It seems to be an EasyCAP clone, there are several devices in this form factor with different chipsets.

Good to know! That link has a lot of good information.

This capture device seems to be labeled as “BR116” based on photos in reviews, which can help identifying the chipset. BR116 is sold by Conrad and its manual by them mentions “STK1160” in a screenshot, so this Amazon one most likely also uses the STK1160 chip, which was one of the worst ones in this timebase stability test (which means it has no TBC). However, it’s alright if your VCR is a late model that already does TBC internally.

Noted! I will keep this in mind.

I came across this video about digitizing VHS tapes [1]. It talks about hardware to use, and hardware to avoid [1.6]. One of the examples that it gives for hardware to avoid seems to be a clone of the device that I was looking at on Amazon [1.2]. The rationale for why it should be avoided was that it doesn’t pass both fields of the interlaced video through independently [1.1]. Though, you have mentioned that it’s fine to capture the video interlaced, so perhaps this isn’t a big deal-breaker. The capture cards that the video recommends are:

• IO-Data GV-USB2 [1.3]
• StarTech.com SVID2USB232 [1.4]
• Dazzle DVC-100 v1.1 [1.5]

Get an actual composite capture card for the job.

Ha, honestly, I wish that I would’ve done this to begin with. It’s way cheaper, and simpler to get the one composite capture card rather than converting composite to HDMI, then capturing HDMI. I’m honestly not entirely sure why I did the latter — perhaps it’s because I was under some presumption that such a device wouldn’t exist (which, now, I realize is an obviously silly assumption to make). I found this one. It’s still just a generic capture card, but it’s a direct composite capture. Do you think that it would suffice?

Check that the output is indeed interlacd

Is it possible to see this in OBS? I see an option to select an interlacing technique if I right click the scene

Look at stats/logs to see of any frames are dropped and investigate if it’s just the 59.94 Hz compensation

Are you referring to “stats/logs” within OBS?

make sure to disable auto-gain or else quiet sections will get boosted like crazy, increasing the noise.

If you are referring to a toggle on the capture card or the converter, neither have a button for that, so I think my setup is fine in that regard?

This was very informative! Thank you for your comment!

you should check that the video output is actually at [59.94 Hz]

How does one measure the input frequency of the video feed? I’m not aware of OBS being able to monitor the frequency/refresh-rate of individual input devices, but I could certainly be wrong.

Don’t use the converter if it cannot output 480i or at the very least 480p! Scaling should happen during playback, the files should be original resolution.

I looked on Amazon again, and it seems that every converter being sold only outputs 720p, or 1080p — none of them simply repeat the input resolution, eg 480p or 480i. Would you have a converter in mind that would accomplish this?

I’d just clean the VCR after every tape if I suspect mold. You’d still need to clean the cleaning VCR after every tape to avoid cross-contamination

Do you have any resources that you would recommend for proper cleaning of a VCR?

And Arch Linux instead of openSUSE Tumbleweed and Fedora 😊

Ah, so it does [1]. Apologies! Perhaps another older Thinkpad has a 12" screen? From what I’ve heard, and from my experience with my own T460, they’re usually pretty solid laptops, so if you could find one with the specs that you are seeking, I would say that it’s worth considering.

ELI5 How come it seems now the old [wives’] tale of Vietnamese eating pets and now its immigrants into the USA?

That’s still a rather incomprehensible sentence.

ELI5 How come it seems now the old wise tale of Vietnamese eating pets and now its immigrants into the USA?

I don’t understand that sentence.

Older Thinkpad (eg T460)?

vhs-decode

This is a very cool project! Thank you for sharing it!

Why a separate VCR for cleaning tapes?

I was just thinking that the cleaning process might damage the VCR (as one is rummaging around in its internals [1]), so it’d be better to use a worse quality VCR for cleaning, and a good quality one for digitization.

you should definitely not use default deinterlacing techniques for the video

What “default deinterlacing techniques” are you referring to?

you should […] especially not [use deinterlacing techniques] built into these generic dongles

How do I find out that information for the 2 things that I purchased (mentioned in the post)? How would I even control that? Only the composite to HDMI converter has a single switch from 720p to 1080p. I don’t see anything else that would control what interlacing technique is used.

Capture [the video] interlaced, preferrably as losslessly as possible

What method do you recommend to accomplish this?

use deinterlacing software where you can fine-tune the settings if you need to.

Is this possible in OBS?

TBC can obviously be done in software if you have the raw composite or head signal but that is not possible with the capture cards you have.

If I did want to capture the raw signal, do you have any methods and/or tools that you would recommend to accomplish this?

Thank you! Solved!

Thank you for the information! Perhaps that’s what this setting is:

I will disable it and report back.

EDIT (2024-09-09T22:09Z): @ccf@lemmy.world, unfortunately, with that setting disabled, I still am experiencing the stuttering.

Dang, that’s pretty neat! Man, there’s probably going to be some funky bugs with legacy code getting included into Rust.

I thought Rust already had several different methods for interacting with C++?

Oh? Would you mind sharing them? It would be absolutely fantastic if such a thing existed and is mature enough to be practically used.

Personally, I have little interest in learning or dealing with C++ solely for the sake of developing KDE applications. I would much rather use Rust.

Imo, restricting the languages that can be used for app development cuts out large swaths of developers who would otherwise be eager to develop software for the project. I’m sure there are some who wouldn’t mind picking up C++ for this cause, but I’d wager that they are a minority. Gnome beats out KDE in that regard, imo, as GTK has bindings and documentation for many languages.

That’ll definitely come in handy. Thanks!

without having to reboot to run the installer?

I’m not sure that I understand what you mean. Are you saying that you want to be able to load the OS without having to reboot your computer? Or are you saying that you just don’t want to have to click the equivalent of “try the OS” when booting a live USB? If it’s the latter, you should be able to just select the flash drive as the install point (though, tbc, I have never tried this, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work) (I think you’d need 2 USBs, though — you’d need 1 to be the installer source, and one to be the install point — I don’t think theres any installer that can run as a desktop application. Though, if it’s Arch Linux, you might actually be able to call pacstrap from the host OS — I’ve never tried this after having already installed the OS). There’s even OS’s that are specifically designed to be ephemeral on hardware in this way — eg Tails OS.

Very clever use case!

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