vhs to dvd

jeffy22

just checked my video player
it has a scart lead and two little connector things, one yellow and one red. no white one though,
would i still need a converter?

Wombat

I'm guessing here (best if you could check your vcr manual to see what these connections are), but usually the red and white sockets are audio connections and the yellow one is video.

So either you have a mono sound output socket and video or some other configuration. In which case I would say you would be better off getting a Scart adaptor. Personally, if I was in doubt, I would go for the Scart, although I've read that Scart connections don't give the best quality of reproduction. Having said that, mine were fine via Scart.

Alternatively, just try using the 2 sockets you have and see what results you get.

ianian99

Steve-o wrote: »

Okay, after a quick bit of Googling (God love 'em!), I've discovered that a Time Base Corrector does the deed of stripping off Macrovision protection and stabilising the image (so the transfer should be better quality - whether home video or commercial tape).

http://www.holdan.co.uk/datavideo/tbc100.htm

At £250+VAT the obvious choice is to buy all my videos again on DVD from Play, but the geek in me wants me to buy the time base corrector and do them all myself. :rotfl:

Convenience or geek fun.......convenience or geek fun........convenience or geek fun......

you dont need to spend that kind of money. I bought a box about 10 years ago that you plugged in between the 2 videos and that only cost around £60 and there were cheaper ones available.Maplins even sold them as video enhancers. Thing is they made them illegal to sell in UK but you can still find them under the guise of video enhancers, maplins prob still sell them too under those names

Also you could bypass the macro on some machines by using the rf tuner as opposed to scart so that might be worth a try for anyone messing around.

beachbeth

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I thought that Macrovision only kicked in when you did VHS -> VHS

Ive got a Panasonic vhs/dvd recorder and recently tried to copy one of my old videos to a dvd. It wouldn't do it because the vhs was copy protected.

jeffy22

ok i think the best idea is scart.. I'll have a scout around, cheers everyone!

jeffy22

been lookin around for a scart one (with editing sotware) for under £40 but can't find one.. any ideas?
what are people typing in to search for them?
i've been puting in vhs to usb, but seems to br bringing nothing up

thedon

I tried the Magix "Rescue your Videotapes" last week, and sent it back 3 days later. It seemed to work ok on my mid spec laptop - but found that it lost lipsynch after around 10 mins of capture. It also produced an obscure error message every time it launched - still waiting for Magix support to respond 5 days later - I've already returned it to Amazon as faulty. (edit - finally had a response from Magix support 10 days later!).

I even shifted my high spec desktop PC (I'm trying to archive old recordings off our Tivo box onto DVD) and found that I got the same error message, and the USB dongle wouldn't capture any footage at all.

I can't recommend it - it was a complete waste of my time - but a few others on Amazon seemed to have some success.

I'm now looking for a cheap DVD recorder instead (not interested in a freeview tuner, I just want to back up a couple of videos and recordings off the Tivo - got a Humax for normal freeview watching & recording) - anyone offer any opinions on these:
http://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=SAMS-DVDSR275 (didn't buy - too many bad reviews)
or
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?SUM-DVDRCD (edit: I bought this "Sumvision Dolphin" - seems pretty good so far - great service from Novatech - and about as cheap as I could find £40.25 plus £5.99 p&p for next day or just £1.99 if you could wait 7 days for the economy service)

I've just recieved a £48 Vistron one from e-buyer, but it's DOA, and they don't seem to list it anymore. The Samsung one gives me most confidence, but is a bit pricy, and reviews suggest it's quite clunky and dated - so is probably no better than a cheapo argos one like this:
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5336841/Trail/searchtext%3EDDV+RECORDER.htm (didn't buy - no confidence in it)

I'd really appreciate help from anyone with experience of these machines?.

huddsman

Just buy a hauppauge USB PVR, Look on ebay they go for peanuts and out of all the Tv cards these work best. They come with software (Win TV) and you can choose what format you want to save in (avi, mpg, mpeg-2 etc). Also if you dont gave a video player they go for 99p on ebay daily.

jeffy22

if i just bought a scart to usb lead and used adobe premiere on my laptop would that work?

firbyfred

Wombat wrote: »

I've just started using one of those USB stick transfer jobbies. It comes with software you instal on your computer, plug the audio/visual leads into your vcr, the USB into your computer, start the supplied program, play your tape, click on Record in the software, watch and wait.

The one I'm using saves the video file as an .mpg.

One snag I hit was that our vcr didn't have any audio/visual output jacks, only a Scart socket, so I had to use the Scart to A/V converter plug from my Video Sender plugged into the vcr Scart socket, which then would take the female A/V leads from the USB Video Grabber.

Result was excellent.

I was thinking of getting one of these http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150929 which was suggested earlier, but have the same problem as our video player only has a scart socket, do you think one of these would work okay http://info.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=35931&&source=14&doy=11m1
thanks