Copy old VHS to PC - best capture device?

[^woody^]

Can anyone recommend any capture devices to copy VHS videos to the computer?

I'm not looking for top quality, or top prices, as the existing recordings are not that good.

I've seen some USB devices from "EzCap" which seem to get good reviews on Amazon, but not sure about which model would be best

 

[ericmark]

I have a TV card in my PC. Aldi I think which will allow a comp sink input so will record from a VCR. Not tried with VCR but used with Camcorder which is same sort of thing.

However with my stand alone Hard-drive/DVD recorder I have been disappointed. The first an Aldi one would transfer tapes to DVD without a problem and before it failed I had done most of the tapes. However the second a Philips refused to transfer commercial tapes due to copy-write protection.

Also VHS is rather low quality and clearly there is no point in transferring at a super high quality. The PC DVD writer will only pack half the amount of time onto a DVD that the stand alone one will do. With a 4.7GB DVD the stand alone will cram on 8 hours play time. I rarely use that quality but regularly use the 6 hours onto a 4.7GB DVD option.

I have found my PC is a tad too slow to record direct I have to switch off everything to ensure it works so I have when wanting to write to hard drive first recorded onto a re-writeable DVD then ripped onto PC to MP4 format.

But the big problem is Copy-write protection as of course no one can advertise as ignoring copy-write protection so you don't know if it will work until you try it which a a bit too late.

 

[Sam Gangee]

For the record, the word is "copyright" - the right to copy.

 

[timtheenchanter]

Also VHS is rather low quality and clearly there is no point in transferring at a super high quality. The PC DVD writer will only pack half the amount of time onto a DVD that the stand alone one will do. With a 4.7GB DVD the stand alone will cram on 8 hours play time. I rarely use that quality but regularly use the 6 hours onto a 4.7GB DVD option.

This depends on the encoder you use, converXtoDVD will let you put hours of video on one disc (my record so far is 10hours) it simplyhas a little traffic light system for quality, 10hrs tipped it into the low quality, but was still fine for the kids cartoons on the 7" car player.

I have the ion video2pc thing, seems ok, once set up, which was rather fiddly getting the software settings correct. has composite, L&R audio and S-vid inputs. I think they do an all in one unit with built in VCR as well.

quality before/after was about equal, and it doesn't complain about commercial recordings (or hasn't so far) though the only ones I have copied cant be bought on dvd.

We had a standalone at work, but it was so fussy on media, and wouldn't accept most commercial recording, but would never say so, and just coastered discs.

 

[GRC]

OP, what end-result do you want?

Do you want to keep the video on your PC? Do you want to make DVDs of the VHSs? Do you want to put video clips on YouTube?

This will have a bearing on what you choose, as will your budget for the project.

If you want to make DVDs, my recommendation is to forget the PC and get a VHS/HDD/DVD recorder. I use the Panasonic, and recommend it highly. However, at Amazon's current price, you're looking at £350 or so. You can copy DVD to HDD, edit it there, sort titles and chapters, get it into the format you want, then write to DVD

This has the advantage of being a usable TV reception recorder as well.