I'm looking to archive / convert to mp4 (and / or DVD) a set of about 50 to 60 EP VHS tapes a friend off loaded on me of local bands (with the tapes themselves dating back to the early 90's). And... I'm stumped. My budget is around $200 for the set up I'm trying to create (need a tuner, VHS, and the software) and this last generation of VHS players appear to be completely shit, plus finding a capture card in this price range (not to mention software) appears to be hit or miss.
Things I'm not looking to do...
1) upstream or edit the videos in any way (except maybe dead space that the process of archival itself adds)
2) compress. Looking to keep them in raw format or at the worst, maybe mp4 or mkv.
3) Convert to DVD. Most products are marketed to this demographic (as DVD's are the DIGITAL FUTURE!) as "VHS to DVD" converters and I have absolutely no interest in this feature.
What I'd like to do...
1) Have the raw / compressed files as one large entity (or in a format viable for editing)
2) Be able to "play and forget" and slowly go through the videos as I'm off to work.
3) Archival quality transfer (best possible for video that is lightly horribly degraded)
Anyone care to advise on the best way to archive a large set of tapes such as these? Flack, I'm looking at you for your wondrous, world weary experience but anyone here, feel free to chime in.
VHS to DVD Conversion - thoughts?
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RetroRomper
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Flack
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It sounds to me like you have two options, one of which you've already ruled out.
The one you ruled out is going from VHS to DVD by using an all-in-one device. Even though you ruled this one out, I'm going to throw out the positives and negatives of it. You can get one of these units for around $150 at Walmart. To dub your tapes to DVD, all you would have to do is hit record on the DVD-R side, hit play on the VHS side, and you're done. Six hours later (you said EP), boom, you're done. The advantage here is (a) if your friend wants digital copies, you can give him the DVDs (or copies of them), and if you want computer copies in mp4 format, you can rip them directly from the DVDs.
The second solution involves buying a VCR and a capture device. The last time I was in Walmart, the only VCRs they sold were combo VHS/DVD units. You could probably get one from a thrift store or just by asking around at work (someone probably has one sitting out in their garage). If you're getting an old one, I'd pop the cover off and clean the heads before starting.
Then, you'll need a capture card. Two options here, internal and external. There are lots of internal ones in your price range. I owned a Hauppauge one that I loved, but unfortunately the older cards are not 64-bit compatible, so when shopping make sure whatever you buy is. The other option is an external device. Most of them are USB 2.0. The difference between the two is that most (of the good) internal cards offload the compression to the card, so your system's CPU isn't throttled. On USB cards, most of the heavy lifting is handled by your computer. When your computer can't keep up, you'll experience the dreaded "dropped frames" which means your capture is dropping frames to keep up. I have a 2.6 ghz quad-core running Windows 7 64-bit w/6 gigs of ram, and if I have any other programs open other than the capture software, I drop frames with my USB device (I have the USB Dazzle). One other downside of the USB devices is that most video editing programs (I use Sony Vegas) won't recognize the USB devices as capture devices, so you have to use their crappy bundled capture program to capture the video, save it, and then load it into a different program to edit/compress it.
You can tell almost nothing from Youtube quality video, but I recently captured this from a 20-year-old VHS tape using the Dazzle.
[youtube][/youtube]
That was captured at (I think) 352x240, although there is a lot of debate as to what the perfect VHS resolution to capture at is. Some people say 352x480, some say double that, some people say that more is better, some say that too much just introduces noise ... For a lot of it I think it depends on the source material -- if you're talking about dark concert videos, I'd guess the 352x480 (or 240) would probably suffice.
The USB Dazzle I bought was like $50 and the software that comes with it (Pinnacle) supports MP4, so if your machine will handle it, that's probably your cheapest option. If not, look for an internal card with the inputs you need (again, don't get caught up with "HD" quality, not for VHS captures).
The one you ruled out is going from VHS to DVD by using an all-in-one device. Even though you ruled this one out, I'm going to throw out the positives and negatives of it. You can get one of these units for around $150 at Walmart. To dub your tapes to DVD, all you would have to do is hit record on the DVD-R side, hit play on the VHS side, and you're done. Six hours later (you said EP), boom, you're done. The advantage here is (a) if your friend wants digital copies, you can give him the DVDs (or copies of them), and if you want computer copies in mp4 format, you can rip them directly from the DVDs.
The second solution involves buying a VCR and a capture device. The last time I was in Walmart, the only VCRs they sold were combo VHS/DVD units. You could probably get one from a thrift store or just by asking around at work (someone probably has one sitting out in their garage). If you're getting an old one, I'd pop the cover off and clean the heads before starting.
Then, you'll need a capture card. Two options here, internal and external. There are lots of internal ones in your price range. I owned a Hauppauge one that I loved, but unfortunately the older cards are not 64-bit compatible, so when shopping make sure whatever you buy is. The other option is an external device. Most of them are USB 2.0. The difference between the two is that most (of the good) internal cards offload the compression to the card, so your system's CPU isn't throttled. On USB cards, most of the heavy lifting is handled by your computer. When your computer can't keep up, you'll experience the dreaded "dropped frames" which means your capture is dropping frames to keep up. I have a 2.6 ghz quad-core running Windows 7 64-bit w/6 gigs of ram, and if I have any other programs open other than the capture software, I drop frames with my USB device (I have the USB Dazzle). One other downside of the USB devices is that most video editing programs (I use Sony Vegas) won't recognize the USB devices as capture devices, so you have to use their crappy bundled capture program to capture the video, save it, and then load it into a different program to edit/compress it.
You can tell almost nothing from Youtube quality video, but I recently captured this from a 20-year-old VHS tape using the Dazzle.
[youtube][/youtube]
That was captured at (I think) 352x240, although there is a lot of debate as to what the perfect VHS resolution to capture at is. Some people say 352x480, some say double that, some people say that more is better, some say that too much just introduces noise ... For a lot of it I think it depends on the source material -- if you're talking about dark concert videos, I'd guess the 352x480 (or 240) would probably suffice.
The USB Dazzle I bought was like $50 and the software that comes with it (Pinnacle) supports MP4, so if your machine will handle it, that's probably your cheapest option. If not, look for an internal card with the inputs you need (again, don't get caught up with "HD" quality, not for VHS captures).
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