USB capture device and streaky output
 

Hello!

First off, I'd like to thank you for hosting this site. It has a wealth of information on capturing old VHS tapes that I had thought would have been lost through time.

I have a number of old VHS tapes that I'm hoping to digitize. I'm running an old Sanyo DA4HEAD Hi-Fi VHR-9424 which I assume is less than ideal, along with a cheap $20 dongle that digitizes the signal through a USB cable. I don't wish to purchase a new VHS player (this seems to be the best of three in the household) as there's only five tapes that have a significant amount of content on them (and about 10 others with a few clips here and there).

The USB capture device ("UCEC Video DVR Capture") was not compatible with Windows 10 or any recording software aside from the software it came with (I think it's called Honestech 2.5). As a result the files being exported are mpeg-2 and rather large in filesize. I'm also doing this on a laptop I bought back in 2004 that seems to struggle during the recording process. The filesize doesn't bother me, but if there's going to be a significant hit to quality, I can probably splurge on a new one.

I'm not looking to make these videos perfect, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you could let me know if a new capture device would have any impact (I figured all capture devices would be the same), and if there's any easy way to get rid of some of the streaks seen in some of the videos (some portions of the tape seem to have this, others are fine). I've attached a picture of the mpeg-2 output.

Thank you!

That video is terrible -- but sadly expected with an old consumer VHS VCR, no TBC, and Chinese-made $20 capture card. That's the sort of low-grade quality you get, if it even captures at all.

Have you considered just paying somebody else to transfer those 5 tape? It's work we do. Contact Us.

For such a small amount of tapes, I agree, buying full video hardware workflow not ideal.

And to answer your question, no, the capture device won't make much difference. The better VCR and TBC will. But those are costly devices ($$$), only worthwhile if this is a hobby, profession/business, or you have a large amount of tapes to transfer (and DIY is cheaper than outsourcing).

Hi Lordsmurf,

Appreciate you getting back to me so quickly! I agree with everything you mentioned; the reason why I've been relucatant to send the tapes away for conversion is I've been afraid they may get damaged or lost, but I suppose getting this done properly is better than having it done poorly, even if it's more convenient. I think I'll take a poor copy of each of the videos using my current VCR over the coming days/weeks so that worst-case I'll still have the low-quality copies (I would be shipping from another country).

I'll reach out through the link you provided once this is done.

In the interim, I've digitized a couple tapes all in one go, but the majority of the video I wish to crop out. Is there an easy way to cut or combine (in a few cases where I clipped the video too soon) these files (Mpeg-2)? I believe a family member has the full suite of Adobe software at work so if any of that stuff would work, it should be possible for it to get done using that. I've seen Womble mentioned in the "Edit Video, Audio" forum - is that a preferred method?

I realize I'm diverging from the topic of this thread so I'll end it there, but I greatly appreciate your help.

When you do make contact, include a link to this thread. :2cents:

Yes, you'll want to use Womble MPEG Video Wizard (my favorite), or VideoRedo (not as good), for editing MPEG. You want a non-reencoding application for the MPEG work.