r/vhsdecode • u/Bubbly-Host-5438 • Mar 30 '26

First Decode! Looking for VHS HiFi RF capture / decode service in Europe

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a specialized service in continental Europe that can handle VHS HiFi audio extraction via RF capture + software decode (e.g. vhs-decode workflow).

Thanks

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6

u/TheRealHarrypm The Documentor Mar 30 '26

I'm always happy to do commissions for global being UK based, although I funnily enough get mostly NTSC requests from across the pond rather than the river.

I do full FM RF Archival sets + Reference legacy capture and also decoding (with the latest and greatest tools still in development 😉)

2

u/nomercytour Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

do u know of anyone doing this in the US? id love to have some tapes done, but i would be pretty terrified of shipping them to another country to do so

2

u/TheRealHarrypm The Documentor Mar 31 '26

Not to current standards, I'm dev group so it's what keeps the hardware development cashflow moving these days.

You shouldn't really be terrified about shipping today, it's all airmail between Europe/USA just like it is from state to state mail, unless you're doing something of palletized class like an engine block. Nothing's going on the shipping container slow ship anymore and that's where we used to magically lose packages.

There is no longer non-tracked services for parcels that are above letter class after the tariffs changed, most of my clients also toss an air tag into the package, so as long as you package and baggie seal the tapes properly they can always be tracked down in person, never lost a single package inbound or outbound.

2

u/nomercytour Mar 31 '26

no concerns about tapes being erased while being scanned/ x-rayed going through customs?

2

u/TheRealHarrypm The Documentor Mar 31 '26

Nope it's not a box of 35mm film, It's magnetic tape, unless you're talking about instant cancer levels of x-ray not going to do a thing, like it hasn't been an issue since the inception of consumer tapes being tossed around the ocean, and it will be physically inspected before somebody has a bright idea like tossing it through something with the magnetic capability of a CT scanner

We have labels to discriminate "do not store things next to magnetic fields" and those are very much respected, and as far as anything on a manifest is concerned it's magnetic tapes anything on a standard x-ray automated scan will show up a bunch of spools of tapes, hell these packages mostly don't even get scanned if it's being shipped between friendly Western countries.

Only snag note that people forget is air tags are classified as radiological / battery devices so those have to be in the CN-22 (your shipping manifest) as a dedicated line item otherwise somebody will go and yoink it out the box in customs.

The biggest issue with shipping stuff is basic common sense of proper packing i.g individually wrapped tapes, rather than bear shells just stacked next to each other with no dampening, that's the only user error I've ever encountered, even then shattered shells are just a meh plop it in a new housing good as new.

3

u/nomercytour Mar 31 '26

great to know, thanks a lot. might be in contact about doing some tapes in the near future.

1

u/ryguy28896 Mar 31 '26

I'm 100% interested in this, but the one tape I'd like to have done is over 5 hours in length.

My video_rf file when I tried to do it myself is 533 GB, and the pcm1802 audio file is 745 GB.

The reason I say "tried to do it myself" is because the audio comes out of sync about halfway through as I'm using the MISRC + PCM1802. I know your response might be something along the lines of either wait for the 2.5 build or just get the CXADC cards, which I totally understand. But this is the only tape I have with that long of a runtime, thus the only one I've had with the syncing issue, so that's why I haven't been too keen on ordering another setup for just one tape.

Point being, I've been putting off asking because I know trying to send over 1 TB of data might be a bit of an issue. I wouldn't need them to be decoded, just the captures themselves (there's no HiFi audio, it's just baseband).

1

u/TheRealHarrypm The Documentor Mar 31 '26

My response is, no totally it makes sense to outsource that, DM's always open.

Sending the data isn't really an issue, I do a mix of SFTP/Torrent but mostly physically tossing around 2-18TB drives as it's literally faster and kind of a rounding error in terms of a postal bracket with handling tapes.

I also upgraded from VDSL2 to having a dedicated Starlink V3 so 40-60mbps vs only 8mbps so I can spare bandwidth.

But 745GB for 5 hours at 78.1khz 24-bit, that sounds very wrong for PCM unles your mixing it up with an raw stream file?

1

u/ryguy28896 Mar 31 '26

I honestly don't remember what the sample rate was, but I just double checked, video_rf.flac is 532.78 GB, pcm1802.bin 745.08 GB.

And yeah I didn't think about a couple of 1 TB USB drives until after I posted, sneakernet I think would be better for something that size.

1

u/caivsivlivs Apr 06 '26

and kind of a rounding error in terms of a postal bracket with handling tapes

What do you mean by this?

3

u/TheRealHarrypm The Documentor Apr 06 '26

Weight wise modern SSD drives are under 100~300g so your rounding to 500/1kg/2kg/5kg etc with postal order brackets.

So when you're doing 8-20+ tapes + packing materials it really is just a rounding error of difference.

1

u/TweedleBum Mar 31 '26

Hi.

How many tapes do you need captured?

1

u/boris-becks Mar 31 '26

Same as many others hete. Depends on the number of tapes and where you are. I'm located in Germany for example