VHS to PC/DVD

silkyuk9

ok, Ive been messing with this problem for a good long time. I have a VHS recorder which only has a scart socket on the rear, no plugs at all. I want to transfer VHS tapes to my pc then put onto dvd's, this was I can edit the content as well.

Ok, I bought some hardware called EasyCap, useless!! I managed to connect this to my camcorder and get the movie on screen however the sound and picture quality wasnt that good, the sound quality was aweful. connecting this to my vhs recorder was a waste of time as I couldnt get any picture output at all.

So im back to square 1.

Any advise on new hardware to purchase.

I can but a DVD/VHS recorder but too expensive, cheapest ive seen is 200 quid.

So basically I have a VHS recorder with only a scart socket in the rear. I need something that will work.

Any help. Cheers.

Heinz

It'd be far easier to buy a HDD/DVD recorder and copy the tapes (not copyright protected) onto the HDD, edit them and then burn them to DVD.

I use a Sony RDR-HXD890 for that sort of thing. A standard scart cable from the VCR to the HDD/DVD recorder is all that's needed.

silkyuk9

Heinz wrote: »

It'd be far easier to buy a HDD/DVD recorder and copy the tapes (not copyright protected) onto the HDD, edit them and then burn them to DVD.

I use a Sony RDR-HXD890 for that sort of thing. A standard scart cable from the VCR to the HDD/DVD recorder is all that's needed.

£249 bit of a sting to put a few home movies onto dvd.

Heinz

silkyuk9 wrote: »

£249 bit of a sting to put a few home movies onto dvd.

That's top price. I paid £154 for mine, brand new.

It's a very handy piece of kit too - acts as:

1. the back up Freeview recorder when Sky + already has 2 programmes on record;
2. the means by which I can archive (edited) programmes off Sky + onto DVD.

will-he-payitoff

I bought one of these to do exactly the same and it worked a treat

opps http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lite-DVD-Recorder-/120830327364?pt=UK_AudioTVElectronics_Video_DVDPlayers_Recorders&hash=item1c220c7a44

WhiteChristmas

HDD recorders seem to have killed the DVD recorder market before it reached critical mass for cheap mass production.

Up until a couple of years ago, you could get a DVD recorder without digital tuner or HDD - pretty much a straight VHS replacement - for less than 100 quid.

They generally don't last long - a couple of years at best.

You'll probably be able to pick something up on eBay; especially now that digital roll-out will be rendering hem obsolete. If you've only got a few things to record then you don't need it to last long.

One word of advice: ONLY record on "Standard Play"; if you use Extended Play then your computer won't be able to read the disc properly.

You want your computer to read it because home-burned DVDs aren't that robust and you want to make numerous back-ups as soon as you can.

bobthedambuilder

Depends what you want to do with the VHS content once you've converted it. I wanted to edit some very old home movies, so I decided to go your route and convert to best possible quality on my pc, and then play with them to edit out all the rubbish and put titles etc in, before burning to dvd.

I used a fairly cheap piece of usb hardware called KWorld DVD Maker. I had to buy a SCART to RGB adapter as well for my VHS player (only coppers). You need a switchable adapter which allows you to select SCART IN or OUT (you select OUT to connect to the pc via the KWorld thing). This also came with an editing program (PowerDirector/PowerProducer - an old version) which seemed to work fine and did all the editing and burning stuff.

As to quality, old tapes will never be that great, but I've found that converting to avi files (which btw are HUGE) gave me the best possible result. The software gives various final quality / length options for burning to dvd - I stuck to the maximum quality which gives me about an hour's final length on a 4.7GB dvd.