Advice on capturing VHS tapes to PC/DVD

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eracode

Smpl Mnmlst
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#96589 31-Jan-2012 17:24

We have some VHS home movies shot about 25 years ago which I am keen to transfer to my laptop and on to DVD. I'm assuming that the tapes are still OK - that remains to be seen. Also assuming our VCR is still OK too - it hasn't been used for five or six years but was quite a good one and not very old when we stopped using it.

I have a reasonably decent-spec laptop - Asus G73JH with a Core i7 Q720 1.60 GHz CPU and Windows 7 64. I don't know if the graphics card is actually relevant here but it's an ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870. The laptop really has only USB inputs, i.e. no video inputs.

There's a lot of stuff on all this on the internet but some of it is a bit confusing. I have been trying to find out whether my laptop would somehow capture the video natively but haven't been able to determine that. It seems to me that I need an RCA to USB video capture dongle/adapter, something like one of these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/EasyCAP-Video-Audio-Capture-Card/dp/B0011N9QNC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1327945644&sr=8-4

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=398015

I would be grateful for any advice or comments.

Thanks.

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Disrespective

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#575469 31-Jan-2012 17:45

Those adaptors look like the one I used a few years back although I don't think they are the same as the one I had wasn't as pretty as those ones heh.

You will also need some sort of capture software. From memory I used Pinnacle Studio (Or some variant of it) to capture the streams and then re-encode onto a DVD.

eracode

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#575473 31-Jan-2012 17:55

Disrespective: Those adaptors look like the one I used a few years back although I don't think they are the same as the one I had wasn't as pretty as those ones heh.

You will also need some sort of capture software. From memory I used Pinnacle Studio (Or some variant of it) to capture the streams and then re-encode onto a DVD.

Thanks. It seems that the necessary software comes with the adapter, on a DVD.

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xpd

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#575508 31-Jan-2012 18:55

Or find someone with a DVD/VCR combo and just do it that way...Ive done a couple like that and theyve come out fine.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Chainsaw

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#575718 1-Feb-2012 10:02

Clean the heads of the VCR first to ensure best quality, VHS is bad enough without anything else making it worse!

I think from memory there's a fair bit of free software out there if you want to do any basic editing of the stuff, and if you get fancy you can put chapters on your DVD so you can jump to the good bits.

allan

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#575796 1-Feb-2012 11:43

xpd: Or find someone with a DVD/VCR combo and just do it that way...Ive done a couple like that and theyve come out fine.

+1 for that. It actually works pretty well. Used a Panasonic VCR/DVD combo (don't recall model sorry) in the past and even got to create menu structure etc.

speedy23

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#576139 2-Feb-2012 01:14

I was in the same position so bought a RSA - USB 'dongle' with a windows disk of software. Problem is - I am running ubuntu and have not found a suitable software package. Any ideas would be most welcome otherwise it goes on Trademe.

stevenz

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#576376 2-Feb-2012 17:13

Disrespective: Those adaptors look like the one I used a few years back although I don't think they are the same as the one I had wasn't as pretty as those ones heh.

You will also need some sort of capture software. From memory I used Pinnacle Studio (Or some variant of it) to capture the streams and then re-encode onto a DVD.

I've done the same job using Ulead or Pinnacle, and the outcome was "ok", I then ran the resulting files through a conversion app to do a little bit of cropping and convert the humongous .MPEG files into a more managable size and then burnt it straight off to a playable DVD. It was fairly quick & easy.

I don't recall what the editing software was that I used to chop it up with but it may well just have been Windows Movie Maker which IIRC did an "ok" job.

@KnightNZ