Overwhelmed with info to digitize VHS tapes!
 

all i wanna do is digitize my 500+ VHS and 200 High 8, Mini DV, etc...tapes for my own personal use but this rabbit hole is much too deep. every year or so i dive back in hoping a new product has been invented to get the best quality out of my tapes so i can spend time doing that and not researching.

i almost pulled the trigger on a AVT-8710 on eBay until i came here and saw they're crap, too. good lord!

can someone just tell me what the best option(s) is for me for under a grand? even that is way more than i wanna spend but i wanna get on this before i'm too old to even view these tapes!

i'm not expecting any good answers. there are just too many options and my brain doesn't have the bandwidth to deal anymore and i'm sure every newbie comes in here and asks the same questions. i'm basically throwing a hail mary pass until i put the tapes away again until next year.

The hardware part is not the issue, The after the capture part is the most worrying for that many tapes, Imaging if you have to de-interlace, crop and/or resize and encode over 700 tapes, if we add the capturing time of a 1.5 hrs per tape average and double that for after capture processing, you're looking at over 3000 hrs, @ 4hrs a day it is 750 days or over 2 years.

If I was you I will be assessing the contents first to minimize the effort, for commercial tapes try to get as many as you can on DVD, or other digital formats including non physical digital media. For home videos see if you can get help from other family members. For non important tapes try to capture directly into a lossy codec, not suggested for high quality but will get the job done quicker.

Now for the capturing hardware, If conventional methods that rely on computer CPU scare you, get an analog to SDI converter, All the processing is done under one hood (analog to digital conversion, TBC, Proc Amp ...), what goes to the computer is a steady digital video with locked audio, You do however need a desktop with digital SDI port (PCIe card) or a SDI to USB3 adapter if using a portable device. There are legacy analog to SDI converters that are still being made to date such as BE75 from Ensemble Designs ($1400), or completely new products such as SM03 from SingMai also around ($1400).

For the sheer number of tapes you have I would suggest a SDI recorder instead of computer and SDI adapter, It records lossless or into a lossy format ready for viewing and sharing from its internal hard drive, Kind of like the Chinese Clearclick but it's a professional device, I don't have enough info about such recorders but I know Black Magic and Grass Valley have few of them ranging from SD all the way to 4K and priced accordingly.

If you wish to go the USB stick and computer route there are a lot of success stories, you do have to learn how to deal with the inherit issues associated with such workflows and sometimes requires more expensive pieces to fix such issues, It could run into the $3k mark if the tapes are not cooperative.

Can I delete this post?
 

After thinking about this more I don’t have the money nor the time for this now. I’ve replied to the reply via PM with a hearty thanks and just want to remove the post. I’ll come back when I’m able to follow through. TIA.

Come back when you have time and budget, and we'll make this happen for you. :)

Video capture requires those two main items: time, funds. You cannot avoid either. It will happen. And less funds = more time, more funds = less time. Pick your poison.

The actual VHS conversion process requires 3 items:
- VCR
- some form of TBC
- capture card

Not just any random VCR/TBC/card, but specific items known for quality and usability. Ideally
- JVC/Panasonic S-VHS VCR with line TBC
- DataVdeio/Cypress type frame TBC
- quality ATI/Pinnacle capture card

eBay is full of shysters, and you probably bought a black AVT-8710 from an idiot reseller that doesn't know a TBC from a toaster. eBay is not the venue to acquire quality video gear, it's mostly junk, and none of it is truly "tested" or "working" as claimed by know-nothing resellers.

Thank you, my friend! Your little reply was more helpful than the hours I spent so far. Mike sent me a PM with an offer to talk on the phone and Latreche34 was helpful as well. I feel confident when I'm ready to take this on, you guys can help me get set up. I didn't buy the 8710, I just saw some videos that said it was a great TCB then I read on here you said they were not, at least the black ones.

I'll be back when I can spend some time and money. Thank you all! I wish you good healthy, too, Lordsmurf!

That’s cool of them

Good luck with it.

Re your MiniDVs, they need a totally different workflow but you may already be set up for that. What camcorder do you have and do you have a Firewire port on your PC?

I'm in the same boat as you with over 200 home video tapes. Just starting my journey and it's mindboggling. Lordsmurf put together a nice hardware package for me, now I'm trying to educate myself on how to use everything correctly and efficiently. I understand the flow of things but getting everything to work correctly is a chore. I put this off for a long time as well as I was overwhelmed with the information, options, and opinions. Best of luck!