Is it possible? I basically want it so that I can take all my old classics like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, Stingray and all my other Gerry Anderson stuff (alongside some other vids I have on VHS) and somehow transfer them into data of some description onto my PC be it in DivX, avi or whatever format. VHS -> DVD isn't an option as I have no recording equipment for DVDs - so, is it possible? My VCR has SCART output if it helps.

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

You can get TV capture cards for PCs, so you could get one of those, play the VHS through the TV, and capture what's on your TV.

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.

It is possible.. but you might have to spend some money on it.

My family transfered all our home videos, which would not last much longer on VHS, to DVD.

What you need is a Video Capture device.
Like this..
It will come with a program, and pretty much all you do once you have it figured out is to connect it up, play the movie, and as it plays it will be recorded on the computer. You can even edit it, breaking it up into scenes like a DVD menu if you have the time and patience.
There are alot of other devices out there, some better than others. This was just the first one I could find on the internet to show you what they are. Look around, read reviews to get what you want. I personally can't recoment a product unless you want to spend alot of money... ours is kinda pricey.

I have an ATI All In Wonder card that intergrates a TV tuner and video in and out capability. You can easily connect your video source to one of these. If you don't want an all in one type of card just go for a tv tuner or video capture card. No matter which way you go there should be included software that will create video files of whatever you feed it. A couple of things to think about are that the proprietary software may encode the video file using a hardware codec. That means the file can only be played on computers with similar or same video hardware. Other bundled software should allow you to encode in software codecs and give you more control over the type of file. Also, video editing, even minor editing, is extremely taxing of your computers resources. It is extremely easy to grind a computer to a halt and it can take a very long time for a computer to render your video files.

Another thing is that if you try to copy from a source that uses copy protection, such as a commercial VHS film, your video most likely will not come out. I would like to convert many of my VHS tapes to digital files to preserve them. Does anyone here know what kind of hardware I need to "filter" the signal? I believe they used to be called video stabilizers or something similar.

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Have you forgotten ...

The only type of copyright protection I know of on VHS tapes are those little tabs you break off to signify "Read only" to your VCR. Obviously vidoes you've bought of films have these ready broken, so to get round that you just put duct tape over the hole...

...but maybe I'm wide of the mark!

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Nope, that's about right!

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

In short, buy a ten quid TV card, hook up your TV and video, play, record the television, convert and burn.

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Wise men say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so look before you leap, so to speak, because the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill.

VIVO capable video cards (video in, video out) also work great, although that probably means spending a lot of money. Maybe a good option if you need a new card anyway, otherwise just get a good TV capture card, they are very practical anyways. LeadTek's newer ones are really good and only 40-50 USD. I'd Google for TV tuner sites and get all the goods on various TV tuner chipsets. The tuner chipset is what's most important. And the fact that it can capture and not just view TV, but I don't think you'll find a TV card anymore that can't capture.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

I bought a leadtek tv capture card last year for about $90 AU. It is a godsend. I usually just use it for TV, but it can do VCRs or any other input fine.

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Cantina Cloud | BCF | The Massassian 1, 2 & 3 | Gonk WoW Petition <- SIGN!
Corrupting the kiddies since '97

It all depends how serious you want to get.

Use the "video in" on a cheap video card as your capture device. Be prepared for dropped frames during capture and audio must be captured separately using sound card. I tried this and gave up soon after.

OR...

Use a dedicated capture card or USB device with on-board MPEG2 encoding. I'm using a Compro VideoMate Live USB. It's not as expensive as you would think and also comes with a built-in TV tuner. Capturing is dead easy using the supplied software. From there, just some simple edits with Ulead Video Studio and you can then re-encode to any avi or leave it as mpeg2 for burning to DVD, as DVD burners are dirt cheap now.

For those who want to overcome the VHS copy protection (Macrovision), you need to use a Time Base Corrector - a hardware video device. You can pick up cheap ones for about $A150.

Once you've decided to give video editing a go, hop over to www.videohelp.com - it's a god-send.

Raynar

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Pagewizard_YKS: "making your own lightsaber doesn't make you a nerd... "

[This message has been edited by Raynar (edited August 02, 2004).]

Incorrect. What you're talking about is the "write protect" tab. Commercially produced VHS films do indeed often have a form of copy protection. It is evident if you try to dub a tape from VCR to VCR. A similar effect can be seen if you attempt to view a protected DVD through a VCR of TV/VCR combo unit. I know that ATI cards recognize the copy protection. It specifically addresses that fact somewhere in one of my manuals. To test the effect I recorded a trailer from the THX widescreen VHS re-release of (original) Star Wars from a few years back and the captured clip was in fact unwatchable.

I decided to Google the topic and here's the search for anyone that is interested: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=VHS+copy+protection

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Have you forgotten ...

Erm, what? If you use a good video capture program, such as VirtualDub, it will let you capture audio at the same time, and as an added bonus, it is the best AVI video compression utility out there. And the best part, its free!

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

What he means is that usually VIVO cards don't have dedicated audio inputs and you have to plug the audio source into your sound card instead. Dedicated solutions sometimes include audio inputs.

Martyn, if I'm not mistaken, some commercial VHS tapes (I've seen this on Walt Disney tapes) DO use copy protection, similar to Macrovision (for DVDs), that will scramble the image if not being played directly to a TV that can decode it.

Oh, and www.videohelp.com IS a great site, check out their guides.

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Tous les guitaristes ont les doigts agiles.

That's exactly what I was referring to above. It is Macrovision. I have managed to successfully copy a few tape to tape, even one that had a Macrovision warning, but my latest attempt to capture video directly on my computer from a Star Wars tape was an utter failure. There are things available online but I question their effectiveness.

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Have you forgotten ...

I'm buying a TBC later this week to strip macrovision, I'll let you know how it goes.

Raynar



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Pagewizard_YKS: "making your own lightsaber doesn't make you a nerd... "

Old VCRs = no macrovision

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

Wow! You learn something new everyday! I stand corrected

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

I bought myself a TBC (Timebase corrector) from our local HiFi store. Plugged it in and it works just fine - macrovision is now stripped. Although the main reason I bought it was to clean up dodgy out of sync VHS tapes.

Raynar

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Pagewizard_YKS: "making your own lightsaber doesn't make you a nerd... "

I was wondering about this today. Thanks for the info. Obviously pirates can use this kind of stuff. It's so unfortunate that people who have legitimate needs to back things up have to resort to such measures. It's like my friend Matt told me, I guess. The only ones who are really affected by anti-piracy measures are legal users.

Anyways, I'm gone for about a week so if you wouldn't mine emailing some specifics about what exactly you purchased and from where please do so at steven.l.miller@us.army.mil

Thanks again!

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Have you forgotten ...

Wow - I thought this thing had long died. I didn't purchase anything in the end because I'm skint right now, but in about 6 weeks I've got one *major* payday coming up so I might consider getting something then.

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

Here's the box that I picked up.

Raynar

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Pagewizard_YKS: "making your own lightsaber doesn't make you a nerd... "