Blackmagic Forum

This a bit more specific request. We have a project that requires us to import VHS footage, upscale it, restore it as much as we can and forward it to an editor. This is what I know about VHS import so far.

In order to get the best image out of VHS into digital it's always recommended to get the best D/S-VHS player as possible, professional or at least prosumer stuff with TBC and some built in curing for tearing, etc. We will look into this and either rent it or buy it.

Question is what capture hardware do I go to. Can I go with something like BMD Intensity or go oldschool with Matrox RT.X2 PCI. Or go even further with Brighteye TBC with RF to SDI out.

If anyone does have experience with similar setups I would appreciate the feedback.

You may have better luck in the Post Production sub-forum. That's more of a hardware issue at the moment, as Fusion doesn't interface directly with capture equipment.

I recently started to digitise and upscale some of my old S-VHS, VHS and miniDV tapes for a film I'm working on. I wanted the highest possible quality and also upscale to HD or UHD at the same time. I bought a Teranex Express and it is simply mindblowingly, outrageously brilliant. Not only does it do a perfect de-interlace, its realtime upscale - even to UHD - is insanely good. I know it's pricey, so rent it if it's too much for a one-off job. Of course it also does amazing frame-rate conversions. I sound like a Teranex fanboy, but there's a reason why it's the industry standard. No endless rendering times - realtime processing - what's not to love about that. It outputs to SDI which I simply connect to my Decklink 4K Studio to capture. I have hundreds of hours of tape to capture, so I bought a small UltraStudio Mini Recorder to capture the HD upscales of the Teranex to my MacBook instead of using my desktop computer. Another strategy which works well and I've also used, is to use a BlackMagic 4K Video Assist and record your Teranex output onto SD cards. To play the VHS tapes I found an old Sony SVO-5800P which was a 'broadcast quality' S/VHS player in its day. The cool thing is, it has Component (YUV) output for best (analog) quality which I feed into a BlackMagic Analog to SDI converter which feeds the Teranex. Whatever I do with my new digitised masters now, whether editing and colouring in Resolve or sending to Fusion, I'm just amazed at the quality the above-mentioned pipeline has delivered. Obviously you have to be realistic, an analogue SD, interlaced video image will never compete with natively shot digital HD or UHD footage, but it definitely has a look and is definitely usable. Believe me, I've tried just about every software conversion software on the market to scale up and de-interlace my S-VHS footage, but the final results and horrendous render times (for the tons of footage I have) was no match for the Teranex monster.

Hey there,

Forget Fusion in this field, find a Terranex...

I can echo that recommendation too, actually. I blocked the experience from my memory, but I had a job where I used a Teranex for format conversion, and it was a fantastic piece of gear. That was before BMD bought it, though, so ours cost $40k!

Konrad, I thought the TN had component YCbCr inputs? I'm surprised you need the converter to SDI.

Thanks guys for jumping in. I looked up Teranex Express and pricing is ok, I might as well then transfer all my personal miniDVs so I guess it will pay off in the end. As soon as I find some time to do so

There is not a lot of VHS footage to transfer so I was going to Nucode it to HD and run all those DVO tools which I've never used so far before I send it off to Fusion, but it seems Teranex Express is really top of the line when it comes to standardizing analogue to digital. I looked it up online last night and I'm sold.

I just need to find that damn broadcast S-VHS that works first and go from there depending on the outputs. I will most likely rent some analogue converters down the line but it is what it is.

Bryan Ray wrote:I can echo that recommendation too, actually. I blocked the experience from my memory, but I had a job where I used a Teranex for format conversion, and it was a fantastic piece of gear. That was before BMD bought it, though, so ours cost $40k!

Konrad, I thought the TN had component YCbCr inputs? I'm surprised you need the converter to SDI.

Hi Bryan, the Teranex Express has 'only' SDI; its big brother, the Teranex AV has all the bells and whistles. By the time I had bought all the extra bits and bobs, I thought it might probably have been cheaper to buy the Teranex AV straight off the bat.