Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I have a pile (50ish) of VHS family videos that date back up to 30 years which have survived with suprisingly good quality. I now want to transfer them to DVD.

Would I be better off hunting around for a VHS player with a built in DVD recorder or buying an adapter card for the pc? Any recommendations for either? I.e make/model. (I have a good working JVC VHS machine with SCART in/out.)

This is probably the only time I will use such a system so don't want to spend a fortune if I can help it.

Interestingly it was said by many in the trade that a VHS tape recording was only good for about 6 months. Have they been proved wrong....

Any advice?

Thanks - Dave

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Hi Dave. I bought a basic combi [one touch] job from Maplin to go with a portable TV [Freecycle]. The combis were £99 [no built in digi tuner]. Most people use the Computer but I struggle. Also, with a huge pile of tapes there is some advantage in having a dedicated unit not tying up anything else while you copy. It's probaly not the cheapest option if you already have a PC and something to play tapes on but it could be more domestically convenient to have your own "transfer suite":-). It's a bit a time consuming job, especially when those video "nuggets" are unearthed.
My earliest video is circa 82. I think the tape medium is proven to be [generally] pretty long lasting by now Digi mediums are a bit Abba [take a chance on me] but I think I'm getting converted. Essential given my embarrassing No of videos. A row of 100 Cd's/DVD's is still only about the lengh of one video tape [in paper sleeves]. Going backo the original question, if you've ony got 50 tapes I suspect that a bit of software is all you need. Over to the more enlightened experts.
Dave W

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I take it these combi machines only copy your home recorded tapes and some commercial ones which dont have macro???

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Well I've not had a problem with any sort of tapes but then I don't know what Macro is ;) ? If it's a commercial protection I don't want to defeat it anyway. I expected a lot of responses by now! Dave W

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I am just going through this very exercise. Having a stack of VHS tapes taking up valuable space is a luxury we can no longer afford (or so my wife tells me).

The best way would be to use an SVHS machine because it will output an s-video signal which would give you the best quality input for the DVD. However, I've just used my old Akai hi-fi VHS machine and used its composite video outputs. I've got a Panasonic HDD/DVD recorder and its been working just fine. I can record either direct to the DVD or the hard drive and edit as required before making the DVD.

You can get "video stabilisers" which will sharpen up a VHS image and add some degree of TBC but, to be honest, getting one of those just seems like a lot of faff :)

Paul

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I have used a combi VHS to DVD ----DVD to VHS bought from ASDA a few years back . DUAL is the name on it. I hve found it very good. Easy to use. Stck a blank DVD-R or DVD-RW in and a prerecorded VHS tape home video . Press COPY and away it goes. Obviously it works in reverse also.
It won't copy all commercial DVDs as some have copyright protection which is possibly another name for macro ?.

It may be a good idea to edit your VHS tapes first using two VHS recorders before transfering the finished edit to DVD.

I haven't tried to copy anything via the PC as it seems a long way to go and I have enough grief with computers as it is.:(.So I cannot comment on that way to go .

I wonder is it a good idea to copy videos of whatever format to DVD as this format also will be on the way out as the next format comes rushing in.. Just a thought.
Peter W .............Reelguy???

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I believe copy protection is built into the DVD specification as part of the data stream, something that wasn't included in the original CD specification hence it is easier to make a digital copy of a commercial CD than a commercial DVD.

Macrovision is inserted by the DVD player onto the analogue output to prevent copying by upsetting the video AGC of VCRs and DVD recorders.

I normally copy any VHS tapes using the PC as I can edit out any unwanted bits but this does take time and for a straight forward copy then a combi VHS to DVD unit is a good idea. Remember that the quality will only be as good as the original VHS tape.

I would hang onto the original tapes and keep them safe as you cannot guarantee that the DVD media will outlast the tape. Don't leave recorded DVDs out in the sun for long periods as this can destroy the recording. They could also be used to copy the video to the next format.

Keith

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Hi All
I have just converted all my Home videos with one of these. It worked very well and required very little effort
ION VCR2PC USB Video Converter
It plugs into the computer USB port and will make a DVD if needed - otherwise you can view it from your hard drive
Regards
Trev

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Where did you get it Trev and how much?

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Google "ION VCR2PC USB Video Converter" and you will see loads of suppliers and a range of prices.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Hi David, A word of caution, I too considered transferring my tapes to CD/DVD but was put off due to my experiences with optical media. I have had many fail with read errors after just a couple of years, even with well known respectable brands. I've done my best to keep them in the dark with as little fluctuations in temperature as possible. Still no joy.
There is much said about this on the web with no really conclusive results.
I now copy to hard disc (a lot smaller than 50 DVD's) where I have had much better long term stability. But it does create the added worry of putting all your eggs into one basket!!
Vic

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

As Vic says, hard disk is useful. optical discs are not 'proven' long-term, so keep those tapes!
I have a DVD-R--HDD and a separate VHS machine. Bung the video onto hard disk, edit it, and from there make as many copies onto DVD discs as you want at high speed. All done in front of the telly with not a PC in sight!

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Hi,

Would you get better quality transferring direct from the video tape to computer (then possibly to DVD), as opposed to video tape to TV to HDD to DVD?

I want to transfer all my tapes but only want to do it once and with the best possible quality.

Thanks.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Ordinarily a longer "chain" [say via a computer] would suggest a possibility of a weak link but in practise digitally, that may not be the case at all.
Paulo's, post 5* seems to sum it up [SVHS player technically better but not essential]. Subjectively I find that a Combi Transfer seems to enhance just in the copying process itself somehow [like scratchy vinyl to CD] but maybe that's my perception! The real difficult problem [as most people suggest] is whether you do a back-up [maybe keeping the tape] or take an unfortunate chance! The search for ultimate copy quality may like waiting for the definitive computer to appear, before you actually risk buying one. Dave W

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I def agree about keeping the tapes ,I recon they will outlast the discs . certainly some home recorded Cds i have had have stopped working properly ,and it may be like that with DVD. Video tapes I have had since the 80s are still working well

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Agree with the last post. Keep the original tapes, transfer them to a PC hard drive, back up to an external hard drive and create DVDs. Then you'll have a disc to play and be able to recreate the disc if/when it fails. At worst you'd have to recapture the tape but if the files on the PC are backed up then this unlikely (but not impossible).

Keep the original tapes in a safe place also keep the DVDs in a safe place and do not expose them to prolonged sunlight as this can make them unplayable.

Transferring them to the PC has the advantage that your videos can be edited. This is usually done by creating an edit file which tells the software which bits of the video file are to be used. The original video file is not changed in any way. Several different edited versions of one original video can be created, assuming you have the time and inclination.

Keith

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I know I'm a bit late on this but I'd just like to suggest that, if you record to DVD, you are careful about which brand of DVD blank you buy. Chipp1968's comments about poor lifetimes of CD-R's are echoed by many people but you don't have to put up with this problem. If you use good media they will last for many years with no degradation but good media is hard to find. As far as I know there is now only one manufacturer of decent CD media (Taiyo Yuden in Japan) and maybe only two decent DVD media manufacturers (Mitsubishi/Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden). I have 13 year old T-Y CD-R's which still show low error rates when tested with Plextools and my oldest Verbatim DVD's still seem good.

Cheers

James.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Thanks for all your responses on this.

As per Keith's post, I'm intending to transfer from video/DVD (and Sky+ hard drive) direct to my PC, rather than via the combi video/DVD recorder route (as I want to edit, rearrange, list the contents of all my videos when they are on the hard drive).

Does anybody have any tips on what software I should use?

I have something called Windows Movie Maker on my PC and Currys has some products by Pinnacle (such as Dazzle) which appear to provide the cables to link video and PC and also the software to edit.

Thanks.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Whilst some people find Pinnacle OK, personally I have found it unreliable and certainly not user friendly.

Try Video Studio (I think current version is 11.5). I bought version 10 and that's one of the applications I used in making a couple of the previous BVWS dvds. I've found it very intuitive and certainly way more stable than Pinnacle, my only real gripe is it doesn't handle NTSC->Pal reliably but I don't think you'll find that a problem.

Also recommend you visit doom9.org/; a few sections will be relevent to what you are doing but there are also a number useful FAQ's there ranging from beginners to uber-anoraks.

You'd be amazed at just what free software alternatives there are and just how much old video can be improved, but of course there is a learning curve to go with it. If you just want to get the job done ASAP then I'd recommend the Video Studio route, but if you have any interest in the undelying video processing then have a trawl around Doom 9.

I tend to stick to Verbatim and Imation discs and these seem to write reliably and last the distance, not to say that others aren't as good but these work for me. But whatever you do, once you've transferred them store the tapes away in a safe place.

TTFN,
Jon

I tend to stick to Verbatim and Imation discs and these seem to write reliably and last the distance.

Transferring VHS to DVD
 

Hello folks!

These posts are about 10 years old.:-/

I think it is time for a fresh-up!:beer:

DVD-RAM is known as a long time lasting media.
What about Blue Ray?

What is your experience?

Computers of today are much faster, new software is available.

What is your advice to store our videos?

It will be fine if the result of this discussion will be added to the sticky post!
Thanks in advance!

German Dalek :angry:

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Both DVD and Blu-Ray will inevitably become obsolete themselves, probably sooner rather than later. I'd suggest archiving material to a digital file, itself backed-up per usual good practice. Format is debatable - what do people think?
Edit: Most popular entertainment material is likely to be widely available online for the forseeable future; personally, I wouldn't bother making my own copies.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I agree, I have archived a lot of VHS & Beta tapes to HDD, this seems to be the most reliable method.

As used Sky boxes are available for next to nothing, I have bought several to harvest the 500GB HDD's, these make excellent storage/backup media to save archived material.
I connect them to my PC via a USB device, I always have two identical drives should one fail....
:beer:
Mark

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I had to do this for a funeral (old VHS home movie ) e-bay now sell a VHS to DVD converter for under £10 they work quite well


Dave

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

There are loads of software that can take old VHS and DVD recordings into them and edit and clean them up. You can even get some special effects with them. One of the best to use is by Magix, but Sony Vegas is popular too.
You do need a decent memory with your computer or when copying the tapes it will drop frames. Leaving a choppy playback.

As yet I have not come across any software that is affordable that can remove lines, tape damage on the video. Though I have seen the film and movie industry tech people clean frames up one at a time or use cloning techniques. So if it's not available now it must come in the future.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

No DVD is reliable, best bet store on at least 2 hard drives or if you wish the Cloud".

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Totally agree - make at least two independent backups, preferably on different media and hang on to original tapes - suitably stored of course

J

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Replicate your copies - across different physical media (so have a BluRay, a DVD and a HDD copy)

Also remember the necessity for physical storage-diversity: don't store the different media together! Otherwise you risk both copies being wiped-out if your basement floods/house catches fire/mice build their nests in your storage. [I know someone who put a plastic storage-bin of VHS tapes in the attic: over the winter snow blew under the eaves and it was some months before he discovered his tapes unhappily sitting in half an inch of mould-encrusted water]

Give one copy to a friend, take it to your holiday-cottage/office or something.

Personally, I like 'cloud' backup with several different providers: that way if one goes bust there's still a fallback option.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

The biggest problem for me is getting the recorded video's to play back right on a TV screen. Not the picture quality, but either the aspect ratio, or fitting on to the screen. You can get rid of the bad bits at the top and bottom of the VHS image. But once you have done that, played back on a TV it cuts bits of the picture off. And on a widescreen picture how do you get it to switch like on the broadcast TV?

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Hello, It's a while since I contributed my wisdom here... a supply shortage issue!

Having recently been asked to repair a VHS/DVD machine, I was stunned to see how much some of these conversion machines are worth on ebay. The Panasonic DMR-EZ49v DVD Recorder for instance. One went for over £200 last week.

The advantage of buying something like this is that it has all the plug formats like SVHS, Scart, and composite video input available on front and rear panels. For monitoring output from the disk, there's even HDMI.
The tape player is also PAL/NTSC (never twice the same colour).

Alas, in my case, it needs a new video head/drum assembly and even from Donberg this is an expensive proposition at about 70 euros delivered for an equivalent VEG1642 to replace the existing VEG1699 which has a clearly visible hole popped in one of the 4 ferrites.

While it may not qualify as vintage equipment, it does in a way serve the media from vintage era recordings, so yes, an update on the topic may help.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

The price of these conversion jobs is directly proportion to availablilty yonder, you are behind the curve on this8-\ I've hoarded Pansonic DVD recorders and some VHS machines. Even then the DVD Recorders have to be encouraged like steam engines! Things haven't really changed all that much for a decade. You take a chance on anything when archiving really, unless you have all the time in the world and a knowledge of RAID technology [I don't]. The cheapo recovered HD's method sounds good but I would just get lost in content. CD Recordable stand alone machines are even rarer these days, so I use DVDA [audio only DVD] mainly. It's got longer recording times for a start and most people still have a DVD machine. I'm hoping that DVD players are so cheap and available now they will outlast me. I'm transferring 8 cassette tapes of Cider With Rosie [50p Library sale] to DVDA currently [read by Laurie Lee himself]. It works out at nearly 8 hours, the maximum on a DVD-very convenient listening. Unlike Video, there is no discernible loss of audio quality at that setting. I suspect the cheapest way to to get a DVD dubbing set up these days is to plug a VHS machine into the auxillary input on one of those record to DVD Hi Fi units they sell in R Times and elsewhere but I've not tried it yet.

Dave

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I have well over 2000 video cassettes, mostly VHS but also some V2000. I did begin to xfer the recordings onto DVD but gave up because although DVDs have the advantage of taking up less space, I am far from convinced as to their reliability. Some of my cassettes were recorded as far back as 1980 and they still play back perfectly well. It just means that I shall have to always make sure that I retain a good VHS video recorder and a serviceable V2000 machine ad infinitum.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Same as myself (but Beta instead of V2000). My earliest VHS tape from 1980 plays perfectly. I wasted hours burning DVD's but some of those are now 'Disc Error' due to cheap production - and they were Sony branded too.

So now I just keep my tapes in a safe dry place and my machines in tip top order. Perhaps if some of the recordings were 'priceless' I would back up for sure, but they are just interesting documentaries and never repeated films etc. so no real concern.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I have used both a Panasonic VHS to DVD dubbing combo recorder DMR ES30V, a Philips version DVDR 630 and a Toshiba HDD combined DVD recorder RD-XS24SB. The Philips VHS DVD combo gave poor results because the Sanyo designed VHS player did not incorporate the correct video playback equalization. When used to playback tapes it gave too much edge enhancement especially noticed on faces. The Panasonic and Toshiba were excellent in every respect.

DVD recording quality and length or recording is dependant on the bit rate recorded. The greater the bit rate, more information which means better quality but less recording time. However, VHS video is limited to <3MHz. which in practise is LP or EP recording quality ie between 2.5Mbits/240 mins or 1.7 Mbits/ 360 mins recording on a 4.7 /GB disk. For off air recording then XP or 10Mbits gives 60 min recording with a flat 4MHz video frequency response, reducing to -3dB when SP or 5Mbits is selected.

I have DVD's, games, CD's and CDV discs which are very old and as with video tapes not subject to abuse, they are as good as new. Uploading to the cloud may be a good insurance policy as retrieving the images should be possible for the very long term if deemed important.

To be frank, we don't play the children's videos very often so the recordings get stuffed into the back of a cupboard until Grandparents visit and we can't think of anything to talk about whilst, my eyes roll when the holiday videos are shown by freinds.

Chris

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Combo units do a good job but if you happen to have a PC, a video capture device and no software, VLC (yes the free video "Player") can be used to stream from the device, in the process transcode to H264 at any quality you like and write to disk.

It also pays to use S-Video if your capture device supports it. S-Video (or Y-C) avoids cross-colour artifacts such as colour fringing around fine detail.

Because it's so flexible - it can scale as well as transcode - VLC is a bit fiddly to set up. You need to know what you are doing with all the options. But it's worth the effort, H264 takes far less disk space than MPEG2 for the same quality.

VLC can also be used to transcode existing video files and to copy ("rip") DVDs and even music CDs to disk directly, with or without transcoding. It also bypasses region coding....

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

There are several FREE video editing software available. You just have to check that you are not getting a trial version.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

The cheapest solution might be under £5 for 625 line capture: https://tinyurl.com/yd528etk

I have one of these for transferring VHS to my hard drive. It works well on 625 and is selectable to 525 as well although I've never tried that. I have no connection to the above supplier and simply quoted it as an example of the thing available from numerous sources.

Peter

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I used a Panasonic DVD recorder and finalised the disc. I also labeled each copy, so that when I put the DVD in I you know what each part is.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I have read these posts with interest, if your video and tape are in good condition I find there is no discernable loss when simple scart is used. My Sharp triple speed player hooked through to an LG Hard Disk\DVD recorder gives satisfactory results, Macro kicks in with bought tapes of course, but for home tapes not an issue. The video recorder has been regularly serviced, I'm sure this has helped.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I have Panasonic Combi Units or external VHS machines + recorder [N+South] Tony on the straight or scart lead system [all the transfer to Hard Drive stuff is a bit beyond me]. My tapes go back to 82! It may be psychological but I find even the roughest recordings can appear "enhanced" when transferred. My experience is that an occasional VHS tape may be protected but not many! The worst one was a Jane Fonda exercise tape [of all things] that someone wanted on DVD recently. I think Jane was really protecting her money in 1990:D. None of my usual "workarounds" removed the "cannot copy" message :wall:

Dave

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I did once manage to record some TV broadcasts off air when we were in France by setting up my camcorder on a tripod squarely in front of the tv in a darkened room and zooming to fill the screen. Initially a tear line was visible but by trial and error turning the camcorder on and off a few times, synchronism was obtained with no tearing line visible. The camera was a JVC VHS-C , GR M7 that I could manually set the shutter speed to 1/50 sec.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Hi everyone - first post here. I don't use a combo machine to transfer my old video tapes as it would only be good for VHS anyway. I can transfer from just about every format since the Sony CV2000 in 1965. I play everything through my HVR-M25AE DV player which acts as a conduit straight into the firewire card in my PC. I then capture in Adobe Premiere as AVI uncompressed files. It works a treat as I can just leave a tape running and then drag the file onto the time line and edit out what isn't needed. I can then export as an MP4 or another uncompressed AVI to a hard drive. If I want to watch on the TV I can burn to a DVD and see it in glorious interlaced video or watch an MP4 via a USB stick. Definitely best to save precious family stuff onto numerous hard drives though and not CD's as other people above have also pointed out :-)

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD
 

Thanks for the tip about DVD-RAM being a long lasting video. It would be interesting to know if Blu-ray is as well.

I transferred all my VHS tapes to DVD 16 years ago using a Liteon LVW-5006 recorder with Verbatim branded DVD+Rs, they are still playable today.

Although this range of recorders had burners with a very short life, certain models of standard PC burners, particularly, Sony and Liteon ones could be used. Otherwise, I have found them to be excellent and have stood the test of time. I now use a model LVW-5026 which is an HDD+DVD recorder, but note that it only has an analogue TV tuner built in.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Someone I know had some family video-camera footage transferred to DVDs and I was asked to copy them. The origanals were DVD-RWs but of course I used DVD-Rs for the duplicates.

I had difficulty in convincing him to treat the copies as the archivable ones, he found that contra-intuitive, not least because he had paid for the RWs to be made, I did my bit FOC.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I have started offering this as a commercial service (the events hire business isn't exactly rocking at the moment) and I really prefer to provide clients' transfers on USB as files.

I do burn DVDs on request, but I think providing files is the way to go now, they can be duplicated instantaneously, shared all over the planet in moments etc..

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Bumping this as am considering a USB device to record composite video sources to PC as digital files. Any recommendations?

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Only killing time but what i have done is take all my material and put it on a hd\dvd writer. They were very popular in the 90's. Copy all your videos to the hard drive then just extract (as and when) you want to dvd. Doing it this way means that even if the newly made dvd's should fail you have "back ups on the hard drive. Mine is the LG RD7500. In it's day it was an entry level machine available cheapy on various sites on the net.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

This subject is a bit of a minefield . I have a Toshiba RD 97DTKB Freeview DVD / HDD recorder and I think it is impossible to go from a DVD to the HDD as that would allow unlimited copying and I cannot find a way to do it in the 95 page handbook. Copying the other way works OK but I have found that the aspect ratio of the Panasonic TV it is connected to needs to be permanently set to 16 : 9 otherwise the DVD aspect is squashed horizontally. You cannot leave the TV on auto aspect as they seem to talk to each other over the HDMI link. I can couple a VHS or Beta player to the back and record from there to the HDD and then burn a DVD. I also use a Honestech vidbox to convert tapes to my PC via a USB port.

As has already been said DVD's deteriorate even though originally we were sold the idea that there is so much redundancy and error correction that they should still play forever. Ditto CD's but even the commercial recordings fail and the amount of error checking / correction has been reduced to increase capacity. The days of the Philips test of black line across a CD have long gone.

Going back to my Toshiba recorder. It has a 1TB HDD and can store a lot of films etc but the big problem according to the handbook is that the HDD is tied / coded to the recorder so I can not plug it into a PC. A similar problem occurs if you plug in an external HDD to the USB port so that method of long time storage is not particularly practical and if the Toshiba goes "T**S UP" then the lot is lost. I believe they use some proprietory custom form of the Android system.

I spent a lot of time in 2019 prior to going to Australia to visit family in that I copied literally a hundred or so home recorded DVD recordings over to a 1TB HDD USB module as MP4 recordings using my PC and took it with me. All the recordings played back OK on my PC but when I got to OZ and plugged it into my daughters USB port on her TV which is allegedly MP4 compatible less than a third played back reliably so when I got back home I checked and sure enough I had the same problem here. It appears that not all MP4 recordings are the same and there are many factors that can effectively b***er up the structure of the encoding. It appears MP4 has may dialects !

PC's. Where can I begin ? The big problem is legacy systems. Y'know -- Mr microsoft decrees that the picture or video format you used is no longer liked so they drop it. All your recordings suddenly become obsolescent as does the software needed to play them back. e.g. Flash player. It may be bug riddled but now microsoft has cut into my windows 10 and not only disabled it, but on the last major update wiped it completely out of the computer. Unfortunately Mr HP used some modules of flash player so now my printer scanner is useless in win 10 so I resort to Vista on another PC. Similarly you have to make sure all old recordings / pictures are updated to a new format immediately. Even JPEG has several incompatible dialects now and I have 3 PC's running Win XP, Win Vista and now Win 10 just to get round problems. To cap it all, I made a terrible mistake recently and everybody learn from this one -- On the last windows 10 big update which sneaked through without me knowing it I had left my backup drive for all my data and my MP4 recordings drives plus an SD card all plugged in to various ports. Mr microsoft came in with his big hatchet and as part of the "upgrade" with new but probably unwanted whizzbangs etc. proceeded to not just tweak win 10 but wipe it and replace the complete operating system with a new one. Took about 6 hours of continuous downlods and HDD working to do it. Aparrently now when they say you OS has reached the end of it's life they mean it ! This upgrade scrambled my data backup drive which I am now slowly recovering but completely b***ered the MP4 video recordings drive which is unrecoverable and wiped the SD card of all its pictures. Again, unrecoverable. Oh, and by the way, I have found out that HDD's also have a finite mechanical life as well. after 5 or so years of continuous use they can or will commit suicide.

I have come to the conclusion that no storage mechanism / device or method is foolproof ! You pays your money and hope. Tape grows mould and deteriorates over time losing magnetism as well as shedding surface as the plasticiser dries out. Tapes also take up a lot of room and need to be stored at the right temperature and humidity. All the film and TV companies must have a nightmareish situation maintaining and retaining recordings.

Rant Over !

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

Quite a long time ago, I did a lot of work with Pathe, where they were transferring their 16mm films to DVCpro for archive.....

I still have a brand-new DVCpro machine, but I'll bet the tapes are now degrading.

David.

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

I posted a letter on here a few weeks ago, I have dementia now but my methods have served me well. Nowadays the only difficulties I have is remembering to put the DVD recorder in the correct mode for recording, used to be so easy. Was a tv engineer for 50 years and sometimes struggle to turn the tv on. But with care and double checking connections results are usually good. The VCR is mediocre quality, ok, don't laugh, it's a Sharp, but it has done me well. And the DVD recorder is a multi standard LG. I put it all on hard drive first and then do lossless copies to DVD. No Macro errors as it's only home made tapes that I copy and apart from the odd chroma drop out results are good, but good luck with which ever method you use.
Tony Walker

Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?
 

My approach is to capture to PC first. The videos can then be edited if required to tidy up bad transitions, cut out any pointless bits and trim the ends etc. I keep them as MP4 files but they could be authored to DVD if required. Many newer DVD and Blu-Ray players will play video files on a DVD-R disk or USB directly without needing to be in video DVD format.

I am now using a "Hauppauge HD PVR" box for video capture. Despite the "HD" name this also does SD. It has analogue component HD sockets on the back and SD composite, s-video and audio sockets on the front. It connects to a PC by USB2 and has a separate 5V power supply. It contains a decent MP4 hardware encoder and there is a lag of about a second between the video being played and the capture preview on the PC due to the encoding.

They are available on eBay second hand for around £20-£30, but try to get one with the original software/driver disk if possible. There is a normal version and a gaming version but they are the same hardware - the only difference is the latter has leads to connects to three types of games console and doesn't have the schedule recording software, so no important differences for us. Don't get the "Hauppauge HD PVR 2" as this doesn't have the SD inputs.

The software is the usual Arcsoft Showbiz which seems to be bundled with many capture devices, plus a driver package which adds the relevant controls to the capture section of the software. If you have a copy of Showbiz from another device then the drivers from the Hauppauge website should work (if not PM me and I'll send you the drivers from my disk).

I use it with an old Windows 7 laptop (Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, SSD) which works reasonably well. Occasionally it locks up part way through a capture or the capture won't start properly, requiring a power-cycle of the HD PVR and restart of Windows to sort out. I don't know whether it's the capture box, software, Windows or laptop but it's not really an issue. It will probably work on Windows 10 but I haven't tried it, and would probably be happier with a better spec PC.

One useful point is that it captures commercial pre-recorded videos fine, so any copy protection on the tapes doesn't affect capture. This is useful for making copies of these tapes to reduce wear on the tapes and player (I obviously keep the original tapes too).

I have used a couple of those little USB capture devices that use MPG compression previously, and had various problems with them, especially with sound either not capturing properly or getting out of sync etc. The Hauppauge HD PVR does a better job, the picture quality is better, the sound quality is excellent and stays in sync, and it doesn't seem to be upset by poor quality tapes.