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 😊

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.

Very clever use case!

Arch Linux for Android phone case with the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the app in the […]

LibreOffice Draw?

Not really as those are public things.

Would you mind citing an example of exactly what you are referring to? I feel like I’m presuming a lot of things in your statements here.

Dhcp is more of a issue.

I don’t know if it’s “more”, or “less” of an issue, but all these things are worthy of concern.

Using the term as it is currently defined, not all markets need to be voluntary [1][2]

I’m talking about A being a subset of B, you are talking about B being a subset of A.

Ah, that’s my mistake, then. I didn’t initially read your comment as it stating that all voluntary interactions between people are themselves a market. I agree with that. However, I would still personally be more general in that all interactions between people form markets — they need not be voluntary. At the very least, I am not currently aware of an interaction that could not be thought of as a market.

Capitalism is defined to require that the markets be competitive [1], yes.

Same mistake.

Sure, but you’re still misquoting me. What I originally said was:

For a market to be capitalist it must be competitive

From this statement, I am stating that A implies B. You responded with:

you said only competitive markets form capitalism

Which is stating that B implies A. A competitive market need not be capitalist.

Voluntary exchange is a central characteristic of capitalism [1].

Looked to your reference and - same mistake.

This is part of the following quote which I read as being one thing:

you said only competitive markets form capitalism, thus voluntarism doesn’t necessarily mean capitalism.

I don’t really see how the latter half draws from the former half. Yes, capitalism is only formed by competitive markets, and yes voluntary interactions doesn’t necessitate capitalism, but I don’t see how the latter can be drawn from the former.

The way you are wording your replies is somewhat hard for me to follow, so, for me, they are likely susceptible to misinterpretation. I feel that I have to reply to them in fragments.

Not necessarily. For example, if the market were consumed by anti-competitive entities it is no longer competitive. An example of an anti-competitive entity could be a monopoly. Collusion is another example of a behavior which is not competitive.

It’s also no longer formed by voluntary interactions.

I disagree. You can choose to not do business with a monopoly. You can choose to not do business with entities that are colluding. Having choice implies voluntarism.

I would agree that basic principles of ancap do not mean capitalism as leftists describe it.

How are you defining “leftist” in this context?

One can say - people refusing to discuss the possibility of markets not intentionally rigged by some non-market force.

An interesting definition. At any rate, the original point is just a matter of the definition used for a word — “capitalism”. If they understand it as something different, then that is more an issue of poor communication.

Voluntarism and self-ownership.

I don’t understand why you are all of a sudden bringing up “self-ownership”, but yes if one fundamentally has self-ownership, then that implies that they can voluntarily take part in things. Do note that voluntarism isn’t all or none; you can have certain things that aren’t voluntary, eg taxes, and other things that are, purchasing goods and services. One could argue the degree to which one has self-ownership by how many non-voluntary things are required of them. Philosophically, one could perhaps always fundamentally have self-ownership — there may be social repercussions for an action, but there is no universal law preventing one from doing, or forcing one to do anything. It sort of depends on one’s frame of reference.

What’s the use of storing the timezone?

Imo, mostly QoL.

That would certainly also be worthy of concern.

have the machine pretend you’re in UTC.

That is a possible solution, though not exactly the most convenient, imo. That is, if I understand you correctly that you are talking about setting the OS timezone to be UTC.

could be defeated by doing an analysis of when the commits were made on average vs other folks from random repositories to find the average time of day and then reversing that information into a time zone

This is the first thing I thought of upon reading the title

It’s also in the post body.

Any given time zone there are going to be millions if not billions of people.

One more bit of identifying information is still one more bit of identifying information.

Git also “leaks” your system username and hostname IIRC by default which might be your real name.

This is only part of a fallback if a username and email is not provided [1].

A fake name and email would pretty much be sufficient to make any “leaked” time zone information irrelevant.

Perhaps only within the context where one is fine with being completely unidentifiable. But this doesn’t consider the circumstance where a user does want their username to be known, but simply don’t want it to be personally identifiable.

UTC seems like it’s just “HEY LOOK AT ME! I’M TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING!”

This is a fair argument. Ideally, imo, recording dates for commits would be an optional QoL setting rather than a mandatory one. Better yet, if Git simply recorded UTC by default, this would be much less of an issue overall.

if you sleep like most people, could be defeated by doing an analysis of when the commits were made on average vs other folks from random repositories to find the average time of day and then reversing that information into a time zone.

I mentioned this in my post.

It’s better to be “Jimmy Robinson in Houston Texas” than “John Smith in UTC-0”

That decision is contextually dependent.

How do you mean?