Transferring VHS to DVD?

[625 Alive]

Hi everyone - first post here. I don't use a combo machine to transfer my old video tapes as it would only be good for VHS anyway. I can transfer from just about every format since the Sony CV2000 in 1965. I play everything through my HVR-M25AE DV player which acts as a conduit straight into the firewire card in my PC. I then capture in Adobe Premiere as AVI uncompressed files. It works a treat as I can just leave a tape running and then drag the file onto the time line and edit out what isn't needed. I can then export as an MP4 or another uncompressed AVI to a hard drive. If I want to watch on the TV I can burn to a DVD and see it in glorious interlaced video or watch an MP4 via a USB stick. Definitely best to save precious family stuff onto numerous hard drives though and not CD's as other people above have also pointed out

[Fidelity Fan]

Originally Posted by German Dalek

Hello folks!

These posts are about 10 years old.

I think it is time for a fresh-up!

DVD-RAM is known as a long time lasting media.
What about Blue Ray?

What is your experience?

Computers of today are much faster, new software is available.

What is your advice to store our videos?

It will be fine if the result of this discussion will be added to the sticky post!
Thanks in advance!

German Dalek

Thanks for the tip about DVD-RAM being a long lasting video. It would be interesting to know if Blu-ray is as well.

I transferred all my VHS tapes to DVD 16 years ago using a Liteon LVW-5006 recorder with Verbatim branded DVD+Rs, they are still playable today.

Although this range of recorders had burners with a very short life, certain models of standard PC burners, particularly, Sony and Liteon ones could be used. Otherwise, I have found them to be excellent and have stood the test of time. I now use a model LVW-5026 which is an HDD+DVD recorder, but note that it only has an analogue TV tuner built in.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Someone I know had some family video-camera footage transferred to DVDs and I was asked to copy them. The origanals were DVD-RWs but of course I used DVD-Rs for the duplicates.

I had difficulty in convincing him to treat the copies as the archivable ones, he found that contra-intuitive, not least because he had paid for the RWs to be made, I did my bit FOC.

[RobustReviews]

I have started offering this as a commercial service (the events hire business isn't exactly rocking at the moment) and I really prefer to provide clients' transfers on USB as files.

I do burn DVDs on request, but I think providing files is the way to go now, they can be duplicated instantaneously, shared all over the planet in moments etc..

[ben]

Bumping this as am considering a USB device to record composite video sources to PC as digital files. Any recommendations?

[toshiba tony]

Only killing time but what i have done is take all my material and put it on a hd\dvd writer. They were very popular in the 90's. Copy all your videos to the hard drive then just extract (as and when) you want to dvd. Doing it this way means that even if the newly made dvd's should fail you have "back ups on the hard drive. Mine is the LG RD7500. In it's day it was an entry level machine available cheapy on various sites on the net.

[spamfritter]

This subject is a bit of a minefield . I have a Toshiba RD 97DTKB Freeview DVD / HDD recorder and I think it is impossible to go from a DVD to the HDD as that would allow unlimited copying and I cannot find a way to do it in the 95 page handbook. Copying the other way works OK but I have found that the aspect ratio of the Panasonic TV it is connected to needs to be permanently set to 16 : 9 otherwise the DVD aspect is squashed horizontally. You cannot leave the TV on auto aspect as they seem to talk to each other over the HDMI link. I can couple a VHS or Beta player to the back and record from there to the HDD and then burn a DVD. I also use a Honestech vidbox to convert tapes to my PC via a USB port.

As has already been said DVD's deteriorate even though originally we were sold the idea that there is so much redundancy and error correction that they should still play forever. Ditto CD's but even the commercial recordings fail and the amount of error checking / correction has been reduced to increase capacity. The days of the Philips test of black line across a CD have long gone.

Going back to my Toshiba recorder. It has a 1TB HDD and can store a lot of films etc but the big problem according to the handbook is that the HDD is tied / coded to the recorder so I can not plug it into a PC. A similar problem occurs if you plug in an external HDD to the USB port so that method of long time storage is not particularly practical and if the Toshiba goes "T**S UP" then the lot is lost. I believe they use some proprietory custom form of the Android system.

I spent a lot of time in 2019 prior to going to Australia to visit family in that I copied literally a hundred or so home recorded DVD recordings over to a 1TB HDD USB module as MP4 recordings using my PC and took it with me. All the recordings played back OK on my PC but when I got to OZ and plugged it into my daughters USB port on her TV which is allegedly MP4 compatible less than a third played back reliably so when I got back home I checked and sure enough I had the same problem here. It appears that not all MP4 recordings are the same and there are many factors that can effectively b***er up the structure of the encoding. It appears MP4 has may dialects !

PC's. Where can I begin ? The big problem is legacy systems. Y'know -- Mr microsoft decrees that the picture or video format you used is no longer liked so they drop it. All your recordings suddenly become obsolescent as does the software needed to play them back. e.g. Flash player. It may be bug riddled but now microsoft has cut into my windows 10 and not only disabled it, but on the last major update wiped it completely out of the computer. Unfortunately Mr HP used some modules of flash player so now my printer scanner is useless in win 10 so I resort to Vista on another PC. Similarly you have to make sure all old recordings / pictures are updated to a new format immediately. Even JPEG has several incompatible dialects now and I have 3 PC's running Win XP, Win Vista and now Win 10 just to get round problems. To cap it all, I made a terrible mistake recently and everybody learn from this one -- On the last windows 10 big update which sneaked through without me knowing it I had left my backup drive for all my data and my MP4 recordings drives plus an SD card all plugged in to various ports. Mr microsoft came in with his big hatchet and as part of the "upgrade" with new but probably unwanted whizzbangs etc. proceeded to not just tweak win 10 but wipe it and replace the complete operating system with a new one. Took about 6 hours of continuous downlods and HDD working to do it. Aparrently now when they say you OS has reached the end of it's life they mean it ! This upgrade scrambled my data backup drive which I am now slowly recovering but completely b***ered the MP4 video recordings drive which is unrecoverable and wiped the SD card of all its pictures. Again, unrecoverable. Oh, and by the way, I have found out that HDD's also have a finite mechanical life as well. after 5 or so years of continuous use they can or will commit suicide.

I have come to the conclusion that no storage mechanism / device or method is foolproof ! You pays your money and hope. Tape grows mould and deteriorates over time losing magnetism as well as shedding surface as the plasticiser dries out. Tapes also take up a lot of room and need to be stored at the right temperature and humidity. All the film and TV companies must have a nightmareish situation maintaining and retaining recordings.

Rant Over !

[Vintage Engr]

Quite a long time ago, I did a lot of work with Pathe, where they were transferring their 16mm films to DVCpro for archive.....

I still have a brand-new DVCpro machine, but I'll bet the tapes are now degrading.

David.

[toshiba tony]

I posted a letter on here a few weeks ago, I have dementia now but my methods have served me well. Nowadays the only difficulties I have is remembering to put the DVD recorder in the correct mode for recording, used to be so easy. Was a tv engineer for 50 years and sometimes struggle to turn the tv on. But with care and double checking connections results are usually good. The VCR is mediocre quality, ok, don't laugh, it's a Sharp, but it has done me well. And the DVD recorder is a multi standard LG. I put it all on hard drive first and then do lossless copies to DVD. No Macro errors as it's only home made tapes that I copy and apart from the odd chroma drop out results are good, but good luck with which ever method you use.
Tony Walker

[Paul Stenning]

My approach is to capture to PC first. The videos can then be edited if required to tidy up bad transitions, cut out any pointless bits and trim the ends etc. I keep them as MP4 files but they could be authored to DVD if required. Many newer DVD and Blu-Ray players will play video files on a DVD-R disk or USB directly without needing to be in video DVD format.

I am now using a "Hauppauge HD PVR" box for video capture. Despite the "HD" name this also does SD. It has analogue component HD sockets on the back and SD composite, s-video and audio sockets on the front. It connects to a PC by USB2 and has a separate 5V power supply. It contains a decent MP4 hardware encoder and there is a lag of about a second between the video being played and the capture preview on the PC due to the encoding.

They are available on eBay second hand for around £20-£30, but try to get one with the original software/driver disk if possible. There is a normal version and a gaming version but they are the same hardware - the only difference is the latter has leads to connects to three types of games console and doesn't have the schedule recording software, so no important differences for us. Don't get the "Hauppauge HD PVR 2" as this doesn't have the SD inputs.

The software is the usual Arcsoft Showbiz which seems to be bundled with many capture devices, plus a driver package which adds the relevant controls to the capture section of the software. If you have a copy of Showbiz from another device then the drivers from the Hauppauge website should work (if not PM me and I'll send you the drivers from my disk).

I use it with an old Windows 7 laptop (Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, SSD) which works reasonably well. Occasionally it locks up part way through a capture or the capture won't start properly, requiring a power-cycle of the HD PVR and restart of Windows to sort out. I don't know whether it's the capture box, software, Windows or laptop but it's not really an issue. It will probably work on Windows 10 but I haven't tried it, and would probably be happier with a better spec PC.

One useful point is that it captures commercial pre-recorded videos fine, so any copy protection on the tapes doesn't affect capture. This is useful for making copies of these tapes to reduce wear on the tapes and player (I obviously keep the original tapes too).

I have used a couple of those little USB capture devices that use MPG compression previously, and had various problems with them, especially with sound either not capturing properly or getting out of sync etc. The Hauppauge HD PVR does a better job, the picture quality is better, the sound quality is excellent and stays in sync, and it doesn't seem to be upset by poor quality tapes.

[Amtec123]

I know this is a really old thread, but I have to disagree with the OP's comment:-

Originally Posted by Boom

Interestingly it was said by many in the trade that a VHS tape recording was only good for about 6 months. Have they been proved wrong....

Utter nonsense I have many VHS recordings made on a Pana 7300 m/c some 30 + years ago which still play fine today, all be it in mono audio (original format). The picture quality of these recordings look better now when played on a more modern m/c, this is mainly due to advances in the replay chain electronics.

However as someone said earlier transfer your tapes, but keep the originals.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Hi Amtec123.
It's probably bad form for me to speak for somebody else, but as the OP hasn't posted since 20th Apr 2018 here goes.

See those dots the OP put instead of a question mark? (Perhaps he should have used a Percontation point ⸮ )

I would say that to most people reading, it indicates irony.
In other words, the OP doesn't believe it's true, any more than you or I do.

[Amtec123]

Hi Graham,
Thank you for pointing out my error.

However it would not surprise me if some dodgy types did not try to drum up business by churning out this nonsense.

[Welsh Anorak]

I get a lot of people bringing VHS wedding and holiday videos in to transfer to DVD. I do point out that they must keep the originals which surprisies them, and when I ask them whether they think DVD wil still be around in fifteen years time I get a blank look...

As always, this forum is educational - a percontation point? Only been around since 1580, it appears. Thank you Graham!

[Amtec123]

Thanks Glyn,
Well I'm glad it wasn't only me who hadn't heard of a "percontation point".

I wondered if it might have been a "Blackadder" ism to upset Dr Johnson's dictionary, but I digress.

[MarfunAMD]

Hi there This is all so interesting as i have just found some old VCR tapes and I'm looking for some way to get them transferred.

[spamfritter]

Hi and welcome. First thing you need to do is to find a good working VCR. I presume the tapes are VHS. You should be able to pick up one easily and relatively cheaply. basically, if you want to do it at low cost, Feed the video and sound outputs into a DVD / HDD recorder and copy to the HDD. You can then burn the file on the HDD afterwards to a DVD and a lot of DVD / HDD recorders will allow editing before you burn so you can hack out all the ads and other rubbish at the start and end.

[emeritus]

When I last visited a local charity shop before christmas, they had two or three VHS+ DVD recorders. I bought one as a back-up to my own one.

[Ambientnoise]

Various companies will do a vhs to dvd transfer. The most basic and economical that I’ve found is “memories to video” in Bristol. The postage will probably exceed the cost of the transfer. Voice of experience speaking - check what’s on the tape if possible as sometime “precious” tapes have been later used for other stuff, accidentally or otherwise !

[dave walsh]

Martin isn't seeking to transfer tapes himself. I gave him much the same advice Ambient, after he contacted me! He is prepared to post out a single tape which he highly values but I cautioned against this given the current delays and backlog in the system leading to items going missing. There are Transfer Services on the High Street in most areas, which has the additional advantage of being able get exactly what you want in terms of video quality. Alternatively, some of the more national companies appear to use a dedicated courier for security but of course there is likely to be a charge for that.

Dave W