VHS tapes converted to digital

[Vercii]

Okay lets get a few things out of the way.

1. I wasn't quite sure what to name this topic

2. I wasn't quite sure where to post this.

 

So my family has a lot of old VHS tapes that hold a lot of memories like weddings/funerals/get-togethers and whatnot and me and my uncle are planning on converting these tapes to be saved on a computer or a DVD for it to be permanently stored because VHS tapes can degrade in quality over time. With Christmas being around the corner I'd like to get these tapes converted ASAP so I could possibly show the family the old memories.

 

Now, if anyone knows anything about this process please let me know what equipment I will need to do purchase. Please be reasonable with the price, I was looking on Amazon for equipment that claims to do this and they're around $30-$100 USD.

 

Also, if anyone knows a service that does this and is a trusted one as well, please post the name and I will check them out.

 

Thank you guys.

[The_Denks]

I keep hearing these stupid ads for a thing called "Legacy Box'

 

https://legacybox.com/video-transfer-service/vhs-conversion/

[PlayStation 2]

Personally, it'd be best to look into a capture card and, if you don't have one, a VHS player, of course lol

It'd all depend on what way would be most convenient for you.

[Vercii]

4 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Personally, it'd be best to look into a capture card and, if you don't have one, a VHS player, of course lol

It'd all depend on what way would be most convenient for you.

Would this be a good product?

 

https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, Vercii said:

Would this be a good product?

 

https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8

Should be fine. Just make sure it properly supports whatever OS you're using.

[The_Denks]

1 minute ago, Vercii said:

Would this be a good product?

 

https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8

Yeah

[bgibbz]

You could just take it to a service. I had about 15 VHS tapes that i got converted at a local service, i dont remember the cost but it was very reasonable. This way you dont have to invest in the equipment to do it yourself.

[Vercii]

1 minute ago, bgibbz said:

You could just take it to a service. I had about 15 VHS tapes that i got converted at a local service, i dont remember the cost but it was very reasonable. This way you dont have to invest in the equipment to do it yourself.

That is true because we'd probably just use this equipment only a certain amount of times and then have it lying around. 

 

I'll talk to my uncle and we'll decide on what we'll do. Thank you all.

[Scruffy90]

I bought one of those older ion capture devices, plugged in a VHS and ripped it like that and just played around with OBS' settings until it looked nearly the same. Took a bit of time, but it worked out better than sending it out and cheaper too.

[mariushm]

It could be something as simple as a high quality SVHS player with quality outputs ( s-video out > composite > rf out )  and a quality analogue tv tuner / capture card.

 

I personally have a Leadtek 2000 XP Expert TV PCI tuner card, which is a card with one of the latest analogue tv tuner chips (Conexant CX23881) that were made, with higher end specifications than normal analogue tv tuners. It's still supported even on Windows 7 64 bits.  If your computer still has a PCI slot, and you find one of these on eBay, it's a great choice (but it must be the model with Conexant CX23881, there's other similarly named Leadtek tv tuner cards which use cheaper lower quality chipsets). Winfast DV2000 Expert seems to have the same chip

 

Virtualdub can be used to capture the video from the SVHS player. I start Virtualdub in capture mode, configure the resolution (usually record in 768x576, the maximum supported), and choose a lossless codec (MagicYUV or Huffyuv) for video and choose no compression for  audio (because it doesn't take much space and i would recompress the video later anyway), which means it would take up to 1-1.5 GB of disk space for 1 minute of video.

 

When I'm done recording, I can load the big file in Virtualdub again, choose to deinterlace the image if needed (the SVHS player may perform the deinterlace better in its hardware), crop black borders around the image and then choose better video and audio compressors (for example h264 using x264 for VFW video codec) and AAC or AC3 for audio. This will shrink the video down to more reasonable sizes (let's say 1-2 GB for one hour of video would be reasonable for VHS/SVHS tapes)