[tracker1]

I don't know that there are any VHS devices that go straight to digital... Mostly it does come down to capture cards... if you can, use an SVHS Stereo of higher quality for the player, and svhs input... you'll get slightly higher quality.

Though it's been well over a decade since I've touched/used anything like this. I do have a friend that does some conversions as a business... he uses pro grade svhs player and it's slightly better quality, but far from ideal.

Similar for old super-8 videos, mostly comes down to playing and recording via webcam in a controlled environment. If you go completely black, the recording washes out, so want some light in the playback/recording, and then runs through some filters.

[myself248]

For film transfer, you should at least be setting manual exposure control on the camera. But realistically, matching the film frame-advance rate precisely to the camera shutter rate will be all sorts of tricky, and you should either have proper synchronization, or do it a frame at a time and then capture the audio separately.

For any video format, you're spot-on -- using S-Video instead of composite does wonders for the quality, although if it was recorded from a composite source, you won't squeeze blood from a stone. There are plenty of capture cards with Y/C inputs, and modern PCs are fast enough to keep up with even the pathetically buffer-starved models.