Digitizing VHS tapes?

[Cutter John]

Could anyone suggest an affordible method of converting old VHS tapes to a digital format (AVI,MPG, MP4, etc)?

I have a bunch of old subtitled anime that's collectimg dust here, but just isn't available on commercial dvd. I've tried a $35 vcr-usb gadget, but the copy quality was unwatchable.

I've tried buying a dvd set off Evilbay and wound up getting screwed (They sent me the wrong disks, then when I sent them back for an exchange, 'Oh dear, they seem to have gotten lost in the mail').

So, I figure its time to ask the experts. (TrekBBS'ers know everything, right?)

 

[Trekker4747]

You need a way to hook your VCR up to your computer. Most video cards will allow you to do this for the video through an RCA/composite cable but the audio would be trickier unless your audio card has composite inputs.

You may need a TV capture card which will have all three RCA inputs -this will only cost about $50 and is simple to install yourself and will also come with the software you need to do the conversions.

 

[Mr. B]

You have several options depending on the equipment you own. The one time I did this, I hooked my VCR up to a DVD recorder and then ripped the DVD. If you have a MiniDV camcorder you could use it as a pass-through to your PC via Firewire.

Here's a couple tutorials that may provide some useful info...
http://vhs-to-dvd.janvesely.com/
http://dvdguide.ennik.com/

 

[Cutter John]

My equipment is pretty basic. Just a cheap vcr (doesn't even have S-Video) and a fairly speedy PC.

I was contemplating a tv-tuner card with recorder feature, but the salesperson suggested this little USB dongle I brought home. Basically a little module about the size of a lighter with video/audio connectors on one end, and a usb cable on the other, w/capture software. Video was passable, but the audio was just horribly distorted. Going to return it to the store today. I'll see what else is on the shelf.

I'm wondering if tracking down a vcr with S-Video would help?

 

[the Dagman]

I use a DV bridge to do this task myself. I have an eight year old Dazzle Hollywood one that uses FireWire, works nicely for me. I don't know what is available these days however.

 

[Pingfah]

I used to do it 8 or so years ago with a simple TV card, using the RF-out of the video and tuning the RF-in on the card to it.

The results weren't a great deal more utterly shit than the source was.

 

[Mr. B]

I'm wondering if tracking down a vcr with S-Video would help?

If your bridge device uses S-video it couldn't hurt. Simply using a "high end" VCR certainly couldn't hurt. Even with the best one you're going to have less than stellar output which will require deinterlacing and perhaps other filters. You want to make the best source material possible.

 

[RandyS]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but wouldn't simply copying the tape to a DVD-R do the job?

 

[Pingfah]

^ well yeah, but I believe the question is how. If he had a VHS to DVD standalone machine he probably wouldn't be asking

 

[Tiberius Jim]

^ You still need a device to carry out the analog-to-digital conversion. As has been mentioned before, the Dazzle line of products works well. The device has USB or Firewire on one end and RCA jacks on the other. Plug your VCR or camcorder into the RCA's, fire up the software the Dazzle comes with, cue up the VCR to where you want to record and press play. The cheaper ones record straight to DVD while the more advanced models record to video files, allowing you to edit and then record to a DVD if you choose to. This is the one I'd go with.

 

[Mr. B]

It would do half the job. You would have to rip the DVD to make an AVI out of it.

 

[RobertVA]

Be aware that prerecorded tapes of movies and TV series might "feature" Macrovision copy protection, an early version of rights management. The recording circuitry of VCRs is a little more particular than the circuitry that syncs a TV to the input signal. Thus a playback suitable for a TV will be unsuitable for copying on another VCR, with poor video quality on the copy as a result. DVD recording equipment is supposed to be designed with similar limitations.

Retail DVDs often feature Macrovision in addition to digital encryption of the files on the disk.

The term "composite" is realy only appropriate for the video portion of a recording or live program (as opposed to component, VGA, DVI or HDMI). Of those only HDMI would normally have any provision for audio. Alternatives for audio would include digital fiber optical and digital streaming through an Ethernet network.

 

[Amaris]

Could anyone suggest an affordible method of converting old VHS tapes to a digital format (AVI,MPG, MP4, etc)?

I have a bunch of old subtitled anime that's collectimg dust here, but just isn't available on commercial dvd. I've tried a $35 vcr-usb gadget, but the copy quality was unwatchable.

I've tried buying a dvd set off Evilbay and wound up getting screwed (They sent me the wrong disks, then when I sent them back for an exchange, 'Oh dear, they seem to have gotten lost in the mail').

So, I figure its time to ask the experts. (TrekBBS'ers know everything, right?)

I bought this about two years ago, and it does a stellar job:

http://www.ramelectronics.net/compu...ss-capture-box-usbav-192-ef/prodADS00002.html

I have converted all of our family videos to digital format, and it has saved me a ton of money in the process.

J.

 

[Cutter John]

Thanks for the input so far. You guys have at least pointed me in the right direction. The format isn't that big a deal to me, since I'll be watching them on my computer anyway. So either dvd or avi is fine. As they'll just end up burned to DVD-R's either way.

Fortunately these aren't commercial tapes, but fansubs copied off laserdisks back in the mid 90's when pirating anime didn't have quite the stigma attached ot it that it has today.

 

[RandyS]

It would do half the job. You would have to rip the DVD to make an AVI out of it.

When you say "Half the job", are you referring to video or audio? I've never done this outside of making DVD's on a recorder. Doing them on the computer is completely new to me.

DVD's that is. Burning audio CD's is remarkably easy.

 

[BigFoot]

I bought a TV tuner just for transferring VHS (and Hi8) tapes to DVDs. It worked out quite well.

 

[Jadzia]

I've tried using tv capture cards to do this with home movies on vhs, but it didn't work out for a variety of reasons.

Fristly, the videos are not perfect quality, and the capture card drops frames even now and then. This causes the audio to drift out of sync. Even with applications designed to account for that, it still happens. Trying to stretch the audio and resync it manually is just not practical.

Secondly, the frame rate isn't perfectly snapped to 50/60hz from vcr playback. It can average out at 48.7Hz or something like that, so the numbers here don't line up perfectly with digital frame rates. This causes it's own de-syncing errors.

I've never had much success converting imperfect quality vhs to avi. It's actually easier in the long run to record directly into a DVD recorder, and then rip the DVD. They seem more forgiving of imperfect quality.

 

[Mr Awe]

My equipment is pretty basic. Just a cheap vcr (doesn't even have S-Video) and a fairly speedy PC.

I was contemplating a tv-tuner card with recorder feature, but the salesperson suggested this little USB dongle I brought home. Basically a little module about the size of a lighter with video/audio connectors on one end, and a usb cable on the other, w/capture software. Video was passable, but the audio was just horribly distorted. Going to return it to the store today. I'll see what else is on the shelf.

I'm wondering if tracking down a vcr with S-Video would help?

There are other products along this line that work well so don't give up on the concept. I've got one at home but don't know the brand--bought it years ago. It's probably not available today anyway. Same idea as yours but it's more of a small box that hooks to the computer by firewire. It was about $50. And, it does a fantastic job. The quality is essentially as good as the original. It does well with less than perfect material. Won't look any better but not any worse either. No out of sync problems with good or bad material.

Point being, there are simple solutions available that will actually work. You don't really need a tuner card, unless you want one. You might have to try a few to see what works. S-Video helps with dot crawl but you still need the audio connections. Mine has both the S video and RCA inputs.

Another solution is if you have a digital camcorder, some of them offer pass through analog to digital conversion. I believe that's just for the video though and you need to hook up the audio. My camera does this but found it was easier to get the converter box so the audio/video are encoded together without sync problems.

Mr Awe

 

[RAMA]

Could anyone suggest an affordible method of converting old VHS tapes to a digital format (AVI,MPG, MP4, etc)?

I have a bunch of old subtitled anime that's collectimg dust here, but just isn't available on commercial dvd. I've tried a $35 vcr-usb gadget, but the copy quality was unwatchable.

I've tried buying a dvd set off Evilbay and wound up getting screwed (They sent me the wrong disks, then when I sent them back for an exchange, 'Oh dear, they seem to have gotten lost in the mail').

So, I figure its time to ask the experts. (TrekBBS'ers know everything, right?)

http://www.honestech.com/main/VideotoDVDPlus.asp

http://www.honestech.com/main/VHStoDVD30Deluxe.asp

VHS to DVD

I use Virtualdubmod to fix some ofthe video:

 

[RAMA]

http://everything2.com/title/fxVHS