that you used ten years ago will not likely work with a computer that you purchase ten years from now. This also does not solve any of the issues with changing file formats and such. The good news is that (unlike flash memory) data on failed hard disks can usually be recovered by a professional data-recovery service, though the price tends to be quite high. Online data storage on hard disks is a reasonable option, but that incurs regular expenses and does not guard against malicious or accidental file deletion or corruption. Magnetic tape is far from ideal, but it's a better backup-and-store format than hard disk. It's weird that every advance in technology (from stone tablets to papyrus to rag paper to wood-pulp paper to electronic files) had been a step backwards with respect to long term storage.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-28-2009 10:00 PM                        You would think there'd be a company that would offer space you could just "play" your old video tapes thru a device that would upload the stuff to the "cloud" in real time. Then you could download and burn yourself a copy whenever you wanted. They could get around the copyright issues by having a small fee everytime you downloaded, which would be paid to the copyright holders if any.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 09-29-2009 07:12 AM                     Such a device would have to be an A/D converter and as such you might as well just store and then replicate the data locally. Even if there were a commercial opportunity for such a service I think the file sizes would be prohibitively large. There are lots for people willing to do the transfer for you and as discussed earlier, the prices are not off the map.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-29-2009 11:26 AM                        Yeah but to take advantage of one of the transfer places, you have to send your tapes away and many people would not feel comfortable doing that.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 09-29-2009 12:46 PM                     I am one of those people too. In my case they are 8mm films from the 40s and 50s.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 09-29-2009 04:25 PM                       quote: Scott Norwood it would be a bad idea to put a disk on the shelf and expect to be able to take it down from the shelf in a few years and connect it to a computer and recover useful data. I had intended one protection copy to stay on my computer HD - where it would be in regular use - plus the DVD copies for redundancy. I'm actually very afraid to trust any magnetic media as the sole storage, that's a big reason I want to get them off of VHS. Need to upgrade my computer soon, so would be a perfect time to get this done. Thanks!  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-29-2009 04:38 PM                        The problem with DVD is that it uses compression which lessens the quality of the video. The exception would be if you stored your raw video files as DATA on the disc instead of DVD video, but DVDs or even Blu-rays aren't really big enough for a task like that.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 09-29-2009 04:50 PM                       That's right, I have much to consider, I suppose.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-29-2009 09:45 PM                     But he's taking his source from VHS. That's something like 250 lines. Isn't it? A DVD's got nearly double that. The compression in a DVD is virtually irrelevant if you consider the source. Even if you have good source material, it still doesn't matter because a DVD can produce a better picture than many SD TVs can display. Properly compressed, you could never even tell if it displayed on an SD screen. Yes, if you're talking Hi-Def, it's a whole other kettle of fish. But for rescuing old video from a VHS tape, an SD DVD is more than sufficient. As far as archival issues, I know DVD-R (and DVD+R, etc.) are essentially unproven. They haven't been around long enough for us to really know how well they last. We've had film and other storage medium around for more than 100 years. We know how they behave in storage. Recordable DVDs have only been around since when? The 1990s? (Commercially available.) Twenty years is barely long enough to understand their properties in storage. Anyhow, whenever I do a VHS to DVD project, I make two copies of the finished disk. I tell the person who gets it. "One for show and one to go." That means put one copy in storage and never touch it. Use the other for viewing and copying. I will save the project files on my HD for a short time until I'm sure the person is satisfied with the result. After which, I archive the project onto DVDs and make a backup set. Once done, the HD files are erased. So, yes, I know DVDs do degrade with time but, given what we don't know about their longevity, I think my strategy will get the customer, at least, to the point where they have their video on a reasonably stable medium that can be backed up with relative ease if they should ever need it.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-29-2009 10:33 PM                        DVD compresses the color and loses independent frame information. Even Blu-rays look better on SDTVs than DVDs do. Resolution isn't everything.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 09-30-2009 12:34 AM                     Randy, you would be better off giving the customer a DVD to play on cheap media, another to store and then pick 2 different brands of media and give them archival copy #2 and 3. That way by the time the DVD they watch starts to degrade, the hopes are that they have an archival version on higher quality media they can make a new dupe off of. I also recommend to people they dupe the DVD every few years regardless, and then just date the copy. Also NEVER put a label on the disc, use a Sharpie marker to label it.  |  IP: Logged

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