VHS to Digital

done4now

Not sure if this is the right place to post or not but my parents have loads of old VHS tapes and I want to convert them to digita before they get unplayable. I got EasyCap but its not great so I want something that will do a good job of it.

I am looking for some type of Digital Recorder and something simple so that my dad can do most of the work.

I was looking at the below but I want to see if there is anything else out here.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ellion-HMR-700A-Definition-Media-Recorder/dp/B000TF6BZ4

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Measy-E8DVR-DVB-T-TV-HD-Recorder-H-264-MKV-HDMI-Network-Media-Player-1080p-/310494322607?pt=UK_Sound_Vision_Hard_Drive_HDD_Recorders&hash=item484ae75faf&_uhb=1

watty

I used to the AV bridge function on an old Digital Tape Camcorder. I never ever found a decent capture card/box for PC. That gives Firewire and then the digital file is converted to DVD format. No tape is needed.

The only other thing of any use was a cheap Plustron/Dunnes Analogue Tuner DVD player/burner. €99. Maybe get a S/H one? Makes a DVD directly. You use SCART in.

The Cush

done4now wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place to post or not but my parents have loads of old VHS tapes and I want to convert them to digita before they get unplayable. I got EasyCap but its not great so I want something that will do a good job of it.

I am looking for some type of Digital Recorder and something simple so that my dad can do most of the work.

You may be able to pick up a s/h VCR/DVD recorder that'll dub from tape to DVD disc, very easy to use. I use a Sony VX450.

Johnboy1951

You could try something like this

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/5845787/art/noname/recorder-easy-usb-video-g.html

watty

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

You could try something like this

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/5845787/art/noname/recorder-easy-usb-video-g.html

Total waste of money, only good for 1/4 VGA resolution. VHS is a bit better than 1/2 VGA.

Johnboy1951

watty wrote: »

Total waste of money, only good for 1/4 VGA resolution. VHS is a bit better than 1/2 VGA.

I did not notice that on the page

watty

Because it doesn't say it on the page

Johnboy1951

watty wrote: »

Because it doesn't say it on the page

Phew! Thought my old eyes had let me down!

Can you provide any further info or link to info/specs about those devices?

I believe there is one (similar to link) in this household, but I have never used it.

I would like to know what I should expect if I find a working VHS player to test with

wil

There are a few considerations - what type of stuff are you digitizing, for what purpose and what value because if you have loads of videos it can become a real pita.
Biggest problems are more likely to be down to the degradation of tapes and build up of crud on tape heads, bad tracking and over sensitive Macrovision built in to many recorders rather than the capture resolution.

If it is invaluable family memorabilia then it might be worth taking time and care over.
If old TV shows then you might find someone has already put them up on utube or elsewhere and saved you the bother. Unless they are rarities I wouldnt waste much time or effort.
Original movies will tend to trip antipiracy macrovision. Likewise blips on degraded tape will do same and waste a lot of time on unattended conversion.
Some of the recorders tend to produce overly large mpeg2 files which rapidly fill the HDD.
If you are not too bothered with editing then straight to DVD with a DVD recorder is probably the most straighforward. Use decent blanks and watch out for screwed up disks that wont finalise especially if overfilled.

Most of those usb devices are fairly useless though I have a Hauppauge one that is pretty good but gets hot. Some of the old ATI All in wonders PC cards are not bad, especially handy for editable mpeg2 or even mpeg1 for really easy editing.

I feel less bothered to convert VHS TV as almost all movies and TV series are easy to get on DVd and relatively cheap.

done4now

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

You could try something like this

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/5845787/art/noname/recorder-easy-usb-video-g.html

I got one of them before and it didnt do a good job so I am looking for something better and I am willing to spend a bit more.

wil wrote: »

There are a few considerations - what type of stuff are you digitizing, for what purpose and what value because if you have loads of videos it can become a real pita.
Biggest problems are more likely to be down to the degradation of tapes and build up of crud on tape heads, bad tracking and over sensitive Macrovision built in to many recorders rather than the capture resolution.

If it is invaluable family memorabilia then it might be worth taking time and care over.
If old TV shows then you might find someone has already put them up on utube or elsewhere and saved you the bother. Unless they are rarities I wouldnt waste much time or effort.
Original movies will tend to trip antipiracy macrovision. Likewise blips on degraded tape will do same and waste a lot of time on unattended conversion.
Some of the recorders tend to produce overly large mpeg2 files which rapidly fill the HDD.
If you are not too bothered with editing then straight to DVD with a DVD recorder is probably the most straighforward. Use decent blanks and watch out for screwed up disks that wont finalise especially if overfilled.

Most of those usb devices are fairly useless though I have a Hauppauge one that is pretty good but gets hot. Some of the old ATI All in wonders PC cards are not bad, especially handy for editable mpeg2 or even mpeg1 for really easy editing.

I feel less bothered to convert VHS TV as almost all movies and TV series are easy to get on DVd and relatively cheap.

They are family tapes so I want to do a good job on them before they lose any more quality. I have seen VHS to DVD recorders before but they cost almost £300 and after the tapes have all been converted there would be not use for the device. I liked the idea of a media player as I could edit the videos then put them on DVD or online and after the migration I could still use the device for other things.

Is there anything you would recommend that would be easy to use (so my dad would be able to do it)?

ardmacha

I've copied VHS to DVD just by connecting the VHS to DVD recorder with SCART cable. Not as easy as an integrated machine, but once you did a couple it would be more of the same.

Johnboy1951

watty wrote: »

Total waste of money, only good for 1/4 VGA resolution. VHS is a bit better than 1/2 VGA.

I dug out the dongle I referred to earlier and connected it to this PC.
It is a Silvercrest VG2000 .... so definitely bottom end of the cost spectrum

Not having a VCR, I used a DVD player and connected it to the VideoGrabber.

I watched a full DVD of X-Men through the device, and made several sample recordings - without any recoding.

The results were very good, IMO.

This is the first time I have used it to my knowledge.
It also has an S-Video connection which I did not get working - not that I tried very hard

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : YUV
Codec ID                                 : YUY2
Codec ID/Info                            : YUV 4:2:2 as for UYVY but with different component ordering within the u_int32 macropixel
Duration                                 : 38s 820ms
Bit rate                                 : 166 Mbps
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels                                                                                              
Display aspect ratio                     : 5:4                                                                                                     
Frame rate                               : 24.987 fps                                                                                              
Standard                                 : PAL                                                                                                     
Color space                              : YUV                                                                                                     
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2                                                                                                   
Compression mode                         : Lossless                                                                                                
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 16.000

This exercise has encouraged me to get hold of a VCR so that I can digitise old family tapes which have been left stored, in the hopes that I can make them watchable for future generations.

As you mentioned this device appears to produce very extremely large sized recorded files and would fill up a HDD very quickly if not re-encoded.

Nevertheless, with a good source I saw nothing wrong with the picture produced on the PC from the VG.
If something was to be wrong I would have expected it to show up during the film, or on some of the samples I recorded.

I am quite impressed with the results from a €20 piece of kit!

lawhec

I recently got the lend of a VCR to help transfer some videos to a DVD/HD recorder- I have one of those EasyCap USB dongles and they're OK but not great. I wouldn't recommend them for VHS to digital transfer.

The video I had of TV3's analogue switch off from Carin Hill was originally recorded on a VHS tape before being transferred to a recordable DVD before being ripped and uploaded.

I'd echo the advice others have given here, get your hands on a DVD recorder if you can and hook it up to the VCR with a good SCART lead. If you're recording on to DVD without any further editing, I find that the LP mode on most DVD recorders is fine for digitising VHS material, LP mode usually giving approx 3 hours of recording space on a single layer recordable DVD with a picture resolution of 352x576 and a video bitrate of approx 3Mb/s without any noticeable artefacts for most scenes does the trick if the picture quality on the VHS tape is good. However if you're looking to encode the video in a range of formats e.g. DVD, DivX, M4V and so on which can require transcoding, then if the clip is an hour or less record with the highest (HQ) quality possible.

Johnboy1951

Well I don't know how the VideoGrabber will behave with an input from a VCR, but my tests today taking an input from a DVD Player have shown it to reproduce the signal without any distortions or artefacts.
I now have it working from the S-Video output of the DVD Player and the recorded video is as good as I could expect.

So, all I can say is that with a good input, it behaves well.

watty

You need a very high spec PC and a lot of Storage though.

Seamu$

Some very interesting info on this thread e.g. that Easycap is 1/4 VGA Resolution, hadn't realised that. I have a lot of Mini DV camcorder tapes that I need to digitise, I was going to put them into avi or mpeg-4 format and store on hard drive rather than burn lots of DVDs. My camcorder has iLink Firewire out and AV/Svideo out. My current laptops don't recognise the camcorder though via firewire. I also had difficulty with the drivers for the Easycap device.

What is the best way to preserve the quality when digitising - would a device such as this be a good, cheap option? http://www.ebay.ie/itm/LAPTOP-2-Port-iLink-Firewire-IEEE1394-PCMCIA-Adapter-/390489548070?pt=UK_Computing_Laptop_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item5aeafda526#ht_2945wt_1187

Thanks.

peneau

done4now wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place to post or not but my parents have loads of old VHS tapes and I want to convert them to digita before they get unplayable. I got EasyCap but its not great so I want something that will do a good job of it.

I am looking for some type of Digital Recorder and something simple so that my dad can do most of the work.

I was looking at the below but I want to see if there is anything else out here.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ellion-HMR-700A-Definition-Media-Recorder/dp/B000TF6BZ4

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Measy-E8DVR-DVB-T-TV-HD-Recorder-H-264-MKV-HDMI-Network-Media-Player-1080p-/310494322607?pt=UK_Sound_Vision_Hard_Drive_HDD_Recorders&hash=item484ae75faf&_uhb=1

Might be options for you.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-DVR20-Digital-Recorder-Freeview/dp/B003LO2RIU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352206214&sr=8-2&tag=7800651723-21


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-RDXV60-DVD-HDD-Recorder/dp/B003LO2RKI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352206214&sr=8-1&tag=7800651723-21

Amalgam

If you want to capture to DV format and store on a (large) Hard Drive for future editing and compiling, think about the Canopus ADVC range of 'Advanced DV Converters', if you have a keen eye, you can pick one up from their range, quite cheaply on eBay.

Canopus ADVC-55
Canopus ADVC-100
Canopus ADVC-110
Canopus ADVC-200
Canopus ADVC-300

Just another option.

watty

I'd guess that's similar to using a Digital camcorder that has Analogue in and Firewire port. Not all Digital Tape Camcorders can do it though (Act as DV / Firewire bridge).

Amalgam

watty wrote: »

I'd guess that's similar to using a Digital camcorder that has Analogue in and Firewire port. Not all Digital Tape Camcorders can do it though (Act as DV / Firewire bridge).

Watty, it is, but you have a myriad of physical slider switches to control the output on some of the models, as well as, on the fly, through the driver panel.

I use a Canopus ADVC-300 myself, that also has Time Base Correction built in.

The ADVC-55\ADVC-100\ADVC-110 turn up a lot on various auction sites.. and you can find a quirky auction where sometimes there's a bargain to be had.

Johnboy1951

watty wrote: »

Total waste of money, only good for 1/4 VGA resolution. VHS is a bit better than 1/2 VGA.

I was reminded of this when reading above posts .... and must admit I do not understand what is being said here.

"only good for 1/4 VGA resolution" ..... can you please expand on what you mean?

VGA is 640x480 IIRC
I had success recording at 720x576 using the VG2000
I didn't have any higher res source to try.

So I am a bit lost & don't know what you mean.

Thanks.