Looking for Easy, Stable Setup for capturing analog footage to PC over USB

[Mr.McMister]

I'm setting up a "memory lab" for a local library. Basically it's a station where people can come in to convert old analog memories on slides, photos, documents, videos and convert them to digital formats for preservation and ease of sharing, I've got a good backlit scanner to handle photo's, slides and documents, but I need to find a good solution for converting analog video such as old vhs home movies. 

 

Since the primary users of this station will be the elderly, I need a solution that will be as dead simple to use as possible and stable enough to handle time base sync issues that are common on old home recorded cassettes. My budget for this is about $800 cdn. I've looked into VHS to DVD recorders, but they'e proving very hard to find these days for reasonable prices and probably won't be able to be replaced easily if something breaks. So now i'm looking into PC based capture solutions. There's a reasonably powerful machine set up to run the equipment, as it was specced out to handle video editing(i7 7700, 16GB DDR4, GTX 1060 6GB, 240GB SSD, 1TB HDD), so computing power for encoding shouldn't be an issue. The PC has an open PCIe X1 slot open, though a usb based solution would be preferred.

 

I've had experience with an elgato video capture myself, but when using that solution for recording some home videos from my parents it had some issues, so it would not be a good fit. The software was easy and the quality was decent, but it would crash any time it passed a blank section on the tape. My guess is probably time base sync issues.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions or insights to give?

[Thunderzzu]

Honestly, considering I had to do the same thing, i ended dropping the "to PC" part and used instead a digital VCR that could convert the casettes to a digital form and save it in the internal HDD which would then be transferred to the pc. I can't tell you the exact device or model as this is currently in a different country, but you get the point.

 

If you really wanted to do it your way, i first tried with a BlacMagic design intensity shuttle thunderbolt which alloved me to plug in RCA connectors but the footage had to be transcoded and captured in real time, which is not optimal as people won't sit behind the PC the whole day just to convert 1 casette

[Mr.McMister]

15 minutes ago, Thunderzzu said:

Honestly, considering I had to do the same thing, i ended dropping the "to PC" part and used instead a digital VCR that could convert the casettes to a digital form and save it in the internal HDD which would then be transferred to the pc. I can't tell you the exact device or model as this is currently in a different country, but you get the point.

 

If you really wanted to do it your way, i first tried with a BlacMagic design intensity shuttle thunderbolt which alloved me to plug in RCA connectors but the footage had to be transcoded and captured in real time, which is not optimal as people won't sit behind the PC the whole day just to convert 1 casette

I would prefer to use an all in one unit, whether it be VHS to DVD or VHS to HDD which is PC accessible. I just haven't found one that fits the budget and has good reviews regarding longevity. Nothing seems to be in production currently and it all seems to be new old stock with the prices jacked way up. If you could point me to the unit you used I'd love to go that direction.

 

The blackmagic intensity shuttle is certainly on my list if I can't find a better solution.

 

Thanks

[Thunderzzu]

1 minute ago, Mr.McMister said:

I would prefer to use an all in one unit, whether it be VHS to DVD or VHS to HDD which is PC accessible. I just haven't found one that fits the budget and has good reviews regarding longevity. Nothing seems to be in production currently and it all seems to be new old stock with the prices jacked way up. If you could point me to the unit you used I'd love to go that direction.

 

The blackmagic intensity shuttle is certainly on my list if I can't find a better solution.

 

Thanks

I'm sorry but i really have no clue regarding what device it was. I do remember it was a Sony VCR/DVD and HDD all-in-one which supported going all 3 ways with the content - from VCR to HDD or to DVD. But yes, almost no products are being manufactured atm because most people tend to use the 20€-ish dongles that support RCA inputs. The Blackmagic thingy worked fine but it ran on Thunderbolt 2 and i don't really know whether they released a more updated version with TB3 or something. So if you're going for it you'd need a TB2 expansion card

[Mr.McMister]

11 minutes ago, Thunderzzu said:

I'm sorry but i really have no clue regarding what device it was. I do remember it was a Sony VCR/DVD and HDD all-in-one which supported going all 3 ways with the content - from VCR to HDD or to DVD. But yes, almost no products are being manufactured atm because most people tend to use the 20€-ish dongles that support RCA inputs. The Blackmagic thingy worked fine but it ran on Thunderbolt 2 and i don't really know whether they released a more updated version with TB3 or something. So if you're going for it you'd need a TB2 expansion card

The intensity shuttle has a usb 3 version which I'll probably be going with at this point.

[Patrick3D]

I use a Pinnacle Dazzle brand video capture device that plugs in via USB to backup VHS movies. I haven't used it in a few years now but it's not exactly a one-button experience. You start recording, then play your source, stop recording when the source is over. You then need to clip the start and end of the video and possibly crop the video if the source had black bars or random crap in areas that would normally have been covered by the overscan of tube TVs. After all that you then will likely want to compress the video. The software the Dazzle comes with is supposed to automate most of that but I never found the automation useful.