Capturing video from VHS tapes...

[Inearthed]

So I have some video that I want to get onto my computer; VHS tapes of some performances that I want to try and encode and throw on my band's website, some bootleg vids, and my VHS guitar lesson tapes. Does anyone have any suggestions for a capture card of some sort? Thanks!

[Newc]

Re: Capturing video from VHS tapes...

Canopus ADVC-55 - http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC55/pm_advc55.asp

I got one recently and it beats the shit out of an ATI All-In-Wonder 9200 capture card - the video quality is near perfect (if not perfect), and I notice only a hair's delay when capturing both video and audio at the same time. The ATI was choppy with just video, and even worse with both audio and video at the same time.

[Shawn Lutz]

Re: Capturing video from VHS tapes...

osprey 210 or 230 card
http://www.viewcast.com/products/osprey/osprey210.html

That will get the video and audio to your PC. Once you have that card you can do a couple different things. You can play the video from the deck to the PC and save as an AVI file, problem is avi's can be huge and take up a good chunk of disk space. The other option (still need the capture card) is to get windows media 9 encoder (free from microsoft) then encode using the VHS tape as a source. Save as a wmv.

[SeventhSon]

Re: Capturing video from VHS tapes...

Do you want to edit before you digitize? If not just get a DVD recorder with analog inputs, you can get one at Target for around $150. If you want to edit before you digitize, you need to get the video onto your PC or Mac as Digital Video (DV) so you can edit in MovieMaker or iMovie. In that scenario you should use the Canopus device.

[Inearthed]

Re: Capturing video from VHS tapes...

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'm going to do a little bit more research on this stuff and figure it out from there.

[Jim Shine]

Re: Capturing video from VHS tapes...

My ATI 9200 works flawlessly. But it was factory installed, and I am not sure if that makes a difference.

[SeventhSon]

Re: Capturing video from VHS tapes...

Yep, there are some high quality video capture cards like the ATI All-In-Wonder series (e.g., the 9200) or the nVidias that do onboard encoding/decoding (and thus don't need to use the PC's CPU) that provide excellent results as well.

The Canopus gives you flexibility in that you don't need a PC. You can use it to copy analog onto DV tape, do your editing there and use a DVD recorder to burn the results onto DVD.

But there is certainly nothing wrong with buying a high quality video capture card for your PC either.