vhs encode guide
if you don't already know, i collect, digitize and archive my tapes for fun. a lot of people have asked for a guide on how i do it.
most of this guide, images and one video is courtesy of @jokeskellington, who helped me take my recordings from
table of contents
here's my guide to encoding tapes to play buttery smooth like this:
# requirements
here's what you need to get it all buttery smooth
# recording
after you install everything and plug in your capture card, open AmaRecTV. you should see a prompt to select your capture card and codecs for recording.
in the Format section, input exactly this for NTSC: w= 720, h= 480, fps=29.97, fcc=YUY2, bit=16
move over to the Preview tab...
and make your settings like so!
move over to Recording tab and change the settings to this!
click Apply and find your way on the homescreen of the app.
this is the button to record something. similar to a VCR, the play button is when you're playing something and you hit the stop button (that it turns into) to stop recording.
this won't look up to what i promised just yet but here's an example of what the recording should look like. still interlaced.
# encoding & deinterlacing
now here's the fun part! open up Hybrid and get ready for some rapid fire settings.
this is Hybrid. the processing block in the middle is up to preference. x265 and lossless audio is what's best if you want to emulate me specifically.
move over to the second tab, which for me is x265.
me personally, i have crf 1-pass at 15. mainly this is for how good vs how small you want your video to be. the higher the crf, the lower the size. the closer to zero, the more detail is preserved.
tick the resize box and set the target resolution to 640 by 480. this bit corrects the aspect ratio to 4 by 3. be sure the resize method is lancoz, as well.
this bit is the most important if you want that 60fps. go to the filtering tab and choose (de-)interlace/telecine. change to "auto deinterlace handling" to "QTGMC (vapoursynth)" and tick "Overwrite input scan type to", and select "Top field first". if the video comes out stuttery, change it to "bottom field first".
and so you don't have to do all of this everytime, click "Defaults" > "Save All".
select your input file.
select your output file.
add it to the queue.
if you want to check up on the progress of the encode, go to the Jobs tab.
# distributing
distributing such large files is a bit of a pain, espescially on a slow connection can be a bit of a pain. i personally recommend MS and archive.org.
it is highly recommended if you upload some tape content to youtube, you should upscale it to 1080p60 in something like kdenlive and throw it there.
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