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Firewire to S-VHS?

  • 08-06-2005 6:04pm
    #1
    lukin
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,113 ✭✭✭


    How can I transfer VHS tapes to a laptop through it's Firewire port?
    The VCR I am using has an S-Video out port but I don't have a camcorder.
    Can I connect it straight to the laptop using a cable of some sort? (one with S-Video out on one side and Firewire in on the other?)
    Do I have to have a camcorder to use the Firewire to transfer video, whether it is on VHS tape or from the camcorder itself?
    Thanks for any replies.


Comments

  • #2
    Michael Collins
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 1,852 Mod ✭✭✭✭Michael Collins


    No you can't just connect the cable straight from the VCR to the Laptop. One's digital and one's analogue, they just don't mix!

    What you need is either a camcorder that lets you input and record analogue video whereby you can then connect a Firewire cable from your camcorder to your laptop, or if you plan to do a lot of this kind of thing, something like this is very useful: http://www.simplydv.co.uk/advc100.html


  • #3
    Tenshot
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 648 ✭✭✭Tenshot


    Michael Collins wrote:
    What you need is either a camcorder that lets you input and record analogue video whereby you can then connect a Firewire cable from your camcorder to your laptop, or if you plan to do a lot of this kind of thing, something like this is very useful: http://www.simplydv.co.uk/advc100.html
    I picked up one of these a while ago - it works really, really well, both for capture and playback of analogue video sources.

    In particular, if you're capturing long sections of analogue VHS (e.g. a tape of more than 40-50 minutes), most camcorders will have significant audio drift by the end of the capture; the ADVC100 includes an audio synchronisation circuitry to take care of this.


  • #4
    lukin
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,113 ✭✭✭lukin


    Yeah, someone already suggested one of those analogue to digital video conversion boxes to me already, but too expensive I'm afraid.
    I am using a PCMCIA card that has an S-VHS input to capture VHS.
    The quality is probably not comparable to what it would be with firewire but it is good enough when I capture at a higher resolution.


  • #5
    Michael Collins
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 1,852 Mod ✭✭✭✭Michael Collins


    It was the same story with myself, I wanted to do the odd bit of analogue to digital conversion and I saw that device in action which actually works really well as Tenshot says, but it was just a bit too expensive for what I wanted. Although they do an educational discount at that site which is pretty reasonable, could be as high as 20% I think.

    In the end I went for something similar to yourself lurkin - A Hauppauge PVR 350. Excellent piece of hardware, but horribly outdated software. They could make it so more functional and more intuitive if they just improved that part of it.


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