How to convert VHS videotape to 60p digital video

In 2016, I made a tutorial on how to transfer VHS to digital video. Despite this channel being dedicated to vintage computing, that tutorial remains my most successful video to date. But a lot has happened since then; there’s better software available that can

to date. But a lot has happened since then; there’s better software available that can do everything necessary in one step. So, I figured it was time to make a new tutorial.

Now, there are dozens of tutorials online for transferring VHS, so why is it worth your time to watch this one? Well, other tutorials usually produce an OK result that looks like this… …but if analog video is processed properly, it can look like this: If the example on the right looks better and smoother than the example on the left, then this tutorial is for you. I’ll cover cheap capture hardware I’ve tested that works well,

and show you how to set up the software to perform one-click recording. But most importantly, I’ll explain the critical secret necessary to preserve analog video’s true framerate.

So, here’s what we’ll cover in this tutorial: First, I’ll explain the scope of this tutorial, and who it is for. Next, I’ll explain the secret to transferring video properly that practically everyone, even online streaming services, gets wrong. I’ll show several capture devices I tested

successfully, and where to get them. I’ll walk you through downloading, installing, and configuring the free software we’re going to use. Finally, I’ll go over some common troubleshooting steps if you run into something unexpected. If you know some of this already, use the chapter markers in this video’s description to skip past sections you don’t care about. Now, this tutorial is a

bit out of place on my channel, which is supposed to be dedicated to the topic of vintage personal computing. So to stay “on brand”, I picked some appropriate source material to use today.

computing. So to stay “on brand”, I picked some appropriate source material to use today.

Yeah... We’re going there.

This tutorial has a very specific scope: It’s meant for beginners who have never tried this process before. When finished, it’s a one-step process that creates good quality files that

process before. When finished, it’s a one-step process that creates good quality files that work for most use cases. It also tries to be as cheap as possible. It uses free software, doesn’t require a powerful computer, and you should be able to follow along spending less than $50.

To keep things simple for beginners, I won’t be covering advanced topics in this tutorial: Realtime conversion, such as upscaling and HDMI output, is not covered. This tutorial is about capturing video to digital files, not connecting VCRs to modern televisions. Also, this tutorial does not produce preservation-grade archival masters. Archival masters require more expensive

equipment and a more complicated workflow. And finally, this tutorial does not go into video restoration, such as noise removal or 4K upscaling. I might cover these advanced topics at a later date if there’s interest; leave a comment if you’d be interested in learning about them.

To produce the best quality results, we’ve got to take a minute to explain the critical secret necessary for smooth output, and that is the difference between frames and fields. Analog video

is captured in frames per second. But an analog video frame is not a single image: It actually hides two images, captured at different moments in time. See those horizontal jagged lines? One

image is contained in the even lines of the frame; the other image is in the odd lines. These two

images are called fields, and they are interlaced together in a single frame. (This is why you may have heard analog video referred to as interlaced video.) This property of interlaced video means that we can create a smooth 60 frames per second output, by separating each field into its own image. The end result should look identical to how a VHS tape actually looks when played on a VCR.

image. The end result should look identical to how a VHS tape actually looks when played on a VCR.

Capture hardware can cost anywhere from $10 to thousands of dollars, so what should you buy?

We need both fields in our capture to get the best quality, so the main criteria, no matter the cost, is any capture hardware that passes both fields through unharmed.

Sadly, most cheap $10 USB capture devices don’t do this; their drivers only capture one field, so there’s no way to get a decent result using them.

Here’s two examples of devices to avoid. On Amazon, their brand name is DIGITNOW, but the same devices are sold under many different names and are usually shaped exactly like this.

Luckily for you, I tested many USB capture dongles to see which ones passed both fields through, had halfway decent drivers, and were still available for sale. The winners are: The IO DATA GV-USB2.

This is popular with retro console gamers who stream over twitch. It has a great driver with many options, and is still sold commercially for about $50. Don’t let the Japanese documentation scare you away; you can find a link to the latest Windows driver in this video’s description.

The Startech – get ready for this – SVID2USB232. This adapter works fine, but it’s the least recommended of the bunch because it required some tweaking of contrast levels. This can be inconvenient, but it’s not a showstopper. It’s available brand new for roughly $40.

The Dazzle DVC-100. Yes, this is the same device I featured in my previous video. It’s still my favorite because it’s more tolerant of timing issues than other devices. It hasn’t been sold for over a decade, but you can usually find them on ebay for around $20. For links on where to find

these devices, check this video’s description. And for a used Dazzle device, you can check ebay.

For software, all we need is the excellent and free Open Broadcaster Software, or OBS.

OBS has come a very long way in the past 7 years since I did my original tutorial, and is capable of capturing, processing, and encoding all in a single step. Let’s download and install it now.

okay gonna go off script here and get things started first off let's download obs so OBS open broadcaster software is obtained from obsproject.com if you do a search you may find that other websites will have it listed but this is the official location and once you're here you download uh the version for what you'll be using

this tutorial is on windows so we're going to download the windows version okay once you've got it downloaded and installed go ahead and start it up I'll do so here in Windows and you'll be greeted with a multi-pane interface and it's this isn't a full OBS tutorial but it's worth explaining at least a couple of sections this section up here is called the

scene and it is essentially a big canvas that you can put multiple elements on this whole rectangle becomes the video that you are recording or streaming or capturing some people like to put a little corner of themselves down here like a little webcam or something and then the the thing they're presenting or the game they're streaming here and some other stuff but we're only going to

be putting uh one giant VHS capture on the scene so we're only going to have one element in it uh speaking of which sources are elements that go into the scene so we will be adding sources here most importantly video capture device but let's get to that a little later uh and then finally

over here in controls uh we have uh settings for setting up uh well our settings uh what we're recording and how we're going to be saving it and then of course starting and stopping recording so let's start with a set of defaults first of all if we're going to be monitoring uh how our

capture is doing we should turn on some statistics so go to docs and pick stats and you should see uh a docked stats window show up it will show the capture rate it'll show uh how many frames it has captured uh or missed or skipped and so on and this will come in handy later but for now

it's it's enough that it's simply enabled now we're going to create a new profile a profile is a settings group for OBS and we're going to create a new one because it sets a lot of the settings to default and I want that for this tutorial because then it's less for us to

change let's just call this a VHS capture for the profile okay and as you'll and you'll notice that the window got wider because it set the default to its default which is a widescreen image uh now let's go ahead and create a new scene collection uh just to make things clear and

clean uh so that if you're using OBS with other things for example that your scene won't uh you know conflict with other scenes so again we're just going to call this VHS it's a VHS scene okay and you should notice down here that uh we have a single scene which is fine and now we can configure OBS for what we're going to be doing we need to set the size of this canvas

to be a 4x3 canvas that is appropriate for VHS capture a lot of people sometimes will capture into a wide screen and they'll try to stretch it that looks odd so we're not going to do that but we do need to tell OBS we want a 4x3 screen to do that we're going to do settings

and then video is where we define the properties of the canvas and how it's output for both of these we're going to pick a 4x3 1080p resolution which is 1440 by 1080. and you're going to put 1440 by 1080 in both of these

by 1080. and you're going to put 1440 by 1080 in both of these and since we want our output to be the full 60 Fields per second for common FPS values

for ntsc we want 59.94 if you're in a pal region you can pick 50 for pal but for us we want 59.94 and hit OK now you'll see that our canvas has been resized to what we need at this point it's good to start your Source playing so that you have a signal to examine when you hook up your

capture device so go ahead and put your tape any tape at all into a VCR and start it playing and that will be our test signal when we're starting the next step so naturally at this point go ahead and connect the video and audio leads from your VCR to your capture device typically the video connection if you're using composite video is yellow

and if you have a left and a right audio lead typically the red is the right side so red is right it's easy to remember with everything connected up you're ready to add a video source so go to the sources panel hit the plus sign and pick video capture device you can name it if you want but it's not really necessary just hit OK

and then you will be provided with a window for your video Source now the first thing you have to do is pick your actual capture device I actually have several on this system so we don't see anything so I'm going to drop down and pick the device I have inserted which is the gv-usb2

and it should pop straight up this is our video test Source here and hopefully it's going to look just fine however if you need to make some adjustments if you're not seeing something you can configure the video and what that will do is it'll bring up the driver for the driver

interface for your capture device and you can adjust some properties we'll go ahead and start with the gv-usb2 just so you can see what it looks like and I'll show you the how the pop-up for this for the other devices for the gv-usb2 you generally don't have to change any of these settings but you do have to make sure that it is set to weave and what that means is

it will not attempt any de-interlacing it will pass all of the fields through untouched there are some other settings here too also such as for example a proc amp which you can use to try to adjust brightness and contrast I usually just leave these at whatever the defaults are

to show you an example of what that configuration dialog may look for other devices let's go ahead and pick the star tech device the star tech device is shows up as USB b2828 when you do that now I've paused the video here so don't be alarmed it's not the

capture device is working just fine but I've gone ahead and paused because I want to show something you may need to adjust when you configure the video on this device this device for some reason has incorrect levels you may notice that the some of these areas are blown out and they don't look right if you reduce the contrast level

to the point where the blooming goes away and nothing is blown out then it looks fine and this number contrast 20 actually does match with my own settings that I've tested before so sometimes you have to adjust the image which you can do so in the driver settings when you configure video let's go ahead and check the Dazzle device so you can see what that configuration dialog looks like

so let's go ahead and pick the Dazzle device which conveniently shows up as The Dazzle DVC 100 we still have our paused video frame here as a signal if you configure video on this you have you don't have very many options sometimes on some of these dialogues you'll see a VCR input uh toggle which I believe is supposed to handle either better timing or something but I've never

found this to actually do anything so it's okay to leave it the Dazzle also has some proc amp controls if you need to you can adjust things however the defaults produce a perfect image so we don't need to do anything there once you've connected your capture device and you see that

you've definitely got an image go ahead and click OK and that will set the video capture device to your device and you should also see audio coming in if it's connected correctly over in the audio mixer section and this is good this is what we want to see now that we have our video capture

device putting something into our scene let's go ahead and set our recording settings our file compression settings and do a test capture just to make sure that everything is working as it looks like it's working so for that we go to the lower right to controls and to settings and then to Output if you're not an expert in OBS keep the output

mode simple we are not streaming so we ignore the streaming settings go down to recording first pick a location for where your saved files are going to be I'm going to go ahead and pick a temporary directory on my e-drive you can pick anywhere you like for recording quality we have a couple of options high quality indistinguishable and lossless

we all we need is high quality don't pick indistinguishable or lossless because these create much larger files and they won't have any better quality for our source material which is a VHS tape so just pick high quality medium file size for recording format the most compatible

format across all devices and software as MP4 out of that list so pick MP4 and for encoder you may have software only options you may also have some Hardware options so what you should pick if you don't have Hardware options is software x264 low CPU preset so I don't know what kind of

computer you have if you have an old computer that is slow you definitely need this setting if you have a fast computer like something made after the year 2020 you can pick software x264.

if you have uh any Intel chipset with a quick sync video you could pick that and that will offload it'll do the encoding in Hardware which will offload from the CPU if you have an Nvidia card like I do you can pick Hardware Nvidia encoding h.264 and that will also offload

from the CPU but for this test if you have no idea what to do pick the low CPU usage preset and then click ok and now that we've set our basic settings now I know that this doesn't look correct but what we want to do is just simply test do a test recording to make sure

that everything is working so for that we go down to controls and we click start recording and we are doing a recording now this should light up blue to show you its recording if we go down to our stats we should see these numbers increasing occasionally which they are

and we should also have let's resize this a little bit we can see the total data that's being output into our file and what the average bit rate is and that's it we just need a couple of seconds for

testing so go ahead and stop recording and then go ahead and pull up that file and see if it works now let's go ahead and minimize OBS real quick and go to the location where I saved that temp where I saved my test file and I'm going to double click it to play it to make sure that it plays okay

and it is playing just fine so we've made a successful test recording now we need to finish setting up OBS completely now that we know we can record and play back correctly with OBS let's go ahead and finish setting up this scene so that the video looks the way we want it to remember

earlier how I demonstrated analog video contains two Fields per frame we need to tell OBS how to correctly interpret that so to do that go to your video capture device setting right click and then pick de-interlacing and you have lots of options here because the correct de-interlacing

for any interlaced output is two times the speed we want to pick one of these two x settings the best one here is yadiff 2x it stands for yet another d-interlacer it has what it does is it tries to analyze one frame ahead and behind and make Intelligent Decisions based on that so

use yadiff 2X and you don't have to worry about these field settings just yet so once we do that the output should now be a smooth 60 frames per second to better illustrate that let's go ahead and resize the capture to fit our entire canvas and to do that we want to go right click again

to transform and do stretch to screen and now there's the full stretch and then we can also increase the quality of the stretch by right clicking and doing scale filtering and picking uh land shows I believe it's pronounced that way I'm not Hungarian so forgive me if it's wrong

and what that will do is produce a nice smooth scroll to prove that we're interpreting Fields correctly let's rewind the tape a little bit and go to a section with a lot of motion well this certainly has a lot of motion in it and as you can tell it's definitely smoother so this is the output that will essentially be sent directly to the file this is the full scene this

is what OBS sees and now you can go ahead and do your full recording go ahead and start recording and it might be good to do yet another test uh like do a couple of seconds of recording and then go ahead and check the file which actually I'll go ahead and do here I'll stop recording

and once again bring up the temporary location where I have these files now you'll see that OBS saves these in date stamp format which is great which means they sort naturally and you also can see by the file name when they were recorded let's go ahead and try this new test recording and I'll go ahead and make this full screen

so we're all set to record and now you are set to record go ahead and Rewind your tape to the beginning go back into obs start recording and you should be good to go As easy as that was, you might encounter some issues along the way. Here are some answers to common problems:If you’re dropping frames because the CPU load is too high, you can shrink the size

of the captured video. Instead of 1440x1080, you can choose 960x720. This won’t look as good if you upload the result to youtube because youtube gives less bitrate to 720p videos, but it’s always a better choice not to drop frames. If that doesn’t help, you might need to upgrade your PC. Any PC or Mac made after the year 2010 should work for

this process without dropping frames. If you’re dropping frames even if the CPU load is low, then this might be caused by timing issues, such as an old stretched-out VHS tape, poor over-the-air recording quality, recordings made at the slow 6-hour SLP speed, or dirty VCR heads. There’s not much you can do about tape or recording problems,

but you can clean the VCR heads with a cleaning tape to see if it gets better. There are also more thorough ways to clean VCR heads; I’ve left a few links on how to do so in this video’s description.

If that doesn’t help, then you might need to introduce a piece of hardware that enforces good timing signals, called a timebase corrector, or TBC. Many S-VHS decks come with one built-in, or you can get a standalone TBC unit and put it inbetween the VCR and the capture device.

Unfortunately, both options cost a lot of money, and are out of scope for this beginner’s tutorial.

Some combinations of video capture devices, drivers, and operating systems can sometimes result in no audio signal coming from the capture device. This can be very difficult to troubleshoot, but if your computer has another way of capturing audio, such as an audio line-in port or dedicated audio interface, you can use that for capturing the audio. Just add an Audio Source in

OBS, and pick your audio capture device. OBS will combine both sources during the recording process.

If the finished video has audio that drifts out of sync, you might be dropping too many frames; see the previous troubleshooting tips to address that.

Audio sync problems might be fixable by adjusting an audio offset value in OBS.

I’ve put links in this video’s description to some troubleshooting videos that try to address that.

OBS defaults to recording in stereo. If the audio in your capture is only coming out of the left or right side, there are two common causes: If your VCR or camcorder only has one output jack, you can use a cheap mono-to-stereo adapter to send the audio to both left and right inputs. If the stereo playback itself is only coming out one side, because it was originally

inputs. If the stereo playback itself is only coming out one side, because it was originally recorded that way, you can tell OBS to treat the signal as mono. At the recording source, choose Advanced Audio Properties, then check the MONO checkbox to mix both channels into mono.

If the resulting output video looks consistently jittery or jumpy, as if the frames are playing out of order, then the field order might be swapped. To fix this, right-click your video capture device in

the Sources section, go to Deinterlacing, and try the other “field first” setting.

And that’s it! I hope you found this tutorial helpful, especially the part about how to deinterlace analog video correctly to a 60p target.

What did you think? Is there something I left out that a beginner’s tutorial should have covered?

Leave your questions and comments below. If you liked this video, you might be interested in another video I did about how I clean videotapes covered in mold, so that you can capture them without damaging your equipment. And, of course, if you’re interested in vintage computing in the early days of the IBM PC, check out my entire channel.