Originally Posted by phatrat1982
Don't listen to the naysayers if you really want to put you VHS videos onto Blu Ray it is a good idea. I do this as a business and people are always impressed by the results. First thing is it will NOT be "true hd" in any sense of the word. BUT it is possible to get a GOOD picture and the naysayers don't understand anything beyond what they read on wikipedia which is filled with garbage anyways.
There are myths out there the naysayers don't understand that you need to ignore.
Fact is YES VHS is an analog signal so in order to get the video onto a Blu Ray you will need a way to first turn that analog signal into a digital video. A VHS Camcorder with digital outputs is one way to do this but those were expensive when they were made and still so today plus hard to find.
You could use a video capture card or tv tuner card to play back the tape and record the video onto the PC as if watching TV and using a DVR like Tivo, that is the most common and cost effective method.
VHS, is NOT limited to just 320 x 240 resolution like people like to say, it has multiple resolutions based on the record speed and the type of player used and type of cassette used. the 320 x 240 res is the most common cited res for VHS but that is not the only res you can get out of VHS, truth is if you used SLP you are recording at nearly half that resolution.
Also VHS is analog so bitrates are a bit tricky, just because it is low res does not mean low quality nor does it mean low bitrate. IF the picture is clean on the tape you are going to copy to the computer you can get a clean digital picture on the PC. First you will need the right type of capture card, specifically one with S-Video inputs, Composite (Yellow) video and Coaxial (UHF/VHF) will give lower quality video.
Second you will need a VCR that also has S-Video out, a DVD/VCR combo is NOT going to work most of those the S-video is tied to the DVD side and refuse to send a VHS signal over that cable don't ask why it makes no sense but for some reason that is how the manufacturers did things.
You will also want a player with Digital Tracking, HQ, HiFi, and Super VHS if possible as well as S-Video out puts and any Digital NR and extra features you can get out of the thing, A top of the line $2,000 VCR from the late 90's is what you are looking for, you can get them for less than $30 on ebay even the top of the line professional grade stuff since VHS is outdated.
Now once you have the GOOD quality VCR and a GOOD quality capture card preferably with some quality editing software like Sony Vegas or some other high end software you can capture a decent quality video, assuming the tape is good quality to begin with.
Do not worry about matching resolution to resolution, in other words if your tape is theoretically 320 x 240 which you won't know for sure if it is or not anyways, you don't need to capture at that resolution to get a good video. Analog to Digital conversion is not a straight process like digital to digital is. The tape stores the data using frequencies of hi and low, instead of zero and one like the computer. Analog has a range of data where as digital is either on or off no in-between.
So if you have a GOOD quality tape (meaning there is no major wear the picture is still clear there is no fuzz or noise, there is no jittiniess, no squigly lines, none of that crap you are good to go)
When you go to capture the video use these settings as they will give better results than trying to 'upconvert' the video.
IF the picture looks clear and there are no major artifacts set the capture resolution to 640 x 480 which is SD (VHS uses overscan so even though the resolution is lower than SDTV they compensate for it and you get a full picture.)
Basically the computer is going to create duplicate pixels of every pixels that it reads from the source, no this will not increase picture detail but it will maintain the source quality if you use the right settings.
Bitrate, use a HIGH bitrate and create a LARGE OVERSIZED file. Trust me do THIS no matter what.
I would say use the HIGHEST bitrate your software will allow, don't go over 18mbps but get as close to that as you can, I mean it as CLOSE as you can.
Also do a 2-pass conversion to give the software more data to work with.
Capture the video using MPEG-2 using a custom profile setting the res to 640 x480 and the highest bitrate you can get. Do not worry about file sizes it will BE HUGE but that is NOT what you will have when you are finished.
As for audio, IF you VCR has Red/White audio out, USE them, get a capture card with red/white inputs or get one of those stereo Y cables from Radio shack that has red/white on one end and a standard stereo plug on the other end (the plug is the same size as your headphone jacks on your ipod or walkman etc and should plug right into your PC audio in)
Make sure the VCR has STEREO capabilities and preferable HiFi or even better Dolby Digital audio (this goes back to the player of course)
Next you want to set the audio to be 2 channel STEREO using a 320 kbps bitrate, 48 khz sample rate and MPEG audio (either MP3 or MPEG 2 your choice, MPEG 2 is better mp3 is more common) If you want you can do AC3 also but it won't make a difference because the source audio will not be super high quality anyways (audio on VHS is a hell of a lot better than picture quality though and most people tend to forget how rich in sound that can be)
Now once the video is captured (you will need to tell your software to split the output file into 4GB increments or smaller and make sure you have somewhere between 20 and 40 GB to devote to the project (NO you will NOT end up with that large file but CAPTURING you DO need a large high bitrate file.)
Then once the mpeg 2 is done recording open your favorite media player (windows media player, vlc, divx, nero showtime what ever0 and play back your video, IF it looks good enough to you then you are ready to render THAT into your Blu Ray file.
You will need software that can burn BRD and you will need all the appropriate codecs.
You are going to render SD quality video for the Blu Ray but you are going to keep the highest bitrate it will allow you to have. In digital bitrate is more important than resolution especially when going from an analog source to begin with. If you Blu Ray player has a 12mbps SD video to upconvert vs. a less than 1mbps SD video to upconvert the 12mbps video will look better even if the 1mbps video is higher resolution.
When you go from MPEG2 to Blu Ray try and use AVC, MPEG4 or one one of the more advanced Blu Ray codecs not the standard MPEG2 you rendered the video using. This will maintain your quality but create a much smaller file size. Also if you DID render using AC3 and you managed to get a high bitrate and the audio sounds pretty good on the computer when going from there to Blu you can use one of the more advanced audio codecs and it will maintain some of the quality you captured and still sound fantastic in your player.
Now remember this will yield SIMILAR picture quality to what was already on the VHS but will last forever, never degrade and will play back on your Blu Ray player (which could impress your friends in and of itself which is always a plus)
You do not need to render the video at the quoted 320 x 240 resolution because analog to digital is not a 1:1 math equation for one and another thing the computer is a hell of a lot smarter than the VCR is.
IF you want to clean up the video by applying some DNR or adjusting the EQ, levels, color depth, etc feel free to play around with those until you get the best looking video you can. Remember it won't give better detail or quality than the tape but it will look just as good 100 views from now where the tape will look worse in 5 views from now. However it is a complicated, demanding and time consuming process (which is the SAME process to go from VHS to DVD as it is VHS to Blu Ray so no matter what it will requrie the same ammount of worth, time, money, energy, etc. So it's really up to you to decide if the investment is worth the payoff. Remember those DVD's will last forever too and unless your capturing 4 plus hours of MPEG2 video you might not need the full capacity of a Blu Ray disc. Now I should mention that when you capture from the tape TO the MPEG2 you will still need to re-render the video using DVD quality standards (same res but bitrate will be capped at 8.5mbps) Your target would then be a DVD9 NOT a DVD5.
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Time to upgrade the Roku as well. And let me guess, they don't own a Blu-ray player. 
If so, perhaps buy them a Blu-ray player for Christmas or dare I say, an Ultra HD Blu-ray player. 
After all, you can't put a price on friendship. 
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