Page 1 of VHS to CD

I have got a load of tv programmes that are across about 30 vhs tapes which i want to keep, but the old tapes are occupying the space i have earmarked for the growing DVD collection. What do i need to get these into some kind of digital format (hardware / software) so that i can condense them down to a few cds?? At the moment i just have a cheap and cheerful graphics ard with no tv in or out etc.

This item was edited on Saturday, 1st November 2003, 16:08

The way I managed to do some of mine was through my Digital camcorder
It had an analogue input facility which I used to record the VHS.
I then simply imported the digital footage into the PC and converted to the various formats (MPEG1/2 & DivX)

Another way is to look into TV capture cards. Beware that most of the analogue capture cards will only capture up to 320x288 (or thereabouts). The AverMedia one that I bought from Maplin`s goes to 720x576 (DVD resolutions). It costs around £50

Hope that helps

was a bit p*****d when i found that my graphics card did not have a video in, and was a bit loath to get a new card with video in/out, so ended up getting a BELKIN VIDEOBUS USB CAMCORDER CONNECTOR
it is just a box with composite/s-video and audio inputs. you can link it up to almost any analoge or digital source. works a treat with a video. just needed to get a scart connector. i found mine in pc world.
hope this helps

Hi,

Watched QVC channel (Small Office) this afternoon, they had the very thing your looking for :)

A gadget that plugs into your PC which you then plug into a standard VCR, I assume
there`s software included which converts Analogue to Digital and allows you to save the result on a CD or DVD burner.

One BIG snag, it costs about 130 notes if I remember correctly :o

Antz.

Thanks people, i have just bought the Belkin thing, managed to get it for £45 online. I had a look at the QVC one and it was virtually the same thing for almost 3 times as much! I think the resolution you can import at is slightly lower, but i am not trying to go into dvd production here, just salvage the odd episode of terrorhawks off some vhs tapes from about 1986 - i doubt they are dvd quality anyway! (yeah yeah, i know i could buy terrorhawks on dvd for like £5 if i wanted...)

Thanks again... :)

I have just read this and was interested in the belkin usb video bus to transfer my camcorder tapes to pc to burn onto dvd but after looking on a faq section about it I read that 1 second of video = 1 Mb of hard drive so that would be 1 hour = 3600 Mb ( 3.6 Gb)and also that it produce videos on your computer at resolutions up to 352 x 288dpi and 30 frames per second which is the same as Tmpgenc does vcd`s at so how much space would a tv in card use at a higher resolution of say the 720x576 mentioned above ?

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Wayne

The belkin adaptor captures the video in raw uncompressed format (.avi) so thats why it uses so much space. If you captured using mpeg1 or 2 it would be a lot less. I use the leadtek tv2000xp deluxe card which will capture up 720 x 576 in raw (.avi), mpg2 or mpg1. You can also plug in a tv aerial and record from tv.

you can change the settings on the Belkin so that it does compress. i`ve used divx mpeg4 codec and several others and a 90 file went from 25gb uncompressed to 400ish mb.

Thanks for the info , the leadtek tv2000xp or similar looks like what I need :)
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Wayne

Okay, so the belkin thing is cool, and seems to do what i want, but i am totally baffled by the software that came with it!! I can`t seem to get the thing just to simply copy the video - it plays back at 453 frame/s sec, which is stupid.... any advice, or beter still any free software that i can use with it that is just one click and it copies it type stuff. I am not trying to set up a film business here.... :/

This item was edited on Wednesday, 5th November 2003, 22:59