VHS to DVD adapter

[John Connor]

Anyone know of a good video adapter so that I can convert VHS tapes to DVD? Any specific chip I should be looking at? Software? Thanks.

 

[Cerb]

Funai, Toshiba, and Sony should all make good ones. Chances are you'll get better quality from a dedicated appliance, than trying to record from a VCR with a PC card, unless you spend at least as much money, if not more - and then you can just rip the resulting disc.

 

[Elixer]

There should be a VHS to DVD service in your area, where you can send the tapes to transfer to DVD...that is usually the easiest way if you only have a couple.

If you have lots, then getting something along the lines of http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_usblive2.html should work, though the included software isn't the best. You will end up tweaking the settings depending on the content.

Heck, you might even be able to find a old TV tuner card that you can use for this as well. Leadtek had a line of tuner cards (Winfast I think it was) that could be used for this as well, those should be dirt cheap now, but, I think they all required PCI slots.

 

[John Connor]

Yes, I know about the services that do this, but I have at least 50 tapes that need transferring. I'm well aware of the VHS to DVD appliances, but they are pretty damn pricy. Since this is more or less a one time thing I can't see spending around $200 for one ATM.

What kind of software could I use to burn video to Blu-ray? I always used the EP setting on the tape so it's 6 hours of video. I imagine this resulting conversion will be at least 8 GB and I would have to use two DVDs. Blu-ray would be more ideal and they are the latest tech than DVD.

Would a 6 hour video be 8GB? I would use MP4 if that is an option.

My first tape to optical disk conversion would be the four VHS tapes I have of 9/11.

 

[Elixer]

I don't think you will be anywhere near 6GB per tape with MP4 encoding.
EP is lowest quality, 6 hours per tape, resolution is around 480p or so, so, with H.264 I bet you will end up with 500MB per hour or around there. (That isn't with up scaling or using any filters though).
Using H.264 won't work on all DVD players though, I think MPEG2 does, and that will get you to around 1GB per hour.

If you go convert raw first, then, that is going to seriously chew through space with file sizes above 30GB/hour.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS#Recording_capacity

So the capacity of a fixed length of video tape is finite. 240 minutes of 333x480i. Recording at LP/EP/SLP doesn't increase storage capacity because it trades off video quality (resolution and or compression). Sounds like you are using standard T-120 tapes.

DVD accommodates much higher resolution and depends on book 5/9 to garner 4.5/9GB. I would think it might be more worthy to record to hard drive first, determine the actual storage capacity and move on from there.

Blu-ray as a storage technology is widely available in single/dual layers for 25/50GB capacity, and I think it was Pioneer that just developed a 16 layer BD for 400GB of storage. But that seems nuts considering how cheap a spinner drive can be had and plugged in via USB for highly mobile access.

 

[ronbo613]

Don't worry about quality from an EP VHS tape because there isn't going to be any. If the tapes have been played a number of times, the quality will be even worse. Each time a tape is played, particles are rubbed off by the playback head and the quality of the recording gets worse(that's why they had head cleaners).

You need some kind of video capture device or TV tuner computer card. The consumer "video capture" cards were never very good. If you use a VCR and capture device, you should use a time base corrector as well as some sort of video signal processor or the captured video may be washed out and jittery. For compliant DVDs that play on standalone players as well as computers, you need to use MPEG2, which is way past it's prime. If I recall correctly, and I spent years trying to forget analog recording, you are looking at about 240 lines per inch video, which by modern standards, is really poor. No matter what you do to the video on the tapes, it's never going to be better than it is now.

You need to decide how valuable the content of those tapes are and how much you want to spend digitizing them. If I had to do what are considering, I would forget the DVDs, convert the tapes to MP4 and store them on a thumb drive and/or digital storage device including hard drives or SSDs. That way, you won't need to convert the DVDs again to something more relative down the road a few years.

If you have a computer with an AGP video motherboard, I think I have an ATI All In Wonder card with all the video capture accessories I'll sell you for $20, then you can relive the 1980's all over again.

 

[TeknoBug]

I still have one of those USB things with AV/compoenent/S-video connectors to USB laying around, used to record off camcorder but I haven't seen it for a while, I think it was made by Roxio so I think they're still floating around, cheaper than investing in a PC card. Otherwise you could go with one of those legacy Haupauge cards.

Linux has better support and software for this sort of thing compared to Windows.

 

[bruceb]

http://www.mycablemart.com/store/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=5646&gclid=CJvE5dnt98sCFcgjgQod8osGOQ

Or also here:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1123972&gclid=CNe0qOzt98sCFdgMgQod2bYP1Q&is=REG&ap=y&m=Y&c3api=1876%2C92051677562%2C&Q=&A=details

 

[WackyWRZ]

I'll 2nd or 3rd the USB devices. I have an EZCAP 116 that I used for this very purpose and it worked great (http://amzn.com/B003YGJLWU). Even includes the capture and encoding software.

 

[John Connor]

I'll 2nd or 3rd the USB devices. I have an EZCAP 116 that I used for this very purpose and it worked great (http://amzn.com/B003YGJLWU). Even includes the capture and encoding software.

That looks promising. Thanks!

 

[uberman]

Just a note: I bought the easy cap on Amazon when it was $8.00. I think I read in the comments that someone downloaded another maker's program for making the digital movies.

I got busy and never did my 4 or 5 conversions, now I misplaced the adaptor. I'll have to look around in my backups and find the software download I was going to use with it.

Other video programs are compatable with this adaptor; these adaptors used to be cheap, 6 to 8 dollars.

 

[n0x1ous]

Ive had good results with this

http://smile.amazon.com/Easy-VHS-DVD-3-Plus/dp/B006GOFW3E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460569383&sr=8-1&keywords=roxio+easy+vhs+to+dvd