Cost effective solution to capture VHS to computer ?

[via Email or PM]

Hi,

I'm trying to capture a collection of personal films that have been recorded initially using a camcorder and thn transferred to VHS. The VHS tapes vary from 180mins to 3hr and most of which are labelled as SHQ.

We do have a Bush VHS/DVD recorder, but in HQ mode it would require 3 DVDs per 3hr tape. With a large collection of VHS tapes (30-40) this would mean plenty of DVDs.

We are looking for a cost effective solution to capture VHS to computer. There are S video/ AV to USB devices available on EBay for £5 but surely they would offer very limited quality captures?

Can you you recommend any hardware that we could use in the £50 to £100 range that would offer reasonable quality captures?

Thanks
Adrian

This question was asked in a private message. Rather than hide our tech advice in private conversations, Site Staff will often answer PMs (from any site) here in the digitalFAQ.com forum, so that others may read and benefit from our expertise. Please continue the conversation here. Either login or join as a Free Member, and we can continue troubleshooting your video, photo or web related issue. Thanks for understanding our tech Q&A policies.

[lordsmurf]

Start by reading this, concerning 1-hour DVDs: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...mode-best.html

This is true: USB devices available on eBay generally offer very limited quality captures.
Most of them are the same fake/knockoff junk from China, and the quality is horrid. That's assuming you can get it to work, as most do not.

If you want to capture AVI, and then later compress to MPEG on your own, then the ATI 600 cards capture PAL AVI perfectly, even though it's marketed as an NTSC-only device. I use it quite a bit to capture PAL AVI files. It just doesn't capture PAL MPEG. But if you're converting the AVI to MPEG on your own, this doesn't matter, plus the slow-encoded MPEG may be better quality if you're transferring shaky home movies.

Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B00138EOH8

It could also be argued that 3 HQ DVDs is still less space than a single VHS tape. The concern should be on quality, not cramming as much as possible on a disc. Although, as mentioned, you can easily get 3 hours of quality Half D1 (352x576) on DVD, and it should look at least as good as the original VHS tape -- especially if you filter it with a good VCR, or good post-processing methods in Avisynth or VirtualDub.

List of suggested VCRs here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ing-guide.html
More on TBCs here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...time-base.html

If you need anything else, post a reply here. (Not more PMs.) Thanks.