VHS conversion for 300 tapes?
 

Hello everyone,

I have a question about VHS conversion, my mother has over 300 VHS dating back 30 years! She really wants to convert them to digital, we have bought a Honestech Digibox vhs to digital converter, I have tried to
convert a few vhs's for her, it works, but is causing our PC to crash after an hour or so! It converts to MPEG2. My brother also bought her another type of converter - Digitnow - full media recorder, which records without the need of a pc, it records to an SD card but only in AVI format, which is worse than MPEG2..

My question is what would be the best device i can buy her?? I have been looking around the internet myself, but all the products just seem to look the same at this stage..
Ideally we want to keep the quality as good as we can, i don't see the point
in converting 300 tapes in poor quality..her VHS tapes are unusually very good quality for their age,

Have you any idea of what i could purchase?

Kate

Capturing in one step with one button click never going to produce the quality you're hoping for, because capturing analog video in reality is a multi step process, It starts with a good VHS player, a good capture card, The capturing is only one step, followed by frame edges cleaning/masking, de-interlacing and encoding to a playable format with the highest compression settings.

There are a lot of materials in this forum if you want to dive in and learn, Otherwise just be happy with what you got.

First, there is no single device to get the best quality. High quality VCR + high quality Time Base Corrector + high quality capture device + multiple hours of learning and testing = best quality.

Second, the equipment above will cost $2500-3000+, a quality Time Base Correct is ~$2000. The upside is you can resell it most of it , particularly the TBC for a good return.

Start by reading and thoroughly reading this article: http://www.digitalfaq.com/editorials...g-workflow.htm. Everything except the cameras and necessity of multiples of the equipment applies to home video conversion.

Also read some of the numerous posts about video capture. Here's a start: http://www.digitalfaq.com/search-res...q=best+capture

If you're understandably shocked and overwhelmed, it's understandable. Set your expectations of cost and time to what quality you're willing to except. For perspective, $3000/300 tapes = $10/tape + time = ~$5-7/hour . How much is savings Grandma's memories worth?

I wouldn't scare people with 5 figures cost, They can always start with the VCR and computer they have, once they learn they will surely come back for better advice on better equipment, None of us drop that much money when we were learning, Have you?

Low 4 figures, not 5. And just stating the truth.

Some tapes may have one play in them and will be completely gone with no second or third chance. I stopped capturing years ago since there's nothing so precious on tape that I couldn't live without. It was a different world back then when the TBC-1000 and ATI All In Wonder I had were new and in the $$$ range.

The fact is:

Poor is easy and cheap.
Fair to good requires invest in equipment in the $$$ to low $$$$ range.
Best as the OP and so many others ask for is in the $2500 to $3000 range.

Not looking to scare anyone away, but the facts are the facts.

If you want to do this as a DIY project it's possible as long as you're a motivated individual with some technical skills and you're willing to learn from what's on this board and elsewhere on the internet :2cents: There isn't a mainstream product that can do what you wish unfortunately.

Bottom line is we need to know more about your ultimate objective. Playing VHS tapes becomes more problematic over time as working VHS VCRs become scarce and tapes wear. Digital media like thumb drives and SD cards work but are easy to lose or trash, require compatible playback software, and not convenient for less nimble fingers as one ages. It becomes a matter of trade-offs.

How "good" will meet your needs? So it looks no worse than playing on her VHS VCR, or do you want restoration to correct brightness, contrast, color balance, de-noise, edit out unwanted stuff like commercials or shaky camera, or something in between?

Is a DIY project? And if so who will do it? What is their technical expertise? Their willingness to learn? How simple does it have to be?

Is there a target date for completion? (300 VHS tapes is potentially 600 hours just to play the tapes if they are full and recorded at SP speed. Working steady with capture to a PC, and some editing and restoration that is a 6 month to year long project working at it full time.

What is the condition of the tapes? Do they all play well now? Is a lot of it home video shot in poor light such that the images have a lot of noise in them? Is there a priority for some tapes over others.?

Budget for initial investment and willingness to sell gear bought once used?

What is the intended final distribution media; MP4 on SD card, DVD, file sharing site such as youtube (but beware of copyright material)

Arguably the simplest "1-click" solution that will give results about as good as the current VHS playback is to play the VHS tape into a decent DVD recorder.