My parents have about 50 VHS and beta tapes that I would like to convert to digital for them for Christmas.

I have contacted a couple of people/companies who do this and it looks like it's $30-40 per 2-hour tape, more if it's 4 or 6 hours, and extra for any editing. $1500+ is significantly more money than I'm willing to spend, especially since I'm willing, and likely capable, of doing it myself with the right hardware, software, and a little practice.

I don't need anything professional. I already know how to convert just about any video format to something I can put on DVD, so I don't need any software that will make a pretty DVD for me. I really just want something like a RCA-to-USB converter, right? I would assume that just about any retail hardware will come with some basic software to run the conversion.

Checking around, it looks like I can probably do it with a couple of products from Pinnacle, but I wanted to get your input. I figure some of you have probably done this before and could point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

back when XP was NEW, i tried this with a $60 dazzle RCA-to-USB converter and had some success...some, but it was a PITA...i would assume that in nearly a decade, the process has become easier

so, what will i need to do this?

11/10/2010 8:00:05 AM

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000VM60I8 on the cheap

i've used this one before: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100033

something to be aware of...it's real-time capture, so 2 hours of video will take 2 hours to copy

so if each of those 50 tapes have 2 hours of content, it's gonna take you 100 hours (give or take)...granted, you can just leave it overnight and do one per night, but something to think about

[Edited on November 10, 2010 at 8:21 AM. Reason : `.]

11/10/2010 8:17:31 AM

Im looking into doing this as well. Hows the file sizes if its dumped purely as a file? Also whats best file type? Im seeing mpeg2 with googling.

12/19/2010 12:37:57 PM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116034

Just take the coax out from the vcr into this. It'll record everything to the computer. It'll also let you turn the computer into a DVR other purposes. Then you can burn the resulting mpeg2 files to dvd. I prefer a pci or pci-e card so I can have dual tuners, something a little more sturdy, and hardware encoding so it'll free up cpu cycles for other things while recording. I didn't really care about that when I got my first tv tuner card but I quickly got tired of not being able to do a whole lot else while something was recording. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116015 would be a good option as it has the s-video and audio inputs if you didn't want to use the coax input.

Should be able to change the bitrate for encoding, but figure 1-1.5gb per hr if you want the best quality.

[Edited on December 19, 2010 at 3:30 PM. Reason : adf]

12/19/2010 3:27:05 PM

http://www.adorama.com/VDCAADVC300.html?utm_source=gbase&utm_medium=Shopping+Site&utm_campaign=Other&utm_term=Other

Canopus device is what you want. But it ain't cheap

We have like 3 of them at work. The built in time base corrector is going to knock out 90% of the problems that remain from using a cheaper solution. 50 tapes is quite a bit, if you're going to be using it for like a month feeding in tapes (1-2/night) you might as well get a good one where you don't have to do post work.

12/19/2010 8:59:52 PM

Unless you are trying to edit the video, a stand-alone DVD recorder. I bought a Insignia (Best Buy brand) one for my mom a couple of years ago, and it is super easy to use and creates great quality DVDs. I compared them to the same footage converted with a capture card and then outputted via Adobe Premiere,/windows DVD maker, you can not tell the difference in video quality, while the recording and DVD creation process is much more traightforward and a little faster (pretty much real time + 15 mins per disk to titel and create chapters/menus). I converted a bunch of out old VHS and MiniDV family tapes with that way. You can still do a little bit of old-school linear editing, such as put the recorder on pause for any segments that you do NOT want to record (my grandpa has this habit of forgetting to stop the camera and therefore shooting the ground for like 10 mins every half hour). But if there is any editing required, then the capture-card setup would be a better scenario. Can't give you any advise on the recent hardware, I still have the old All-In-Wonder ATI Radeon laying around somewhere.

12/20/2010 8:40:40 AM

I have the Diamond VC500 One Touch Video Capture Device that quagmire02 posted. It's easy as hell to use and is a lot cheaper than other options. But yeah,

Quote :

"something to be aware of...it's real-time capture, so 2 hours of video will take 2 hours to copy so if each of those 50 tapes have 2 hours of content, it's gonna take you 100 hours (give or take)...granted, you can just leave it overnight and do one per night, but something to think about"

50 tapes will be a pain in the ass

12/20/2010 8:50:33 AM

Just bought the Diamond one from Amazon. My kid has a bunch of disney tapes I want to convert. Not even planning on ripping them to dvd, just host them through Media Center. How's the audio? Oh, and did you use the included software or something else?

[Edited on December 20, 2010 at 10:38 AM. Reason : .]

12/20/2010 10:32:23 AM

I used the software that came with it

I don't get why people had problems with it, it's pretty straightforward stuff. The complaints about quality might be valid, but I've mostly transferred old home movies which were sucky quality anyways. I have transferred a few old movies my mom uses for her classroom that were only available on VHS, and they looked fine to me

12/20/2010 11:03:41 AM

What about a lot of cassette tapes to digital to be burned to audio cds?

12/20/2010 11:04:48 AM

easiest is to use the audio in on the sound card and record, then burn using whatever program you want. I remember winamp could do all of that 4-5 years ago. You'd probably want to have some sort of audio program clean up the noise though.

12/20/2010 12:03:50 PM