FAQ
If any words or terms are confusing and or completely unknown to you read the above document first it covers all the little things and more.
In order to correctly understand this project you will need practical information for setup/usage and a little theory helps for correct handling, its generally no more than 1-2 hours of reading,
If you know what you are looking for on the right-hand side, the dropdown tab of indexed pages will help you.
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Acronyms Guide Covers virtually all basic information you should have a basic grasp on before getting into digitisation of analogue formats.
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The Readme The term RTFM does apply here as the readme has practical operation installation information.
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The Visual Diagrams Page There have been many documented workflows and processing chains at an overview level this is useful to reference if any part confuses you or you want an idea of how to build a workflow.
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Supported Tape Formats - Decoding supports A LOT more then just VHS!
Tip
The Tap List & VCR Reports has a range of notes and high-resolution photos of Consumer/Prosumer/Professional VCR's of different tape formats that have been modified or "RF Tapped" for daily RF capture usage.
FM RF capture is universal in terms of supported hardware, and VCR/VTR units, if it plays tapes, it can be used to get RF Captures!
VHS/SVHS/Video8/Hi8/Beta/ED-Beta/Umatic/EIAJ/SMPTE-C/SMPTE-B/LaserDisc etc
Practically it's all the same and the FM RF Archival method is capture hardware generic, and decoding is entirely platform-agnostic.
Whether it's an NTSC/PAL/PAL-M/NTSC-J/SECAM/MESECAM tape this does not matter as long as the deck runs and picks up the signal.
For SVHS decks in NTSC land (USA/CA) It may be cheaper to import a PAL deck as the later 90's units support SECAM/NTSC (Thanks Linus...)
Now the RF test points that we commonly tap for capture are universal for recording & playback adjustment for video on all videotape decks, regardless of the format/region of the medium making the RF Tap and capture method a drop-in upgrade for almost any videotape deck you can find.
Note
Like an SVHS/SuperBeta/Hi8 device decode has S-Video style output for colour-under and Y/C separated formats, thats why there is 2 .tbc files from the decode process with these formats.
A: It's just better!
No, It's a little more advanced, yet very simple in practice.
What comes out of the VCR's normal video and audio connections Yellow RCA or the 4-pin S-Video etc in an absolute sense, it's whatever the digital chips handling the processing has interpreted the signal as.
This digital processing then conversion back to baseband analogue for capture from an archival perspective this is a nightmare...
Sharpness, interference from off-spec components to over or under-filtering of colour, noise etc... The list is as endless as the number of posts about ''best this'' and ''bad that'' for XYZ tape or VCR format.
Instead of dealing with that mess, we skip past it all entirely so.
With software decoding the saying ''we'll fix it in post'' has never been more true because just like RAW digital photo & video we have full control over the processing of the media in both the analogue and digital domains. With every year of updates and providing better gains in quality potential & performance for free.
We have a basic YouTube video!
A: Yes we have a Quick Setup Guide, but most information in there own full scope pages.
The workflow of 1-2-3 docs is as follows:
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Workflow Guide - Hardware selection based off what formats you plan to capture.
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RF Capture Guide - Rundown of capture tools and software.
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Decoding Guide - Rundown of the motions of decoding various formats and how you may want to adjust commands.
Then you have the post decoding to standard video/audio file world where you will start and or end in your workflow.
TBC-Video-Export --> Post Processing --> Media Archival Guide.
Each guide will have sub-pages these are supporting documents that expand on subjects relating to that part of the workflow.
Not much for the actual FM RF processing. It works with Windows 10/11 on any standard midrange desktop or laptop hardware from the last 10-15 years and processes at around 2~5fps using less then 1GB of RAM normally.
On current Ryzen 9 7950x that's 14.9fps, and 38fps M4 Apple Macs (*if using FLAC compressed & down-sampled 16msps 8-bit files).
The Chroma-Decoder can run faster than real-time and use up to 35GB of ram if available, this is the heaviest processing task but it will be limited by system resources in terms of speed, this also limits scrubbing speed inside ld-analyse
A: Yes, this is the end of methods in real-world terms.
As the FM RF Archival method of direct capture preserves the original tape signals just after the initial tracking and pre-amplification stage of your device, there is no alteration of content in any visual way.
This capture workflow detaches the medium from the fixed widely varying limits of hardware internal and then virtually mandatory external processing of hardware/software capture solutions today.
Since RF signals are basically audio in terms of how software sees it in PCM samples or with FLAC compression (a zip file basically) and even re-sampling in some cases, a single Sony 128GB Blu-Ray disc can hold 6 hours of lossless consumer tape signals and a copy of the tools to decode it, leveraging the full potential of today's tools and tomorrow's software advances.
Due to this process, there are fewer worries if there is tape shedding or handling damage happens afterwards if the FM RF data was fine on the first run it can be combined later, so keeping the original media is recommended, RF data is also headerless meaning very resilient to bit-flips and cosmic ray events even if not stored on solid optical archival mediums.
Capture today, Decode forever!
Setup normally takes under an hour for hardware and software.
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RF Tapping a deck normally takes 30min after finding your test points.
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Capturing an FM RF signal to file is just one click or command with most workflows today.
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Decoding FM to S-Video or CVBS/Composite (.tbc) is just one command.
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Audio Alignment is mostly hands off with a single script (Audio + JSON input) to adjust for offsets between deck captured audio, and or hifi-decoded audio relative to your decoded video frames so there is perfect sync.
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ld-analyse is GUI based allowing for easy inspection, levels adjustment and critically re-framing your active image area so nothing is copped or cropped away before export.
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Chroma decoding
.tbc(4fsc data) files to normal YUV video is just one command with tbc-video-export, likewise the processing tools such asld-process-vbiis one command, but dropout correction is built into the export tool alongside standard profiles for quickly getting a ready to use file.
Overall very simple operation of just change the input/output names on each capture/decode after your setup, copy, paste, edit and run.
While SP will always have a better signal or SNR (signal to noise ratio), decode supports LP & EP just as well as SP in VHS & SVHS.
A keynote here is lower end consumer VCRs or the originating VCR for LP/ELP tapes may be best for tracking/alignment.
Tip
TV Systems is a highly useful read for knowing what media your dealing with in what region.
Q: Yes, most 1990-2000's era PAL VCRs from the Europe lineups support PAL & NTSC with some supporting SECAM or MESCAM.
However NTSC output on PAL decks are virtually always converted colour or PAL60 output in the case of NTSC, some decks support NTSC 4.43 output too (also called NTSC on PAL TV).
Note
FM RF capture will provide native NTSC 3.58 colour signal decoded files from an PAL VCR/VTR as long as tracking/playback speed is working fine.
Warning
This is not a "vise-versa" situation!
NTSC or north america market decks, do not support 625-line or PAL/SECAM speeds, only multi-system and a few pro-level decks ever did support both standards in that market.
Video8/Hi8 on Digital8 era camcorders are a exemption all models are believed to support both speed rates, but not native colour systems as PAL will playback NTSC 3.58 tapes in NTSC 4.43 and PAL60 modes.
A: It varies. If the deck supports SQPB you will be able to capture the full SVHS output since we are capturing at a stage before the signal gets modified to be decoded via the normal VHS circuitry.
On newer (late 90s and on) VCRs it might work even if the deck does not support SQPB as most head amplifier/all in one chips had the support for adding SQPB by then even if the SQPB bits and SQPB mode weren't added the vcr, if you see a lot of black streaks that could be a sign your VCR is not upto capturing SVHS due to higher dropping out.
The relevant part seems to be more whether the head amplifier supports and switches to SVHS/SQPB output mode, and the heads are up to the task which isn't really something that's possible to tell without trying to capture and decode unless the deck is a SVHS deck or a VHS deck with SQPB..
On non-SQPB decks, HiFi/Linear audio will work just fine but the video will have massive colour/signal drop issues on the normal video output.
For those who know what a TBC is and or spent too much on one, It beats the FA-310P and TBC-1000/3000, DMR-ES10/15 handling LP and unstable media incredibly well.
| Out of sync Analog Frame | Time Base Corrected |
|---|---|
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A: Analogue video is like paper put through a shredder each frame is a bunch of lines of analogue image information. Thus each rotation of the head a new line gets written or read, as such due to the mechanical nature and tolerance range these lines of information are almost never perfectly in sync on tape.
A time base corrector looks at the signal and re-times the lines to be more even to each other.
VHS-Decode features the world's first software-defined digital TBC for analogue video media and its 100% free and 100% open-source developed jointly with the ld-decode project.
Digital time base correctors typically feature manual but mostly hands-off automatic video level, black level, chroma level & chroma phase adjustment alongside dropout compensation based on reference RF input, the decoders provides its dropout detection data from the RAW RF during decoding with level control being fully adjustable in post.
ld-dropout-correct after decoding dropout corrects your decoded S-Video or CVBS type TBC files.
Note
Decode is not a frame-store. (Typically the TBC format can handle progressive frames also)
Automatic signal correction and drop-out detection are built into the decoding process alongside the hands-off TBC that applies to the entire signal a full-frame TBC in simple conventional terms with decoded information to a single Composite .tbc for composite modulated formats like Laserdisc/SMPTE-C or S-Video for Colour-Under formats like VHS/Beta etc which makes a separate _chroma.tbc allowing colour to be decoded separately and combined later to a video file.
The Time Base Corrected format (TBC) supports stacking, dropout correction, and fixed framerate output after initial decoding and signal correction processing, via ld-dropout-correct or even Avisynth/Vapoursynth manually.
You can read more about this in full detail on the TV Systems doc.
The framerate in SD video is commonly miss-represented such as 30i and 60i so we use accurate frames interlaced common broadcast wording and the formats and framerates are different between regions.
| TV System | Frame Rate | Field Rate |
|---|---|---|
| PAL / SECAM | 25 | 50 |
| NTSC | 29.97 | 59.94 |
Frames are interlaced into 2 fields for each frame hence the "i" notation after fps rate, this is why when de-interlacing it ends up as 50p & 59.94p as that is motion accurate frames to fields mapping, although for Anime/Telecine Films which is mastered at 24/23.97fps these frames are recovered via pull-down or IVTC de-interlacing.
60p & 60i does not exist, in modern analogue and modern broadcast this is true, but pre-colour era media did have these integer values but is rare to encounter such media today.
Analog tape is always Interlaced, almost always in Top Field First for PAL and Bottom Field First for NTSC (TFF / BFF)
Digital tape can have progressive but interlacing is almost always Bottom Field First.
A: It costs 60-300USD* depending on the level of setup you wish to invest in and what hardware & tools you already have available.
Warning
Always have a look at the Workflow Guide for new and workflow standardised hardware options!
Note
Most options can be sourced via direct fab or via the KoFi Store
The white PCIe 1x CX Cards are 16-35USD per card.
Basic tools/cabling and amplifiers is 25-100USD depending on how budget restrictive you need to be or if you prefer to get tooling and make cables from the ground up etc
A Clockgen Mod setup should be no more if directly built than 120USD total from AliExpress or in 2023, or less with bare PCB's and whole pre-made kits now available on the KoFi store.
The MISRC is 250-300USD but also offers CVBS/S-Video capture support (but lacks the filtering for LaserDisc).
The DomesDayDuplicator (DdD) can cost 280-350USD, this is dependent on the inflation of its 2 dedicated development boards, the DdD PCB is only 70-90USD + shipping. (but is only a single channel capture device not ideal for VHS etc a multi-channel format)
The RTLSDR is 10USD to 60USD (get them from AliExpress never Amazon) (*but only does HiFi audio)
A: Yes & No.
Some basic capture setup such as a GV-USB2 or BlackMagic Analog to SDI is about the max recommended with an DVD recorder like a DMR-ES10 or equivalent as a "poormans TBC" this will get you useful reference capture.
A modern TV or more ideally a CRT can be used for live monitoring if you already have a basic or easycrap setup, well it's good enough just to get you reference runtime & audio sync from the deck if not using an clockgen mod or misrc workflow with a clock locked audio capture workflow.
SDI or AIO IC based capture devices are recommended as they keep audio/video in relative sync.
If you can get your hands on a CRT, especially something like a Sony PVM or JVC equivalent it will make your life easier to check for VBI area data, and adjusting of tracking on a VCR/VTR.
But any basic TV/CRT would allow you to visually adjust the tracking to a acceptable level as well using playback then slow advance or pause + fast-forward etc. To check if the tape is properly tensioned.
There are 3 types of audio on tape, Linear, HiFi FM & PCM Digital
The RCA or Balanced XLR outputs on decks are always Baseband ready for speaker use or direct digitation with standard line-input or line level able audio cards.
PCM digital is mainly found on Hi8 and rare SVHS tapes, and dedicated PCM multi-track tapes, there is a few flavours of studio PCM that used video frames for data, basically a stream of QR code style data blocks and yes there are decoders for that like SDVPCM Decoder.
There are 2 types of signal capture, Baseband & FM RF but there is different ways FM RF is captured between formats.
Video8/Hi8/LaserDisc & Betamax NTSC (If HiFi tapes) - Single Channel capture formats i.e 1 signal path 1 ADC required.
(S)VHS & Betamax PAL - Dual Channel capture formats i.e 2 signals paths hifi/video RF are separate 2 ADCs are required.
Note
- If your tapes only have Linear then you will need to conventionally capture the audio regardless, this is why reference conventional captures are recommended during your RF capture to save on tape re-runs and give you a reference to correct for audio drift.
- This issue of drift and post sync is becoming a non-issue thanks to synchronised setups i.e Clockgen Mod or the MISRC.
SMPTE-C, SMPTE-B, EIAJ alongside Beta/VHS first gen decks are Linear Audio only. (Low end 80s for VHS etc)
For Linear Capture with video RF capture we now recommend CX Card Clockgen Mod which has 2 audio channel inputs using a standard 96khz ADC, allowing truly hardware synchronised Linear/HiFi/Video signals off the same clock source.
If you're not using that then a modern reference capture workflow from an SDI or GV-USB2 chain is acceptable, linear does not have a higher dynamic range then any 16/24-bit audio ADC chip can do today.
You can also use line inputs or desktop interfaces, this capture method tops out practically speaking at current 32-bit float recorders and desktop interfaces i.g Zoom or SoundDevices units.
48khz 24-bit is the practical minimum for sampling for 90% of linear tape formats, ensuring solder joints on the decks and using properly made cables, alongside keeping your linear heads as clean as possible, is all you can do to affect quality of a linear baseband capture.
(Fun fact Linear magnetic is also common on Super8/Standard8 film formats, ware as 16/35mm has had digital optical since the 1980s)
HiFi FM audio capture is just as easy as video it's just another tap point, thanks to the low cost RTL-SDR units HiFi tracking adjustment and real-time decoding, alongside capture is very easy to get into, where as full HiFi-Decode offers a greater level of processing as along as the HiFi signal was tracked properly.
However, some decks are better than others, though this is a limit of current software processing not all VCRs have HiFi test points ones with last gen ICs for example, and the AG7000/5000 line of VCRs have a filter on the left channel so requires a direct head amplifier tap.
1990s prosumer decks from Sony/Panasonic are the most ideal for HiFi tapping.
You will need 2 RF ADC channels + 2 Audio ADC channels for VHS/Betamax, depending on how the tapes were recorded.
You have 6 setup options, DdD + RTLSDR, CX Card + RTLSDR, CX Card + CX Card, 2x CX Card + Clockgen Mod, MIRSC v1.5 & MISRC v2.5 (or newer) with intergrated Audio
We now recommend for people starting or just want to have a production ready workflow at a low cost CX Card based Clockgen Mod as it makes post syncing much easier, but an RTLSDR is a very useful tool for testing & adjusting HiFi tracking so its worth getting if possible.
i.g Panasonic AG-1980P (NTSC) or NV-HS950B (PAL) with its built-in TBC/DNR for example.
A: Yes.
Decode can do everything broadcast and consumer TBCs like a FA-310P or TBC-3000, far surpassing internal deck TBC cards, as with software decoding we can do to frame or even RF sample-level of processing control as it's entirely processed after the fact every single frame could be decoded differently if absolutely needed, a near endless level of post-production control potential.
This is stacking up the 3 core benefits, Y/C "S-Video" separated files, 3D/Transform Comb-Filters, Image re-framing and VBI export.
The best example of this is the --recheck_phase & --chroma_trap commands that correct video colour phase on every single frame and filters the colour signal out of the luminance one producing a cleaner picture.
| NV-HS950B Internal TBC - Conventional | NV-HS950B Decoded RF from ENV Point - VHS-Decode |
|---|---|
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2021 VHS PAL Example
- S-Video to Blackmagic Analogue to SDI (ADV7842 Based Unit) V210 10-bit (720x576)
- VHS-Decode --> Chroma-Decoder using Transform 2D --> FFV1 10-bit (928x576)
As it's not baked-in like a video file you're not stuck with a fixed quality level or fixed processing just the potential of the media format itself, saving valuable head & tape life and your time.
You can re-decode until perfectly adjusted and encode the decoded output to adjusted video files without even touching a video editor if you so wished.
This could be several things:
- Loss of Tracking
Solution: Visually adjust tracking and re-capture.
- Weak RF Signal Output
Solution: Try increasing the gain or add a 10-100uf 16v electrolytic or polymer capacitor to the RF test point before cabling, positive leg on test point negative on cable and or an amplifier.
- Hard Dropouts (large white lines across the whole frame)
Solution: Tapes can have a magnetic loss, shedding or clogged heads if the latter then cleaning is all you can do alongside stitching captures and or stacking them after the fact.
- White lines at the exact position every few seconds on a known good tape?
Solution: VCR solder joints can weaken over time this is called a "dry joint" check your head-amp/head-drum and put some flux on the solder joints and reflow them for 2-3 seconds with a conical tip on a soldering iron at 340°C then clean them with rubbing alcohol.
A: It's pulling too much signal, either add a capacitor 10uf to 100uf 16v in-line with your RF tap point is common practice or just disconnect all but the RF capture hardware.
Under the "VBI Data Extraction & Decoding" tab there is several pages dedicated to this including a Visual VBI Guide showing all the types.
A: If the signal portion is intact, almost any data in the vertical blanking area (VBI) can be inspected via ld-analyse and extracted with ld-process-vbi after decoding like this VITC Timecode shown above.
You can also manually use the full signal 1135x625 PAL & 910x525 NTSC .tbc (not the _chroma.tbc) with FFmpeg as its just standard GREY16 raw video data.
A: CPU & Cache speed are the main bias in terms of frame processing speed.
HiFi-Decode alongside VBI processing and the chroma-decoder (TBC to YUV) can run in real-time but the time base correction part of the code is limited (bottlenecked) due to a lack of multi-threading which is being slowly worked on.
Currently, on X86 (Intel/AMD) 3-15fps is about as fast as current code allows, but we have hit 7-21fps on M1-M3 Apple Silicone and newer hardware in the next 3-4 years may well just be able to brute force past the real-time barrier if effective multi-threading or GPU acceleration is not implemented.
A single running instance of a decoder will only utilise 4-6 cores, even if you have a modern 16-64 core CPU you will not see any speed benefits.
However, this does not stop you from running multiple decodes at separate points on the RF capture, and then stitching the video files afterwards, if you have a Threadripper or Xeon server this option may interest you however we do not have official scripted tools to automate this yet, but are open to pull-requests!
A: As JVC prosumer to rackmount decks generally don't apply much amplification on their head amplifier stage, this results in a lower level of signal output compared to Panasonic/Samsung decks on their respective standard test points.
They may be fancy for standard playback but in reality, not the best option between inflated prices and the requirement to add amplifiers on each test point to achieve an optimal signal for capture.
Yes, today we have full capture, decoding & media export support for current versions of Linux/Windows/MacOS. (2025)
Windows Builds / MacOS Builds / Linux Builds
Capture on MacOS is the most limited cost-effective wise due to no support of the CX Card based Clockgen mod, but Windows and Linux have the DdD for single channel and the MISRC for multi-channel RF capture alongside the Clockgen Mod, but like the MISRC, various hsdaoh implementations are also cross platform viable.
A: Yes using an Analogue to Digital converter (DAC) just like audio files to headphones/speakers.
Using the FL2K VGA adaptors (10USD+-) and breakout cables we have achieved this for more information read TBC-Analogue page.
You can also create TBC files with the chroma-encoder from the ld-tools suite which will take raw RGB or YCbCr encoded video files and make a single Composite or S-Video separated file.
The HackDAC and produce a Composite + Sync signal at broadcast quality, using whatever HackTV supports, currently this will only work on FFV1 output files and outer video files currently, but direct .tbc support is possible.
While we do share the same concept and basic scope of abilities it ends past the RF Tap point.
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Quadriga: FM RF Taps --> Custom Amplifier Boards --> Proprietary RF Capture & FPGA Processing boards --> Digital Files.
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Decode: FM RF Taps --> Open-Source Amplifier Boards --> Open-Source RF Capture via any generic ADC/SDR system to Digital files --> Open-Source Software Video & Audio Processing --> Digital Files.
Thanks to the CX Card Clockgen Mod we now can say we surpass there "RF Direct Transfer" offerings as you can actually buy the hardware.
The suite of decoders is built and tested to run on standard computer hardware and is entirely open-source. It can be ported to anything new, ware as Quadriga uses an entirely closed-source code base physically running on a Xilinx FFPGA, it's a blackbox limited product solution that you can't as an end user update, maintain or replace easily. While it does have benefits like real-time RF processing, any real world debate or comparison to the decode projects is academic, if a consumer or commercial users can't get ahold of it easily and replicate it's a non-starter in the first place for archival use.
Welcome to the digital era.
The final and ongoing cost will be data storage, which is relative to the amount of media, so if you know how long your media runs for you can get a comprehensive cost calculation + 10-20% for overhead, with current standards expect around:
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RAW FM RF 625MB~2GB per minute of real-time capture space. (Dependent on capture device & sample rate used*) -
FLAC Compressed RF 150MB-600MB per minute of permanent space. (Based 16msps 6-bit to 40msps 12-bit range*)
Compressed raw data rates is dependent on if the tape is modulated composite like SMPTE Type-C, LaserDisc or colour-under like VHS, Umatic, Betamax formats, the more actual video signal information means more data to store and less compression effencency relative to initial capture rates.
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.mkvFFV1 10-bit video files are around 70-80mbps 700/800MB per minute. -
.mkvFFV1 8-bit video files are around 45-50mbps 450/500MB per minute.
The decoded TBC files can be deleted after decoding, but always note the command/version used to decode allowing you to 100% recreate those TBC files later if need be.
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.tbcPAL being2.1GB/min CVBS&4.2GB/min S-Video(126GB/hour & 252GB/hour) -
.tbcNTSC being1.7GB/min CVBS&3.4GB/min S-Video(102GB/hour & 204GB/hour)
The JSON file should always be preserved manually, but can be automatically embedded into video files when exported via tbc-video-export and don't forget to run ld-process-vbi and or vhs-teletext on your TBC files if there is any VBI data as unless you make an IMX style or full hight export that VBI space will be lost on the final video output.
If you have a lot of tapes over 100+ hours worth, an 2-4TB M.2 NVMe or SATA SSD drive is ideal for capture and compressing a working space and an 8-36TB HDD's for normal storage, but LTO and BluRay Optical is the only two real cold archival options.
WD/Seagate Shucked Drives are a cheep and good option, but used commercial drives that have not been abused are great deals to be had 2TB for working space is recommended, as this gives enough space to work on 2 full 90min tapes at the same time or capture and compress a single 6-hour tape and or decode it to the HDD if there is not enough SSD space.
Saving only the FM RF data is actually more practical than video considering the decoders and their dependencies are all under 1GB of data in the future the codebase can be expanded on or edited via humans or machine learning ("AI") programming tools in the future, but are also available in self-contained binary's today.
You are better off focusing on archiving the compressed FM RF captures to archival grade optical discs such as M-Disc or DataLifePlus Blu-ray media, these use the universal disc format (UDF) and have a real-world archive life of 100+ years in a 15-35°C environment due to being inorganic you can read more into it on the Media Archival Guide.
FLAC Compression alongside resampling has been employed for drastic space-saving.
54msps 8-bit Compared to resampled 16msps 8-bit (NTSC VHS) for example has a negligible visible difference perceivable in motion, only distinguishable on a modern display imperceptibly level of difference on a CRT display for example.
Important: This is for VHS, 16msps won't be enough bandwidth for higher bandwidth formats, with 20msps 8-bit being the safe capture rate for standard VHS.
Note
RF Capture is always variable data rate once compressed, only raw samples are near absolute in terms of file size due to fixed rate sampling.
16msps 8-bit with FLAC compression for VHS NTSC
| Runtime | File Size | Storage Medium Note |
|---|---|---|
| 45min | 15 GB | |
| 60min | 19.44GB | |
| 75min | 24.30GB | 25GB M-Disk/GlassMasterDisc |
| 90min | 29.16GB | S-VHS/VHS-C tape max |
| 120min | 38.88GB | |
| 150min | 48.6GB | 50GB M-Disk / 50GB GlassMasterDisc Max |
| 3-hour | 58.32GB | VHS SP Max |
| 240min | 77.76GB | |
| 5-hour | 97.2GB | 100GB M-Disk Max |
| 6-hour | 116.64GB | 128GB Sony Quad Layer BDXL Max / VHS LP Max |
A standard BD-R 25GB M-Disc/DataLifePlus for example costs around 3~5USD cost (25USD or less per 5 pack) 25-30USD for a 100GB single disc and 80-100USD for a 5 pack of 100GB discs, these pricing varies depending on region, Japan having the best deals still.
8TB 3.5inch drives costing only 90-130USD a unit for server-grade or NAS-grade drives. (SAS drives can be had even cheaper at the cost of SAS controllers prices are based off SATA drives)
BD/BDXL burners are only 45-80USD (all made after 2014 practically support M-Disk Blu-Ray)
Black Bias Macroblock Encoding, as you will notice darker colours will be more blocky and "crunched" by compression artefacts, this is due to lack of optimising the upload resoluton, codec and its bitrate, with HEVC/H.265 120mbps 8-bit 4:2:0 CBR being the safe rate with 2160p even if your soruce is SD/1080p it has to be upscaled for clean upload.
"SD Just looks bad" YouTube does not scale up media properly so when viewing SD media on a modern HD/UHD display your seeing a poor quality upscale rather than a clean one done beforehand or via a TVs internal scaler so the SD brackets YT technically still supports are useless to end viewers.
So the 4k (2160p) to 8k (4320p) brackets are the only practical ones to use for virtually all publishing on YouTube now. Or moving to plafroms like Odysee which will direct stream an 8-25mbps SD file that's uploaded in AVC/H.264 or HEVC/H.265, and will scale properly.
QTGMC de-interlacing, its the standard for 25/29.97i to 50/59.94p for most tapes this is the "gold standard" with a lossless compressed codec input and output such as FFV1 at 10-bit 4:2:2 for SD sources.
Config: SourceMatch=3, Lossless=2, Sharpness=0.3, TR2=2
IVTC "pull-down" deinterlacing is standard if 24p is the rate of the source media.
Upscaling to 2880x2160p via spline16 and using HEVC/H.265 120mbps 8-bit 4:2:0 CBR mode, using the above notes will provide the best results currently known for YouTube uploads to retain as close to source quality as possible.
A: There are many ways.
- Join the Discord & Reddit community and share your skills and time and new tapped decks!
- Uploading Data to The Internet Archive, the more demo media the better.
- Test ADCs and other hardware, the more capture solutions available and tested for FM RF archival the better!
- Donations - Money puts new hardware in the hands of developers helping test validate and expand this free and open-source family of projects capability.
If its code related, join the discord and or ask about what changes you wish to make or implement as not to re-invent the wheel with outer users current works otherwise make a PR or pull-request via the GitHub system.
If you would like to help, write a new or expand on existing wiki pages please reach out to harry@opcomedia.com or via discord therealharrypm, and your changes can be discussed and possibly integrated into the wiki and workflow options.
- FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
- Diagram Breakdowns
- Visual-Comparisons
- VCR Reports / RF Tap Examples
- Download & Contribute Data
- Speed Testing
- Capture Setup Guide
- MISRC
- CX Cards & CXADC
- CX Cards - Clockgen Mod
- DdD - Domesday Duplicator
- RTL-SDR
- Hardware Installation Guide
- Finding RF Tap Locations
- Amplifier Setup Guide
- The Tap List Example VCR's
- Visual VBI Data Guide
- Closed Captioning
- Teletext
- WSS Wide - Screen Signalling
- VITC Timecode
- VITS Signals
- XDS Data (PBS)
- Video ID IEC 61880
- Auto Audio Align
- Vapoursynth TBC Median Stacking Guide
- Ruxpin-Decode & TV Teddy Tapes
- Tony's GNU Radio For Dummies Guide
- Tony's GNU Radio Scripts
- DomesDay Duplicator Utilities
- ld-decode Utilities