good VHS to digital convertor?

seatbeltnoob

Looking for suggestions on a good VHS to digital convertor. I seem ebay and amazon awash with cheap chinese ones. Looking for suggestions on what works/doesnt work. Ideally looking to retain as much of the original quality picture and audio and dont want to lose any video quality.

Your thoughts?

Chrishazle

I have a Panasonic DVD recorder that also takes VHS tapes and will copy the tape to DVD, upscaling as it copies. It's a DMR-EZ48V. It copies in real time, so not a quick process.

droopsnoot

I've done similar, but with my old JVC VHS recorder wired to the back of the Sony HD/DVD recorder. Once it's on DVD, it's easy to then grab it into MP4 or AVI or whatever format on a PC. Real time is the only way I know of to get stuff off VHS, which is why I haven't done anywhere near as much as I expected to by now.

googler

If you have the VHS player already, look for an old analogue DVD recorder on eBay, they're available for peanuts. Connect output from VHS to input on DVD and record.

Edit on PC if you wish.

Alternatively, look for any of the Panasonic VHS/DVD or VHS/DVD/HDD machines. The former will do the same as the above, but within one box.
The latter will allow you to copy to the HDD, do some editing there, then commit a final version to DVD. Saves having to transfer to computer.

seatbeltnoob

im getting hit and miss results with the cheap ebay captures. i think it needs to be done on a professioanl grade video capture device.

i have a high spec gaming computer yet it has issues with capturing the live playback without reducing the framerate.

sometimes it captures the video fine, other times the footage is missing frames and appears slow motion.

it seems to be the case that if im doing anything on the computer such a browsing the net the video capture is compromised.

paddyrg

If you've got a FireWire port instead of just USB, I've got a dedicated analogue <--> DV device I've not used in years. Fantastic quality, just hook up your VHS. If you want to borrow it you're very welcome to. I'm in Bath.

seatbeltnoob

paddyrg wrote: »

If you've got a FireWire port instead of just USB, I've got a dedicated analogue <--> DV device I've not used in years. Fantastic quality, just hook up your VHS. If you want to borrow it you're very welcome to. I'm in Bath.

thanks fr the offer, very kind. But I think I will need to "borrow" it for a good couple of years because I have a lot of videos.

Dont have a firewire device but do have USB3 which is faster. Unfortunately all the cheap ebay stuff is usb 2.0.

I dont think the issue is with the transfer speed, I think the capture software provided is just pants on the cheap deevice.

paddyrg

Yeah, the device and DV25 predate USB3 and indeed thanks to the different ways the buses work, USB2 just wasn't up to the job - you could probably pick up a FireWire card for a fiver these days. Via FireWire it's converted in hardware to DV25, and then it's (low compression) native DV25 thereafter.

TBH you probably could borrow it for a couple of years, I've not done much video editing in a while, moved onto production! Offers there if you want to try it anyway

droopsnoot

seatbeltnoob wrote: »

thanks fr the offer, very kind. But I think I will need to "borrow" it for a good couple of years because I have a lot of videos.

Once you start converting them, you'll need to increase that estimate because you'll realise what a pain in the neck it is to do them. Obviously if they're cherished family occasions that might be a bit different, but I'm struggling to get around to bothering with mine, even though I could do with the space that chucking the old tapes would bring.