Recording VHS to PC

[VirusType2]

I've got a lot of VHS tapes. I'd like to put them on a Hard drive, or put them on discs and get rid of them. They are gigantic and taking up a lot of space. Plus, searching for things on them takes too long. I've got a video card with VIVO (video in / video out)and the VIVO cord so I can plug my VCR into my PC.

What kind of program do I use to record it? I want lossless, but it doesn't work that way I'm sure.

It doesn't matter how many features the program has. I just want to press record on my PC, and then press play on my VCR, and when it's finished, hopefully I can get a very high quality file that can fit on a blank DVD.


Anyone done this before?

 

[Krynn72]

I did a quick google search and found this on the CNet forums:

In my case it was simple and yielded excellent results - not quite DVD quality but as good as is possible from a broadcast.

I have an Hauppauge WinTV card ( any input card with a composite video input would do ) and plugged the composite video output from the video player ( BNC / RCA phono ) connector or SCART pin 19 ( vid out) & 17 (gnd) [may be 20 & 17 if connector lead is used])

I then chose "record from video source" in Showshifter (I bought mine but a free trial copy is available from www.showshifter.com and recorded to MPEG Highest Quality.

The recording is straightforward but takes 3~4 Gb per hour of transfer.

Then simply drag the file(s) into Nero or myDVD and let it burn

max recording is split into blocks by showshifter (windows limitations) but if gap between blocks is set to zero in Nero then they don't notice.

Heres the link to the thread. http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7596_102-0.html?forumID=60&threadID=12945&start=0

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Always thought about doing it, seems a real bi*ch though.

 

[Sanada]

I've done it a few times before. I simply connect the VCR to the TV card (using SCART) then with the TV cards own software record the part I want and then re-encode it to Xvid in VirtualDub. A good bitrate for 640x480 30FPS or 720x576 25FPS would be ~2000kbps if you encode it right but I just use 1-pass @ 5000kbps as disc space is not an issue and there usally short recordings anyway. VirtualDub will record from a source as well but I've had problems with it.

 

[VirusType2]

thanks everyone

sounds like showshifter/nero will work fine for what I want.

Then I can dump this huge crate of tapes into the ocean or something. Joking. I will put them in the trash.