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Whats the best budget friendly way to transfer vhs tapes (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Extrasvhx9he@lemmy.today to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Hiya, pretty much the title. I have a dozen tapes I want to backup before age takes its toll. My basic idea after watching some videos online is to buy a hardware based upscaler that can interface with my vcr then throw that signal to a video capture card and record on my computer. I'll go with name brands to avoid problems but is that really the best method? I want to avoid sending them to a service since it will cost more than just buying the hardware in the first place and I got time to kill.

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[–] bestusername@aussie.zone 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I did this last year for a bunch of family videos.

I bought an used VHS/HDD/DVD combo, recorded the VHS to HDD to DVD, then used my PC to rip those DVD to MKV and chucked them on my NAS for access/backup.

Quality is fine compared to the originals.

[–] random_character_a@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Was the HDD -> DVD absolutely necessary? Seems like one extra transcoding for no reason.

Did the HDD have it's own partition type or video format directly unreadable by PC? Then it's understandable that one wouldn't wanna go through all that hassle of making it directly work on PC just for better video quality.

[–] bestusername@aussie.zone 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mate I can't remember if it was a limitation of the old Sony combo or not, it's likely it was or I wouldn't have done it that way.

I do remember looking into putting the HDD into my PC, since I didn't do it, I'm going to assume it was a proprietary format and couldn't be read.

This was a set and forget process for 90's quality home videos.

[–] random_character_a@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Many manufacturers made them deliberately uncompatible with PC to dodge probable copyright problems.

However they usually didn't reinvent the wheel and those formats were common, but "sabotaged" by small alterations. Analysing them on a code level would reveal how they were altered and possibilities to fix them.

...but it's too much hassle for few VHS tapes.

[–] davefischer@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Are there any VHS decks that will allow digital transfer without writing a DVD?

Edit: Found it! There are MiniDV / SVHS combo decks with digital out via firewire. Pricey though.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Yes. Just get an RCA to USB adapter and use software to capture the video as it's playing on the VCR.