Capturing VHS tapes

Question

I bought a Video-2-PC DIY Video Capture Kit which includes a copy of ArcSoft Showbiz 3.5, which I found to be too restrictive and low quality, and VirtualDub 1.9.11.0, which I eventually got to grips with and started using after many viewings of the included tutorial.

However, the longer the capture the more the video and audio are out of sync and I have not been able to resolve this.

Can anyone recommend some software that can capture, deinterlace, and compress video from an input source (a VHS player, in my case) while accounting for and correcting blemishes (audio sync problems, in my case)?

Answer 1

This is because the frame rate of the pictures are not exact.

The solution is to note how long the video is after capturing it.

Then save the audio only, and stretch it to that length.

Then put the audio and the video back together, for instance with mkvmerge.

Answer 2

It sounds like you are having problems with drop-frame frame rates. When color was added to broadcast TV, the frame rate was reduced from 30 frames per second to 29.976 to squeeze in that extra color data.

To fix this, you may be able to correct the capture settings in your current software to ensure it is using 29.976 instead of 30 fps. If not, there is some software, such as Quicktime Pro (on a mac) that allows you to edit the metadata of the saved video file to correct the playback speed.

If those do not work for you, I would try using VLC to capture from that hardware. Here is one guide you can follow to record from a capture device. There is a de-interlace filter you can use in VLC; just keep in mind that de-interlaced footage can look worse than using the interlaced footage as-is.

Answer 3

I would suggest using dedicated hardware for this, that ensures synchronization. For example the Canopus ADVC110.