Pacific PV203BLK VCR - How to capture with...

[pacificvcruser]

How can I capture a VHS to my Laptop using the following?:

VCR (of course)
Laptop's S-Video port
S-Video to Yellow RCA jack
Audio (red and white cables, in microphone port)
SCART adaptor plugged into back of VCR
Red, White and Yellow cables plugged into SCART adapter.

Thanks,
PacificVCRUser

[Gavtech]

Originally Posted by pacificvcruser

How can I capture a VHS to my Laptop using the following?:

VCR (of course)
Laptop's S-Video port
S-Video to Yellow RCA jack
Audio (red and white cables, in microphone port)
SCART adaptor plugged into back of VCR
Red, White and Yellow cables plugged into SCART adapter.

Thanks,
PacificVCRUser

You cannot capture to your laptop with any of the above.

For one thing the S-video connector on the laptop is probably an output not an input.

You require a capture device.

If your laptop meets these minimum requirements below, you could use a Dazzle Recorder. See here


Minumum requirements... Note especially is your USB port hi speed?

* Windows® XP (SP 2 or higher) or Windows Vista (32bit only)
* Intel® Pentium® or AMD® Athlon™ 1.4 GHz or higher (2.4 GHz or higher recommended)
* 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
* DirectX® 9 or higher compatible graphics card with 64 MB (ATI® Radeon® or NVIDIA® GeForce™ 3 or higher, with 128 MB recommended)
* DirectX 9 or higher compatible sound card (Creative® Audigy® or M-Audio® recommended)
* 1 GB of disk space to install software
* 1 USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) port
* DVD burner for creating DVDs

[MarkE19]

As already stated the S-Video port on the laptop is almost certainly an output only. But even if it was an input you would only get a black & white picture as the VCR (unless S-VHS VCR) will only outpout a composite video signal.
Dazzle type USB devices are going to be the easiest and cheapest option as long as you do have USB2.0 ports rather than the slower USB1.1 ports. You could get a PCMCIA/Cardbus device if you have one of these ports on the laptop, but they will almost certainly cost you more. If you have a firewire (aka iLink, DV port, ieee1394) port then there are the Canopus ADVC devices, but they are very expensive compared to Dazzle.

Mark.

[grahamlthompson]

Some DV and digital 8 camcorders have video/audio inputs and can convert cvbs video/ stereo audio on the fly to a DV digital video stream which can be captured over firewire, in the same way as the canopus devices. DV avi files are easily converted to DVD.