VCR tape to digital help

Tom Dunlap

Tom Dunlap

Here from the beginning
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Retired in Minneapolis
I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has old tapes that would be easier to use if they were digitized. The one that I would transfer first would be my first crane job. Stood the crane's outboard outriggers about two feet off the ground before it tipped back upright...scary...

What is the easiest way to do this? can it be done with a VCR output to my computer? What hardware/software would I need? Heck, for all I know the software and internal hardware might be in my computer already.
 
Tom

Ive been pondering the same thing for about a year, but for my boxing vids. I assume you mean VCR video player? you need one of those VCR/recordable DVD combo units (make sure it has the recording facility and not just playback).

Record you're VCR footage straight onto the DVD then play, save and edit on the PC. I have alot of old stuff that doesn't get played for years at a time, and Ive discovered that upon trying, afew dont play anymore or have deteriorated in quality.I dont understand why. So if your footage is precious to you, perhaps you should make it a priority. Reg.
 
Tom, if you have windows XP then you should have windows movie maker. Its probably not as good as proper software but should work. Find it from "programs" then "accessories" from the start key.

The first page has instruction for capturing from a device and it say that a VCR is acceptable.

Of course you need to connect the VCR to the computer. If they both have SVHS conections then ok. If not you may need a scart that seperates to vide audio L/R.

I've not used it yet but will do one day.

You go first!!!
 
I dont know the cost but Ritz camera and stores like it will do it for you. Depends on how many you have.
 
Converting the analogue tape to a DVD will not assist in the editing dept.

Actual DVD format and DV format are two different things.

Tom.

The cheapest and easiest way is get a camcorder thats DV and has AV in jacks. Put the video cassette on and hit play, meanwhile the camcorder records it ... hit record.

Now you have a DV out of a camcorder that is good for editing and not compressed. Easy, just find a camcorder with AV jacks in and the red, white and yellow rca jacks go into the VCR where it say "out". Piss easy.

The yellow is the picture and the red/white are stereo sound.

dvdrca.png
 
Getting a external HD that is USB 2.0 or Firewire is pretty much the cheapest and easiest way to store the raw DV. Capturing DV on on your hardrive is not a good idea as it will frag the hardrive BIG TIME if the video is of any real lenghth(I think an hour long DV file is around 12 GigaBytes)

The software you use to edit then encode in is crucial. Adobe Premiere is the best but if have to use a mac :) Final Cut is about as good.

Use .wmv as the output type(streams the best)

Keep at 512kps or better

cant think of much else right now

BTW: the reason recording dvd on a standalone player is a bad idea is that it is forced to convert and record on the fly and "generalizes" alot of the video.
Also DVD is Mpeg2 and editing/encoding it is rough and it does not look good at all ..........alot like photocopying a photocopy only worse.
 
Only frags when running Fat32 file system which XP doesn't use.

I load hour at a time and it's a single file, one huge chunk. Fat32 will break at 5gig, predominantly Windows 2000 set up.
 
Sorry Tom, it appears I could have cost you alot of money then.From here on, if its not tree related, pay no attention to me!

Great picture Ekka, who else would have thought to squeeze just that little that bit more out of a situation. Little things like that impress me, very sharp.

You fancy coming over here to work ? Wind and rain every day at the moment, although I suspect, somehow you'd make the best of it. What do you say mate, we could do with a morale boost!
 
[ QUOTE ]

The cheapest and easiest way is get a camcorder thats DV and has AV in jacks. Put the video cassette on and hit play, meanwhile the camcorder records it ... hit record.

Now you have a DV out of a camcorder that is good for editing and not compressed. Easy, just find a camcorder with AV jacks in and the red, white and yellow rca jacks go into the VCR where it say "out". Piss easy.

The yellow is the picture and the red/white are stereo sound.

dvdrca.png


[/ QUOTE ] I just did this w/ some old high school wrestling tapes and it worked good. It just takes the time to play it.
 
Well I got it to the computer fine but it is too large for a regular dvd. So I got a dual layer which should have enough space but it woint do it.
lam.gif
it saved it as a mpeg. I am now trying it throuh wmv to see if it will be smaller.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Only frags when running Fat32 file system which XP doesn't use.

[/ QUOTE ]
I take it that means you're saying NTFS doesn't fragment? Sorry to have to inform you, Erik, but you need to defragment your NTFS partitions almost as frequently as you did your FAT filesystems. Of course you know what I'll recommend if you want a filesystem that keeps itself defragmented with use...
 
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