Re: Advice for Archiving VHS and Umatic SP

On Jul 3, 11:24 pm, "Richard Crowley" <rcrow...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Argo22" wrote ...



I work at a local community cable channel, and all of our older
programming on Umatic SP, has been given to me instead of being thrown
out, since we have no more use for it, and no space for it. I have
made it a hobby to archive the shows on to a digital medium, either
hard drive or DVD. Most of the productions are 30 minutes, dating from
as late as 2000 to as early as 1980, with varying qualities. Also, a
portion of shows, were archived on to VHS tape.

Need help/advice as to how to archive them. I can use a set top dvd
recorder, but leaning more towards digitizing them with my canopus
break out box, into my imac and using FCP to fix up and archive. I
don't know if these would be ever used for rebroadcast, but do not
want to loose anymore quality than i am already loosing from the
degrading tapes, especially the VHS tapes. I am not concerned how much
space, either hard drive or DVDs, as long as it is good enough. I have
thought about encoding it in h.264 in high quality, or encoding as DV,
and storing the files on dvds or on hard drive.

Any suggestions? This is a very important project to me and i would
like to do the best job possible.

According to Adam Wilt's hierarchical list of video formats
(http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html) DV is higher
quality ("9") than 3/4 SP ("6.5"). Therefore, dubbing from 3/4
SP to DV will preserve all the quality you can squeze out of
the tapes (and the player).

OTOH, video DVD is significantly lower quality than 3/4 SP
(I estimate between 3.5 and 4.5 on Adam's scale). Therefore,
you would be losing a significant part of what is on your tapes.
But running off a convienence/reference DVD on a standalone
recorder while capturing to DV wouldn't be a bad idea, IMHO.

Perhaps someone would like to take a stab at placing H.264
on Adam's scale for reference?

My main goal is to re-master these and destroy the master
tapes once they are preserved.

Not clear why you would want to destroy the tapes unless you
really don't have room for them or something? Is the content
(undisclosed) something that a library or a historical society
might be interested in?

Well about 75% of the library was thrown out over the years, because
no space was available for storage, and nobody wanted or had the time
to preserve them before they were chucked, until I came along. There
were minimal archives done over the years, but the majority of them
were done on VHS tape, in EP quality at that. Very surprised at how
they held up, but still EP quality.
I dont believe that this would be interesting enough for a historical
society, but who knows. Most of the shows left are instructional shows
such as cooking, crafts, local sports coverage, current affairs, etc,
of local cable budget quality. Maybe worth it to people locally, but
probably worth more to the volunteers/staff, or use for archival
clips.

As stated before, do not know if these will every be re-broadcast, but
the ability is a must. Obviously there is probably not much that can
be done with the VHS tapes, but more concerned about the Umatics. I
have acquired the tapes and they are stored in my apartment, so i dont
have a lot of space to store them.

I have so far come to the conclusion that since DV is better than
Umatic, i will record the tapes into the imac and save them as dv.
Also, the input i have is a firewire canopus advc-300 converter.

Thanks everyone for all help thus far.
Mark

.

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  • Re: Advice for Archiving VHS and Umatic SP
    ... I can use a set top dvd ... degrading tapes, especially the VHS tapes. ... thought about encoding it in h.264 in high quality, or encoding as DV, ... (I estimate between 3.5 and 4.5 on Adam's scale). ...
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  • Re: Advice for Archiving VHS and Umatic SP
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