I have hours and hours of video footage (VHS-C) of my family that I would like to edit down (i.e. keep the good stuff, remove the bad/boring stuff) and transfer to DVD format. Seems like it would make for an awesome gift for friends and family.
I know there are services available where you can pay to have video tape transferred to digital format. I guess I could go this route, but they charge per tape, and were talking about 60+ VHS-C tapes. Once in digital format I could edit it myself on the computer, yes? If so, what kind of software do I need?
If I was to buy the equipment myself (to transfer and edit VHS-C to digital), what would it be? How much would it cost?
Either way I’m facing a huge, laborious task. I’m thinking it’s probably going to take me ~ 10,000 hours to complete!
I think the simplest, most painless, and probably the least costly way to do this is to get a PC with a tuner card. You can connect the VHS via the coax on the tuner card and input the files onto your harddrive.
You can then edit the video with software like Pinnacle (I use 9.0) or other various software.
If you buy a new PC for this task (I did for the same reasons as you), get a Media Center machine with the tuner card installed already. You may need to install a second harddrive (as did I - I have over 500 gigs now and I could use more) to make the room necessary to capture enough of your files to start the cutting and editing process.
You’re looking at an investment of around $1,000 for the new machine and the storage.
If you already have a beefy machine you can find different kinds of devices that capture data from a VHS (usb, tuner cards, etc.) and maybe upgrade the harddrive and buy some software for about $300 total. But you may still be unhappy with the results if the machine isn’t really fast.
Either. Whichever one gives the best playback quality.
Yep. In whatever format you choose using your recording program–most capture cards come with some limited recording and editing software which will probably do you just fine for your purpose, but for really professional looking results, you’ll probably want to invest in some better editing and DVD authoring software.
The tuner card is installed on the computer much like a fire wire (1394) card, a video card, or usb 2.0 card is installed. It will have (at least) a COAX connector on it for either connecting your cable signal, a stand alone antenea or the VCR, all using the same type of connection (the COAX). Once the software (you may have to open the software first) detects the signal it will offer you the option to record, or simply watch. If you choose to record the signal you will have to que the tape to the part you want to record and press play on the VCR and then press record on the software icon. Whala. The software grabs the video (in a predetermined or user selected format) and places it on your harddrive. You may then open the file at a later date and edit, copy, author and burn using the same software that you used to capture.
If you use Windows Media Center 2005 it will automatically capture and record the content (without additional software) if you record as you watch. You can then burn it to a disk, but the disk has to be played back on a Media Center machine or a machine with Media Player 10. There are ways around this, you can edit the software and render it to a different format, but this would require a third party application anyway (like Pinnacle).
In short, what you are doing is connecting the VCR to the TV tuner card so you can use your PC monitor as the TV. Since the signal is passing from the VCR through the computer to get to the monitor you have the ability to manipulate the data stream (record, edit, render, format, etc.).
Would this card work for my purposes? It’s only 19.99, when most of the others cards are in the 70-80 dollar range. What’s it missing? Why is it priced so low?
Also, my system is a dinosaur XP Pro, 128MB, PIII/750, 16MB Video (which just barely meets this cards min. reqs.), is that really going to hurt me here? What limitations am I going to see?
You’ll likely get a lot of dropped frames. One here or there is okay, but drop one frame per second and you’ll start to see the audio & video get out of sync quickly.
Actually, I stand corrected, we have 256MB of RAM, not 128MB. PIII/750, 256MB - Would I still see lots of dropped frames? If so, what would be the minimum setup that I would need?
Going through the tuner card, does my video memory come into play here at all?
I tried to do some video stuff with a system like yours except I had an 800 mhz processor and a 64 meg video card. It was painful.
Don’t forget, you’ll need a minimum of 40 gigs free on the harddrive just to have enough room to store the original tape and have enough room left to play with the editing features, rendering, etc. When you’re done with the project you’ll have basically two copies of it on your harddrive. The original and the modified copy. Once you burn the final piece, you can delete one or both of those and start with the next project.
That depends on how you’re doing things. You can capture directly to a highly compressed format like MPEG, and it won’t take up much disk space, but it will be more difficult and imprecise to edit. More importantly, though, it will look like crap. When a computer (especially one as slow as yours) has to simultaneously pull in video and audio streams, and compress them in realtime, quality takes a huge hit. Not only will your videos come out looking pixelated (blocky), but the strain on the CPU caused by realtime compression will make your card drop more frames.
Capturing uncompressed (or with light or lossless compression) yields a large filesize, but better editing capabilities and a far better end result, since the computer can crunch numbers at its leisure when it encodes the big file to MPEG-2 (DVD format).
I also wouldn’t advise capturing through coax to the TV tuner. Get a capture card with an RCA video input. Run the yellow (video) wire from your VCR to the card, and run the white and red (audio) wires to an RCA-to-mini-headphone adapter (you can get one at Radio Shack for a couple of bucks) and plug that into the Line-In jack on your soundcard.
If you can afford to invest a bit of time learning and a bit of money on equipment, you’ll be able to produce DVDs with nice menus and video quality virtually indistinguishable from the source.
Everyone has focused on the technology. Let me just mention from my own experience in doing this that if you are not already intimately familiar minute-by-minute with the content of each tape that you will spend in the neighborhood of 2-3 times the recorded time to edit it. I guess you already realize how big this could get.
You will have to view all the content; that’s one time. You might be able to shorten that if you are fast-forwarding through it, but you might not be able to get away with that if you don’t already know what’s there.
You will be going back and forth making snips, getting them just right, reviewing your work; that’s probably good for another 1-2 times. I don’t know the capacity of a VHS-C tape but if it’s an hour then you have at least 120 hours ahead of you.
You might want to see if your VHS-C camcorder supports a firewire-out connection. I have a Sony handycam with a firewire-out, and converting tapes to DVDs couldn’t be easier. No TV-tuner required…just connect the camcorder to the computer through firewire, and hit record on the computer.
I use a Mac, so I use the built-in iMovie app to record the movie. It will not only control the camcorder functions through the iMovie interface (hit play in the software to play the camcorder, etc), but it will also automatically create a new ‘scene’ at every point you had hit ‘Pause’ on the camcorder while recording the original movie. I’m sure it would work the same way with the equivalent software on Windows.
The quality of the conversions I’ve done this way has always been excellent. If your camcorder doesn’t support firewire-out, it might be worth it to just borrow one that does from a friend. If your computer doesn’t support firewire, though, I guess you’re stuck with using a TV-tuner card.
I was thinking an hour tape. It’s about 13 gigs per hour for AVI foratted digital tapes. Not sure what rate you will be at with your conversions.
So, you start with 13 gigs and you need some slosh room on the drive for trial and error and the final product. That’s where I got the 40 from. The worst thing you can do is run out of storage while working on a project. :rolleyes:
As ** SiouxChief** says, the fire wire method would be the best route (this is the method I primarily use since my Sony Handy-Cam is fire wire ready). The only time I’ve used the tuner card for this purpose was for older tapes that needed to be played from the VCR.
good luck in whatever route you choose to go, and let us know how things turn out.
Wow, thanks for all the great help! This place is fantastic!
No FireWire Out I’m afraid. We’ve been pondering about getting a new computer for awhile. This might be all the additional ammo I need, to convince my wife that it’s time to get one.
