Need advice from tech-savvies regarding VHS To DVD transfers

U

Unkillable Cat

Mildly Dipped
I've been approached with the task of transferring video on VHS over to a more modern medium, like DVDs or just as video files on a computer. I've done some basic online research on the matter, but it's hard finding a decent answer as most articles on it are several years old. So I thought I'd try asking around, and this forum wins the "Smartest userbase" award, so you get to strut your stuff.

Basically, I'm looking for something that's easy to use. I got a look at the tapes I was asked to convert, and a quick count puts them at around 2000 tapes (!!!) but only a part of that mountain is to be transferred. They're almost all on the PAL system and some of them are from the early 1980s, if that makes any difference. I was thinking about something that lets me both write them to DVDs that can then be played in any standard DVD player, and also to convert them into an accepted video file standard, like MP4 or somesuch.

It looks like I am better off with a whole unit rather than some small gizmo that just bridges the gap between the player and the computer, but I'm open to both options.

Any suggestions/recommendations?
 
Well first of all, do you have a TV card? Most of them have software for video capture, with various formats supported. My last one could code video in real time with virtually any codec available.

Anyway, if you do have such a card, dig around the software. If not, you need one for this. Connect the VCR video output to the card (SVHS or cinch, first being better), pick a suitable codec (my preferred one is xvid), configure video size and framerate and do some tests. If the video you record in such manner is ok, ie doesn't skip and the audio is in sync you can start recording material. It's trivial to transfer it to DVDs afterwards using virtually any DVD authoring software.
 
I'm renting a panasonic combination vhs & dvd recorder. Converting is easy as pie, just put in the vhs and a blank dvd hold down the vhs to dvd dubbing button. Come back in 4hrs (or however long the tape is) and finalize the disc. But be warned it takes ages, I don't know how many tapes I started with but it's taken two and a half years so far and I've probably got a year and a half's worth of tapes still to do.

Oh yeah reason I'm renting is the tape heads on the vhs player wear out really quickly I'm on my third machine now.
 
requiem_for_a_starfury said:
I'm renting a panasonic combination vhs & dvd recorder. Converting is easy as pie, just put in the vhs and a blank dvd hold down the vhs to dvd dubbing button. Come back in 4hrs (or however long the tape is) and finalize the disc. But be warned it takes ages, I don't know how many tapes I started with but it's taken two and a half years so far and I've probably got a year and a half's worth of tapes still to do.

Oh yeah reason I'm renting is the tape heads on the vhs player wear out really quickly I'm on my third machine now.
Click to expand...

That's why I spend three to five dollars at a used record shop and just buy my old vhs tapes on dvd.
 
Professor Danger! said:
That's why I spend three to five dollars at a used record shop and just buy my old vhs tapes on dvd.
Click to expand...
I don't know about Unkillable Cat but I'm not copying commercial tapes, besides most vhs/dvd recorders will not allow you to copy commercial tapes anyway.
 
Thanks for the input so far. I'm not copying commercial tapes, and most of the stuff I've been asked to transfer is unavailable on DVD, and will likely never be released on it either. Part of my job will be indexing the tapes and their contents, deciding what to keep, what to throw away and what to try to get on DVD.

Professor Danger! said:
That's why I spend three to five dollars at a used record shop and just buy my old vhs tapes on dvd.
Click to expand...

Good for you, but where I live prices are so much higher. If I was to buy a single DVD movie, I'm looking at $9 for something from the bargain bin.

requiem_for_a_starfury: Are you using something like the DMR-EZ47V unit Panasonic has? Do you think that using a regular VHS player with a plug-through device would be easier on the tape heads of the player?

DexterMorgan: I'm supposed to have a TV card around here somewhere, but it's around 4 years old, a TV Tuner Expert card from KWorld. I think it's more intended to watch TV on the PC rather than right out recording, but it could propably work.

EDIT: Cleanup.
 
I'm using the DMR-ES30V model but I think the heads wear out just from the work load, you'd probably have the same problem with a regular VHS player. Though saying that all my tapes are in long play and tape head cleaners all run in short play. I'm not sure that they don't clean the long play heads, just that they don't seem to make much difference. If you are not converting all two thousand tapes then you shouldn't have the same problem, the first machine was new when I got it and it did at least four to five hundred tapes before it needed replacing.

One thing I like about the Panasonic is that it splits the recording up into chapters for you, when ever there's a break in the recording on the tape. So if you've got several events on one tape it doesn't create just one continuous playback.
 
Interesting news about the Panasonic dividing into chapters. Many of the tapes are just like that, and it would be good to have that option. To my knowledge, none of the tapes were recorded with Longplay, so the tape head problem should not be as severe.
 
There are several machines on the market, DVD- video combos, that do what you want to do. It takes time, though. My dad has one, I think it's a Philips, and you can speed up the process (as if you would fast forward a flick and copy it to DVD at the same time), but that doesn't always work.

Tapes are slow, man.
 
Hm, since he wants to have them in mpeg4 as well I still think it's better to use a computer.

Rip video from tapes using a tuner with mpeg2 hardware compression support and save them in this format, setting the capture at 720x576 resolution @ 25fps - DO NOT DEINTERLACE. You can then arrange these files into chapters on a DVD with DVD authoring software (I got those for free with video and TV tuner cards) any way you like.

Then you can recode mpeg2 into mpeg4 using a codec of your choice. At this step you should deinterlace videos.

With good quality VHS player you should get good results.
 
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