Those who caught the dawn of VCRs will probably find somewhere in the closet or in the attic a couple or two of old VHS cassettes that are a pity to throw away. Most often, weddings, some holidays and other significant events of past years were shot at them.
Modern technologies will allow you to get rid of unnecessary trash, while retaining all the information from old media. Such a process of transferring data to DVD disks, flash drives, or to an internal drive is called digitization of VHS tapes. For this, we need special software and some equipment. Both the first and second are easy to find, so the whole process is easily organized at home.
Before digitizing video tapes, we will understand what constitutes a VHS-format.
Video Cassette Formats
The VHS format began its history back in 1976. Such cassettes did not differ in high image quality, but because of their cheapness, they were enviable demand among ordinary consumers. Actually, they are called carriers for home video systems (VHS / Video Home System).
As a rule, the information on these devices was overwritten from other, more noble formats, so there was no talk of high quality. The most popular volume was considered to be a three-hour medium, and most films on VHS tapes had a duration of one and a half hours.
S-vhs
After a dozen years, in 1988 a new type appeared - Super-VHS. The Super prefix meant a more detailed and truthful picture on the screen, but such super-cassettes of the VHS format did not take root among the people because of their high cost. This type has a design similar to conventional media and is compatible with all standard VCRs.
VHS-C
The VHS-C format was developed in 1982 and found its application in compact (at the time) video cameras. A cassette differs from a conventional medium only in form factor - it is half as much and lighter. The tape used, as well as the recording quality, is similar to VHS. However, the output image is slightly better, because the data was obtained directly from the camera itself, and not by overwriting.
A cassette can take a much smaller amount of information, and in hourly terms this is somewhere around 45-60 minutes. The media is compatible with a conventional VCR. To do this, you need a special adapter that looks like a regular video cassette, with the only difference being that a small VHS-C format is inserted into it.
Video8
Video8 format appeared in the same year as VHS-C, and along with the latter was enviable because of its even greater miniature size. The carrier film is only 8 mm wide and the dimensions are slightly smaller than the VHS-C form factor.
The recording quality is comparable to S-VHS, and the shooting time ranges from 60 to 90 minutes. As in the previous case, there are special adapters that allow you to use this form factor in conventional video recorders.
Next, we consider the process of digitizing VHS tapes on digital media.
What is required?
The very first thing we need is a personal computer, and not with average performance indicators. It is highly desirable that he had an impressive amount of free space on the hard drive. This is important because all data is processed in an uncompressed form, that is, it takes up a lot of space. Such an average option can be considered a hard drive with a volume of 320 GB and a speed of 7200 rpm.
After digitizing the VHS-tapes, the data will need to be reloaded somewhere, so it will be superfluous to take care of the purchase of DVD-ROM drives or flash drives. The first is better to buy with a capacity of at least 4.7 GB, and the second - from 8 GB. One disk is enough for a three-hour video sequence from a VHS cassette. Well, a flash drive can be found at 256 GB, and without regard to the free space, digitize everything in a row. By the way, many experts are not so flattering about USB-drives, preferring the good old DVD-discs. The fact is that flash drives have noticeably low bandwidth compared to the disk, which for a long time delays the entire process of digitization, and sometimes even leads to crashes.
Necessary equipment:
- Laptop or personal computer.
- Video recorder.
- Tulip Cable (RCA) (S-Video as an alternative).
- Adapter / adapter (for modern video cards).
- External media for recording (DVD, flash drive).
Programs for digitizing the video stream work with almost all platforms, but in order to avoid some problems it is better to use the usual Windows 7, 8, or 10. Series Exotic XP or something with the Server prefix does not guarantee the correct support for such software.
As for the specific performance of the computer, the packages for digitization feel comfortable on the Intel base, starting with the i3 chipset, and on AMD with the A5 chip and higher. 4 GB of RAM is enough for most tasks, but if you want more speed, you need 8 or 16 GB. The class and type of video card is not fundamental (the office version with GDDR3 is also suitable), but the amount of memory should not be less than 1 GB. Modern cards are not equipped with an old interface for "tulips", so it’s not out of place to take care of the adapter on DVI-> RCA or HDMI-> RCA.
You can, of course, complete the whole process on older machines, provided that the digitization software starts up, but then you will have to wait a very long time for the result.
Digitization Utilities
The Windows platform in the professional (Pro) or maximum (Ultimate) version has built-in utilities for digitizing VHS tapes and other media. It is called Movie Maker. The program processes the video sequence and immediately, as they say, without intermediaries, writes it to the specified disk, whether it is a DVD or a flash drive.
The Movie Maker utility does not differ in the variety of add-ons and functionality in general, so for those who want to not just digitize the stream, but make some changes or additions along the way, we can recommend a versatile product - Nero. This is a whole complex of working with video and everything related to it. The program is quite "heavy", so problems can occur on weak PCs.
Also, many users note a product quite interesting for these purposes - Movavi. The software not only captures video from almost any source, but also provides the ability to convert the received digital data into popular video formats. You can also recommend simple, but at the same time functional utilities - EDIUS Pro 8 and AVS Video Editor 7.2. In general, you can find a lot of programs of this plan, so there should not be any problems here.
Digitization process
The first step is to connect the VCR to a personal computer or laptop. The video stream is captured in most cases using a video card or a special tuner. The latter option is suitable for those who have an integrated rather than a discrete card.
So, we connect both devices via the RCA interface (an adapter for new video cards may be needed) or the S-Video output (an additional sound card is needed for a PC).
Then run the utility to capture the video stream. They all work according to a similar principle: indicate the source (video card and / or sound card), stream resolution, frame rate and the folder where the files will be saved. Some programs directly write files to external media without a hard disk.
Advice
Before you digitize video tapes, it is worth clarifying some details. The directory for saving the received files should not be on the same drive as the operating system itself. This will significantly speed up the process of digitization and eliminate any glitches.
Most programs of this plan were originally conceived for working with three-hour VHS-tapes and standard DVD-ROM drives, so they compress the final data for a volume of 4.7 GB. Be sure to specify the receiver you need (DVD-ROM), because in the free digitization of the utility, little care is taken to save space on your disk, and the output is "as is", and not what you needed.
You should also pay special attention to other processes in your operating system. The digitization procedure requires a lot of RAM and loads the computer chipsets properly. Therefore, it is better to disable extraneous processes and not run anything in the background. Otherwise, the time spent on digitization can increase significantly.