Question re: VHS to digital

[Joe Neglia]

I'm attempting to transfer a lot of old family tapes to something else. DVD is out since those combo machines seem to sell for stupid crazy amounts now, so I'm looking into the VHS-to-digital route. Has anyone used any of these systems and if so, have recommendations? Noting again, this is regarding personal tapes, not piracy.

[prettynami]

Some of the libraries in my area loan these out as part of the "library of extraordinary things" 'movement' (Is that what its called?). So you might call around and see if your public library (should you have them) has such a collection of strange checkout-able things. They are really popular here, so they must do a pretty good job. I've never used one myself so I have no idea what model they have, but a short inquiry to a public library probably wouldn't hurt too bad, specially if they have one and you get to use it for that sweet sweet price of free.

[Ultimo Gallos]

Most major cities have a place that will transfer from VHS to whatever. They charge by the hour and just transfer what is on the VHS, no editing.

If they are home recordings might be cheapest to get a stand alone set top DVD recorder and a spindle of blanks. Should be 70 to 100 tops for the recorder. Much cheaper than getting some company to do it.

If you have to go VHS to digital I guess ya could ad a TV tuner card to your desktop. Plug you VHS vcr into that and capture the signal with some software on your computer.

I got a set top DVD recorder. And it works great and is easy to use. One thing to look for is see how many hours it lets you put on a blank dvd. If what you are transferring is old home movies filmed with a VHS camcorder you should be able to put 3 hours on a dvd without any picture or audio quality loss.

[edgestar]

I have a vhs to dvd transfer. I don't remember it costing much, but, I did get it before digital got bigger. Sorry that it isn't much help.

[No Longer a Produceman]

Granted, this was a while ago, but Fry’s Electronics (or your local equivalent I would presume) sells VHS to digital devices. You plug your RCA cables into the device, hookup the device to your PC, and use the software with the device to do your transfer. That what I used to transfer old VHS movies to digital/DVD years ago

[chazraps]

Nov 30, 2018 19:28:32 GMT -5 Joe Neglia said:

I'm attempting to transfer a lot of old family tapes to something else. DVD is out since those combo machines seem to sell for stupid crazy amounts now, so I'm looking into the VHS-to-digital route. Has anyone used any of these systems and if so, have recommendations? Noting again, this is regarding personal tapes, not piracy.

This is the machine I have, and it's really durable so I think your best bet is getting one of the used ones for $200 (which is really not much more than what I paid for mine new)
www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B001T6K7G6/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

I just recommend using a separate VCR for rewinding tapes as the one on this one is really strong and my snap the end off of particular old VHS tapes.

[Chainsaw]

Honestly, you can look into a DVD recorder flat out instead of getting a DVD to VCR combo. Granted, DVD recorders aren't that cheap either due to it not reaching a popularity like VHS did, but it's usually cheaper than getting a combo, and it's not a hard process for set up. Run composite cables from a VHS with composite output into a DVD In, then run DVD out to a monitor that still has a Composite In (one of the benefits of keeping a tube TV around still.) I did it for years at my old place, have 100s of DVDs now. The important thing is to finalize them as soon as they're full, because if your recorder fails, you may be stuck with a bunch of DVDs you can't play, like I did.

[eDemento2099]

I bought a USB-based dongle that has an input jack for a male-to-male AV composite cable. The dongle also came with software (I think it was Ulead VideoStudio), enabling me to view and capture the VHS video and sound being sent across the AV composite cable from the VCR to the dongle. (The dongle, in turn, relayed those signals into my PC.)

It worked out fine. However, VHS sound is mono, so when I watched the VHS footage on my PC, all of the sound only came from one of my two speakers.

To improve the experience of watching captured video footage, I did a bit of editing.

First, I used Audacity to remaster the audio so that I could simulate stereo sound. (The sound that was coming from the left sound channel was copied, mapped to a right sound channel (that I had to manually create), and then saved as a stereo WAV file.

Secondly, I used Tmpgenc Xpress to combine the new WAV file with the MP4 media file that contained both the original video and audio. (The new WAV was substituted for the original audio.) I also used the same program to crop the edges of the video and to add video effects like fade-ins and fade-outs.

Keep in mind that VHS video is low-resolution and doesn't look good.