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Ripping VHS to computer


MadAbbott

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Curious if anyone had any experience of this? I know Mikec had recommended the Elgato VHS capture - https://www.elgato.com/en/video-capture but as it comes in around £80 to just rip a handful of tapes was just wondering if any one knew of anything cheaper (that works!)

 

Might have to pay it as I've tried a couple of things that just don't work at all (easycap converter - absolutely useless, avoid!) or only rip the footage and not the sound, unwatchable quality etc

 

Ideally it would work with mac but PC is ok too if it definitely works!

 

A while back I had access to a recordable DVD player which worked, bit of a longer process but I could record the VCR to DVD and then rip the DVD.

 

Got some really rare Q, Craze + Allies + many more footage to upload!

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I had a card in my PC to do it years ago. More recently I found an all in one machine that converts any signal to DVD... relatively cheap on eBay. Then you can RIP it to your computer. Maybe try and find a cheap one, use it and resell.

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Guest Symatic

if you can't find a way to do it you can send the tapes to me, i can do em with some kit at work......

 

to do it cheap I would probably hook up the VHS to a DVD recorder and try recording that. or hook it into a camera that accepts composite signals? I used to record VHS onto my DV camera that way, then i could digitize that into the computer.......

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if you can't find a way to do it you can send the tapes to me, i can do em with some kit at work......

 

to do it cheap I would probably hook up the VHS to a DVD recorder and try recording that

 

cheers Sy, I will try and find a solution myself first as I know once I start I'll keeping finding other stuff but good to know that's an option!

 

I thought that too about the DVD recorder, but they're still annoyingly pricey! Decent ones second hand that can record go for £1-200. I did buy the cheapest I could find which was about £40 used and it was such a pile of crap took about an hour to get up and running !

I use the Elgato

cheers Broke , and no probs works well with the mac?

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Do you all run into copy protection issues with these?

With the few I did rip when I had that recordable DVD player I didn't have any problems no, I was only copying from blank tapes though so imagine manufacturers wouldn't have protected those?

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The copy protectionis on vhs is normally hidden in the top few lines of video information, above where the actual screen starts... people get round it by digitizing direct to a edit software and zooming in a bit.

If you want a dvd recorder just send me a fiver and postage and ill send you one. I have stacks at work we want rid of.... they have scart inputs so you should be good

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cheers Broke , and no probs works well with the mac?

TBH I haven't tried it with the Mac, I just use the PC in the studio. It's very easy to use though, plus the quality is better than what you'll get from one of those USB stick sized things.

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Guest rasteri

That vid is still interlaced, you can see it on moving objects where they go all line-y. There's quite a lot of subtlety to ripping VHS, hardly anyone on youtube gets it right. None of the off-the-shelf solutions I've tried do it right either.

 

What you wanna do is rip the raw vid at a high-bitrate to either 480p@30FPS (for NTSC) or 576p@25FPS (for PAL). Then using a deinterlacing filter (yadif is nice), interpolate that to 480p@60FPS or 576p@50FPS.

 

Unfortunately youtube doesn't support 480p60 or 576p50, so you have to then scale that to 720p50/60 or 1080p50/60 to maintain the higher frame rate.

 

virtualdub can do all these things, but you need to install a bunch of extra codecs.

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bloody hell, I didn't really understand a word of that Andy! If my vids came out looking half as good as that DMC clip I'd be over the moon. Most of my vids were flimed in dark clubs (ooerr) like this -

 

 

or in-stores where everything moves around a lot like this -

 

 

all very amateur anyway (can't polish a turd?)

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bloody hell, I didn't really understand a word of that Andy!

Yeah sorry. Unfortunately ripping videos with decent quality is a massive pain in the hole, it took me ages to figure it out just to rip one old VHS.

 

Probably the DVD recorder way is a good plan - you can then rip it to your PC using something like MakeMKV and then convert/deinterlace that. If anyone wants talked through the process hit me up.

 

But basically, if you're in the USA then your videos will rip at a resolution of 720x480 at 30 frames per second, and if you're anywhere else they'll be 720x576 at 25 frames per second. The problem is, analogue TV is interlaced - meaning it squashes TWO frames into each frame (one frame in the even-numbered horizontal lines, one frame in the odd-numbered lines). That's why Hiipfire's video looks all line-y on fast moving stuff, because each frame is actually two frames being overlaid on each other. You need to separate those frames and store them separately - this process is called deinterlacing. This will produce a video that's 60FPS for the USA, and 50FPS for everywhere else.

 

However youtube only lets you use 50 or 60fps on videos that are 1280x720 (i.e. 720p) or 1920x1080 (i.e. 1080p), so once you've deinterlaced you then have to resize the video up to that higher resolution if you want your videos to look good on youtube.

 

But yeah, if you can get them onto DVDs with decent quality then you can worry about the deinterlacing shit later.

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If you want a dvd recorder just send me a fiver and postage and ill send you one. I have stacks at work we want rid of.... they have scart inputs so you should be good

 

Very kind Sy! Does that offer include any with HDMI & remote?

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bloody hell, I didn't really understand a word of that Andy!

Yeah sorry. Unfortunately ripping videos with decent quality is a massive pain in the hole, it took me ages to figure it out just to rip one old VHS.

 

Probably the DVD recorder way is a good plan - you can then rip it to your PC using something like MakeMKV and then convert/deinterlace that. If anyone wants talked through the process hit me up.

 

But basically, if you're in the USA then your videos will rip at a resolution of 720x480 at 30 frames per second, and if you're anywhere else they'll be 720x576 at 25 frames per second. The problem is, analogue TV is interlaced - meaning it squashes TWO frames into each frame (one frame in the even-numbered horizontal lines, one frame in the odd-numbered lines). That's why Hiipfire's video looks all line-y on fast moving stuff, because each frame is actually two frames being overlaid on each other. You need to separate those frames and store them separately - this process is called deinterlacing. This will produce a video that's 60FPS for the USA, and 50FPS for everywhere else.

 

However youtube only lets you use 50 or 60fps on videos that are 1280x720 (i.e. 720p) or 1920x1080 (i.e. 1080p), so once you've deinterlaced you then have to resize the video up to that higher resolution if you want your videos to look good on youtube.

 

But yeah, if you can get them onto DVDs with decent quality then you can worry about the deinterlacing shit later.

 

 

cool, that's is probably what I will do then, thanks a lot!!

 

I miss Mr Bongo's

 

Me too. I was in the shop when that Vic Roc routine was recorded.

 

 

Ahhh, I was probably the annoying lanky guy at the front shoving a camcorder in his face while he was trying to do his showcase!

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Guest Symatic

 

If you want a dvd recorder just send me a fiver and postage and ill send you one. I have stacks at work we want rid of.... they have scart inputs so you should be good

 

Very kind Sy! Does that offer include any with HDMI & remote?

 

 

sorry, missed this reply! yeah they have HDMI and a remote. i cant guarantee they wont spot the vhs anti pracy stuff tho.... but worth a try i tihnk

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