VHS Decode on Mac

[Rydawg96]

I am trying to archive a bunch of old VHS tapes to my Mac and am struggling to find the best capture method to do that. I noticed there are many options, but one of the newest ones is VHS Decode, which is supposed to be the best quality possible as it captures the tape signals directly from the video head rather than a video output jack, thus avoiding the post-processing many VCRs use to ruin the picture for archiving. The problem is being so new, I don’t know where to begin getting it set up. What software do I need to install on my Mac to capture the VHS tapes? Which devices do I need to capture the RF signal from the VCR into my Mac? And how do I get my VCR modded to output the undecoded VHS tape signal?

If VHS Decode isn’t a suitable method for Mac, what are the best alternatives for video archival that won't break the bank? Should I go with a legacy Firewire DV capture box like an ADVC or some other DV capture box that has a TBC? Or should I invest in something like an uncompressed HDMI capture device with a scaler like a Retrotink 5x or 4K hooked up? What about capture using the S-Video input through my Sony Handycam for Firewire DV capture?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I would ask what the end goal of capturing the video is. VHS, especially original-not-S-VHS is pretty low quality, and largely relied on the softness of old CRT TVs to look "okay." If these are old home movies recorded on an old VHS camcorder in the mid '80s, no amount of special capture will help the low quality.

If they're recorded-off-the-air TV shows, then if they're things that exist digitally already but you're being cheap or just want the nostalgia of the source material (maybe you want the old local TV ads?) again, the recording itself isn't going to be high enough quality to go through VHS Decode.

If they are for example a late '90s student movie you made using high-quality analog video production equipment, and now you want a high quality digital copy to present as part of a sizzle reel of your work, that seems an appropriate use. Or if you have some very early VHS recordings of local live-aired shows that there are no higher quality copies of, again, that would make a VHS Decode method make sense.

But barring "extremely high quality source" (first-recording made from very high quality source footage in SP mode of impossible-to-otherwise-find material) I'd just go with S-Video through the Handicam.

That is exactly the method I use for digitizing old home movies and recorded-local-shows, and it is plenty good enough quality. You can always feed the digitized video through a software upscaler algorithm that doesn't try to do it in real time if you want to make it look better.

Also note - VHS stores video on tape in essentially the same format that comes out an S-Video port. If you are using a 100% analog VCR with an S-Video port, to a high-quality S-Video digitizer (my Handicam does a great job,) you're getting the same thing you would using VHS Decode hooked directly up to the read heads.

 

[joevt]

There's a GitHub repository and a wiki and a Discord and a Reddit. Maybe they have more info.
https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode
https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode/wiki/