[dingwall]

Hi,

I have 3 very precious old VHS home videos full of stuff including friends, family and parents now no longer with me. What is the best way of transferring these to DVD? I am not bothered about editing, as the raw footage and audio is wonderful and adds to the charm and memories.

I want high quality, but most importantly I do not want to risk losing or damaging these tapes whatsoever.

I was thinking of borrowing a decent £200ish DVD recorder (any recommendations?) and just recording direct from my VCR (a £500 Panasonic deck that was well reviewed in its day). I guess the VCR playback is the most important factor, or do DVD recorders vary a lot also?

What eqpt do Jessops or someone better use? Do you think they would let me come in with the tapes and literally sit with them watching the transfer in action? I cannot risk damaging/losing the tapes at all.

Any advice or experience most welcome. Thanks a lot.

dingwall

The easy way is to use a Canopus ADC box, I have the 100 and its great for this type of work, I use it regularly to transfer tapes and dvd footage to digital format for my pc then edit it in Vegas 6. I did all my silent super 8 movie films with this box then burnt them to dvd.

These boxes are cheapish but give excellent quality, you can buy one for about £100.00.
I do not think they would let you sit there and watch if you took your tapes in to be transferred.
As for damaging the tapes its always a risk and I would say its a higher risk if you use another vcr other than the one that recorded the tape.
But don't forget if you do go this route then you need plenty of h/d space for the captured footage unless you write the dvd as the footage is played.
( not recommended )


Gizz

[felix2]

Hi,

Personally, if you're only ever going to do this for those 3 tapes, I'd go with your original idea of playing from your VCR to a borrowed DVD recorder.

Obviously the possible risk to your tapes comes from the quality (and cleanliness) of your VCR mechanism. As gizz says, the 'safest' thing would be to play the tapes back on the same machine they were recorded on. But Panasonic have arguably always made the best quality, most reliable (and therefore kindest to tapes!) consumer VCRs available, so if your Panny VCR was originally £500, and you're happy it's never chewed a tape (and is never likely to), then I reckon you'd struggle to better that. If the VCR has got S-video output, you'd also want to consider whether that would give better video quality to the DVD recorder than a standard composite connection. (And I personally don't understand whether it would or not, if the tapes are only VHS rather than S-VHS??? Someone else will know!!)

Yes, there is a wide (well, certainly noticeable!) range of video quality you can get from a DVD recorder. You might want to check the DVD Recorder forum on here for more advice, but when I got my Toshiba RDXS34, 18 months ago, the serious contenders were Panasonic again, Toshiba, Pioneer, and Sony. JVC were also recommended for dubbing from VHS, and LG and Samsung were also considered to be worth looking at.

For best quality, you only want to put 1 hour of video onto each DVD-R. (Which would probably equate to 'HQ' on the recorder, or about 8 Mbps video, with the audio either being uncompressed at 1410 kbps CD quality or with minimal compression at about 384 kbps which is twice as 'good' as MP3.) Assuming your tapes are longer than 1 hour, it's a lot easier if you know someone who's got a combined DVD / hard disk recorder. That way you can transfer the whole tape onto the hard disk in one go, and then break it up into chunks of 1 hour or less (and add chapter marks and menu thumbnails etc) before burning onto DVD. It also makes it easier to produce 2 or 3 identical DVDs at the same time, rather than playing the tapes again. (Although you could obviously copy a master DVD on your PC anyway.)

But before you think archiving videos to DVD will be the end of all your worries, I did have a waffle about the lifespan of recorded DVDs and archiving to them in this thread a few weeks ago. Ultimately DVDs are a distribution format rather than an archive medium, - but they can be used for archiving (as I do) if you're aware of the potential pitfalls and keep regular backups!

[redsox_mark]

The Canopus converters do a fine job, and if you want to edit on a PC they are a good way to go.

But if you don't want to edit, then your original idea of using a DVD recorder is a much easier option. And if you use a decent one, the quality of the end result should be good. Ideally get a model with a time based corrector (TBC) - this can correct errors coming from the analogue tapes. Check in the DVD recorders forum (within AV Forums) for recommendations. (I'd start by looking at Panasonic).

[jaymac]

If you are not going to edit get yourself a DVD recorder. Aside from the S-video subject the best you can do is record at max quality which is 1 hour per dvd as Felix states though standard play might be good enough then you can get 2 hours on.There is even a compromise to that with some recorders I use a panasonic. Whereby if you have a section of tape which is say an hour and a bit there is a flexible record choice so it will be recorded somewhere between XP and SP.

[dingwall]

Thanks for the replies and help guys, much appreciated.

Still unsure of what to do...via PC might be easier (chapter marks, cutting the video so scenes start and finish on the same DVD, making a little menu). I would prefer to do this via a DVD recorder as I can borrow quite a few different models, so I'll have to see if any hard disk recorder can do those things...doubt it without a lot of hassle or am I wrong?

I can borrow a Sony Camcorder - I guess their in-built ADC's aren't as good as a Canopus, but could it be good enough - or should I stop with that idea right now?

Cheers,
Dingwall

[redsox_mark]

A DVD/HDD recorder will be easier, and will do what you need. I have a Toshiba (XS32, an old model). It is very easy to edit to only include the bits you want, to set chapter points, and to make a menu.

The edits are simply cutting out the bits you want - no transitions etc. But fine for a "cuts only" edit.

On the menus you can use a picture from your video as a back drop, and have some control over the colours of the fonts etc.. but again no where near as much control over menu creation as on the PC.

PC is more flexible... DVD recorder is easier. I do a lot of editing, and most of it is on the PC as I want to do more advanced editing. But if I need to make a DVD quickly, I use my DVD/HDD recorder.

A Sony camcorder with analogue/digital function will do a good job - I've done lots of importing analogue video that way. Remember, that while it may be precious, as it is VHS the video quality coming in won't be that great anyway. You won't lose any noticable quality if you use a Sony camcorder to do the conversion.

[Gavtech]

Originally Posted by felix2

If the VCR has got S-video output, you'd also want to consider whether that would give better video quality to the DVD recorder than a standard composite connection. (And I personally don't understand whether it would or not, if the tapes are only VHS rather than S-VHS??? Someone else will know!!)

Just a confirmation that - yes it does make a difference, even when using VHS tapes, and if you have an option of S connection, you should definitely use it.

Also , some of the upmarket Panasonic VCRs of a few years back also had RGB output which would be even better. Worth checking to see if it has this capability. Have a look in the scart specification in the manual. If present it will almost certainly be as an output on AV1 only.

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by dingwall

Hi,

I have 3 very precious old VHS home videos full of stuff including friends, family and parents now no longer with me. What is the best way of transferring these to DVD? I am not bothered about editing, as the raw footage and audio is wonderful and adds to the charm and memories.

I want high quality, but most importantly I do not want to risk losing or damaging these tapes whatsoever.

I was thinking of borrowing a decent £200ish DVD recorder (any recommendations?) and just recording direct from my VCR (a £500 Panasonic deck that was well reviewed in its day). I guess the VCR playback is the most important factor, or do DVD recorders vary a lot also?

What eqpt do Jessops or someone better use? Do you think they would let me come in with the tapes and literally sit with them watching the transfer in action? I cannot risk damaging/losing the tapes at all.

Any advice or experience most welcome. Thanks a lot.

any half decent dvd recorder will copy vhs at sp mode and give two hours of lossless dvd per disk.chris

[jetinder]

I've got a lot of VHS old tapes (around 12-14 years old) which i want to put to DVD, i did this by connecting my VCR's composite output to my PC's tv card's composite input and connecting the VCR red and white sound leads to the PC sound card via a 2 in to 1 cable.

I used Magix Movie Edit Pro 2005 and transfered it all to my PC, editted the bits i didnt want, tested to see if works it did and burned it to DVD......... so far so good.

But when the DVD was put in to a normal DVD player the sound of people talking didnt match their lips moving.......... thats really annoyed me.

I bought Unlead 7, Pinnacle 9, Nero 7 but they all had the same problems as Magix Movie Edit Pro 2005. I even bought Adobe premier Pro 1.5 but that cant " see " the tv card + its very hard to use so i've given up on that ...........

Now i record old VHS tapes in to my PC and use Magix Movie Edit Pro 2005's audio offset function to try to match the the sound of people talking to match their lips moving. It works but it takes around 3 weeks to get this spot on as every time you make an adjusted you need to burn it to DVD-RW to see it on a normal DVD player, each time that takes 3 hrs to do hence why it takes around 3 weeks to get things spot on.

The software doesnt give a true picture of how " out of sync " the sound and lips are which is very annoying but thats life

Wish i could get a VHS-DVD recorder as that would be bliss, but i'd still want to record this to DVD-RW before i put it in my PC to edit out bits i didnt want to see.