Big collection VHS to DVD conversion

[darkbluesky]

Hello,

I have searching this forum for a recommendation, but I have not get a conclusion, so maybe you could give me an advice that makes me decide finally.

I need to do a backup of hundreds of VHS tapes, that come from the collections of my fathers, uncle and a cousin. There are familiar tapes, tv broadcasts, purchased movies, and recorded from tv some difficult to find versions too.

As you can see, dealing with some hundreds (over 300) is not a problem to solve with step-to-step optimized-method guides. So I am thinking about using some software that captures, build a dvd image, and burn the dvd, itself.

I know that using these softwares implies some trade-offs, but I must accept them, because I have too much tapes. So I am ready to accept VHS image quality (no optimization), no menus, no VBR (so no space optimization) if needed, etc.

On the other hand I look for a really unattended method: to put VHS tape, 1 or 2 clicks on the software, and after some, unattended, hours, get a DVD backup of it.

Some tapes are 120' long, but anothers are 180' (even a few ones 240'). I would prefer to use the same method for all the different tape durations if I can. Because of that and also to avoid decreasing the, already low, quality of the VHS, and considering that these softwares use mainly CBR, I was thinking on using Double Layer DVDs.

For this reason I do not think on using a stand-alone DVD recorder + VHS player; I do not know any standalone DVD recorder that can use DL without needing to stop recording when swapping layers.


Could you recommend some software or other solution/guide that could fit to my problem?

Any advice will be welcome.

Thank you very much

[PuzZLeR]

I have a similar project to yours. I was at 300 VHS tapes a year ago, now down to less than 50. It has been quite an adventure with tons of nostalgia from decades of content: personal video, rare TV stuff, documentaries, sports games, old music videos, etc. Much of it was on 6 hour tapes that I had to shuffle through and decide what to keep. Quite a chore. But, it has been more fun than I actually thought it would be surprisingly.

And that's the first key. For a project of this magnitude select a fun method. You understand it will be alot of work, so don't do something that will bore or frustrate you.

If you were to ask a purist he or she would say get the best video card and record to your computer and save to a lossless file and then edit from there.

That would be the best method in theory if it works, but from experience, I wouldn't recommend it. First of all, even today, for some reason, PCs are not perfect in capturing video. It's a CPU intensive process and dropped frames and out of sync issues, etc are all too common. It's frustrating. Trust me.

You will need lots of storage for this uncompressed format and that means more than a 1 GB a minute for reasonable almost-DvD-like quality.

It will be time consuming, hog your PC for days and months and always have problems. It's never as easy as "one or two clicks".

Here's a better solution.

Use a DvR. I know you mentioned it. But it really is the best method for the hobbyist who's not 100% picky on the ultimate quality.

Understand that DvRs are built for recording video and that's all they do. They will do it well and in a stable fashion. They are solid.

Every night before I go to bed I would load it with one VHS tape for about 6 hours, and another before I go to work. I then make quick edits, dump to a DvD-RW, migrate to my PC and make edits and final productions. It is so easy and quick and I have yet to have one problem. It's a routine that works. It's as easy as just feeding the machine.

I have also not noticed any difference in the quality transfer from the "XP" and "SP' modes on my DvR.

XP is about 7500kbps. It fits roughly 1 hour on RW media.
SP is about 4500kbps. It fits roughly 2 hours on RW media.

I recommend SP because the difference, when it comes to VHS, is negligable. Sure if the tape is super important go with XP, but stick with SP for the most stuff.

You don't need DL for two hour good quality. Regardless, what you can do if DvRs don't come with a record-to-DvD-DL feature is still record fragments of it and still be able to do the final edits and joins on your PC later.

Even though DvRs have alot of editing features, they are still no replacement for what a PC can do here. Sure they're great for capturing, but do the final production on your PC. You will also need to do this because many of your recordings will have "white fuzz" at the bottom - typical of VHS captures. This is easily removed with many editing software packages on your PC (cropping is good, but I prefer overlays). You can add menus, effects, transitions, etc. and then combine and burn a final production to DL if necessary.

Stick with DvR for capturing. The PC is for the final production. You can make some minor intro edits on your DvR, transfer to re-recordable DvD-RW discs, and use the PC for all the final editing and burning steps.

You can do all your edits, cuts, and joins on a DvR directly and save time. I prefer a bit more enhancement with higher level edit packages like VideoStudio. Your choice.

I have tried the cards and the lossy codecs on my PC and I have not benefitted any better with added quality worth it. The DvR method is straightforward, painless and quick. Your project will get done sooner at very high production. Life's too short for anything more complicated than this solution in my opinion. It's only VHS. You can only get so much out of it.

DvRs are not expensive today and worth the investment. It's my favorite gadget in my house. They are solid and reliable and can last for years. They're also great replacements to VCRs as well when you record TV programs. They're great machines. I recommend a Pionneer. Great reviews.

Good luck.

[darkbluesky]

Wow! Thanks for this answer. I thank your effort. Although I don't want to do editing, the "white fuzz" could be the only thing I will edit (overlay too).

As my tapes are at least 3 hours, I am obliged to cut them to fit in one DVD single layer. It is not a bad idea at all. I like it, although I'm really afraid of the time needed for each 3h tape.

If I could do one tape each 2 days, it could take me about 600 non-stop days, which considering that the real life takes place and I am not going to stay 2 years continuosly doing this, it could become 4 or 5 years at least...

Really I would wish to find an even more automatic way to do this. I am going to think about all your suggestions seriously, though.

[PuzZLeR]

Hi again. You can tell I'm passionate about this.

Yes my friend. It's going to take some time. There is no short cut today other than good equipment, a good system, organization and routine and you gotta love it.

It's not that bad really though. If you accept the fact that it would take a year or so, then you can build a routine. Like I said, I regularly feed the machine. I feed the DvR tapes regularly and I migrate the video to my PC twice a week from my DvR's hard drive with RW media, and do all my edits a couple of hours on a weekend afternoon.

It's not like a year of hard work though. Alot of the time will be with the machine working unattended. And it is enjoyable, I assure you. If you look at it as "work", then it will be "work". If you look at it as "fun", then you will enjoy the project immensely. I've even confessed in another post that now that I'm down to <50 tapes, I'm a bit sad. I enjoyed every new production and every new set of memories that came my way.

Three hours on a DvD-R is a bit of a squeeze with MPEG-2 quality. I'd say that very acceptable quality is, for VHS to DvD, is 2hrs on a DvD-R, and 4hrs on a DvD-DL.

To save even more time get a good editing software app. DvRs can edit, but they are too slow going through commercials etc. Just dump it in your PC and an app like VideoStudio can make your editing much faster (and cover the "white fuzz"). Try it for free on their site, you'll see how a feature like "Multitrim" saves a tremendous amount of time. I can edit hours of video in just a few minutes with this, save my projects as project files, batch them, and render it all overnight.

I also recommend an external hard drive. If you have a lot of content and it's messed up among many tapes, you will need to organize it. Today you can actually hook one up directly to your DvR I'm sure - easy transfer to your PC.

I also use compression methods like DivX and H.264. This is very handy for video that I don't care for DvD, only to archive in a compressible format. DivX is supported with many DvD players, and H.264 will be in the future.

I hope it helps. And once more good luck.

[darkbluesky]

Thanks. While I think how to adapt your experience to mine, anyone knows of a stand alone DVD recorder that uses DL and that do NOT need to stop when swapping layers?
Maybe one that can record continuosly DL discs when feeded from its HD?

Tx

[elling]

Thanks. While I think how to adapt your experience to mine, anyone knows of a stand alone DVD recorder that uses DL and that do NOT need to stop when swapping layers?
Maybe one that can record continuosly DL discs when feeded from its HD?

I was in Best Buy yesterday and saw 3 - a Panasonic, Sony and Samsung. I don't remember the model numbers but the Panny was around $300 while the Samsung was about $180. I think the Sony was $270. None of 'em had hard drives, btw.

[Marvingj]

external hard drive is the answer you can get a 1 Tb 1,500 hours of videos for under $350, save it when you want to edited it.

[elling]

Hi again. You can tell I'm passionate about this.

Yes my friend. It's going to take some time. There is no short cut today other than good equipment, a good system, organization and routine and you gotta love it.

I don't mean to hijack DarkBlueSky's thread but I have just read PuzZLeR's replies to his questions and it strikes me that perhaps PuzZLeR could offer me some advice. To make a long story short, my 83-year old Mother has Parkinson's Disease and will be moving to an assisted living home in the very near future.

Over the years I have made extensive VHS collections of her favorite mystery series (insert popular series name here). These collections are almost exclusively recorded on medium-quality tapes at EP (SLP) speed. Surprisingly, they have held up very well over the years and she can still watch and enjoy a 6 hour tape that was recorded 10+ years ago. Stellar picture quality is not important to her but if a tape has tracking problems it is an annoyance.

What I want to do is, over time, start dubbing those collections onto DVDs so that they will be easier for her to manage. She still loves to pop in a 6 or 8 hour tape and just let it play all day. She doesn't care if she misses a few minutes here or a scene or two there because she has seen the collection many times before. I plan to start with her favorites and gradually add the more obscure others.

I am not going to dub/backup EVERY one of her 6-hour tapes and on quite a few I plan to selectively edit out some of her least favorite episodes. What I am trying to say is that just because she has 6 hours worth of, say, "Columbo," on a VHS tape I may only dub 3 hours. This is where having a DVDR (same as "DvR", right?) with a hard drive is important. I will look into using VideoStudio but don't know whether I will have enough time.

Below is a link to the AVS Forum for DVD Recorders where I initially started to ask for advice -
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11544820&posted=1#post11544820

There are much more detailed questions and answers in that thread but I would be happy to see what Passionate PuzZLeR has to say. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

[elling]

external hard drive is the answer you can get a 1 Tb 1,500 hours of videos for under $350, save it when you want to edited it.

That's a very interesting point. I was thinking about getting the Philips 3575 for VHS-DVD conversion of my mom's tapes but I would probably not use the Philips as I have DirecTV service with TiVo (Series 2) and the DirecTV HR20 DVR. Do you have any recommendations for an external HD (make, model, where to buy)? Can I plug a VCR or DVD player directly into one (with a Sima CT-2, where applicable) and start editing 6-hour tapes down?

[gll99]

I've only done a few vhs to DVD using the "av to dv passthrough" feature on my Sony Dv Handycam HC30 and Windv on the computer. You end up with a large DV file which you can edit as needed and then use just about any DVD authoring software. It's slow but it works. The only problem I had was the need to adjust the black level.

I have a bunch of standard and Hi8 home videos that I'll have to get around to transferring one of these days.

[edDV]

One warning to consider when using cable/sat DVR internal/external disk drives. The recordings are encrypted and will not decode if you cancel your account or change boxes (upgrade or broken). A lot of work could go down the drain. Consult AVS and forums specific to your box for more detail.

[victoriabears]

I have been at this for years and as the basic idea is to get the stuff digitised, concentrate on that, also start with your oldest recordings or most valued, editing can come later and never ever forget that a LOT of stuff is available from various sources that will save YOU the effort of transferring to DVD, if you get my drift.

I will also help to know at least what country you are in-thanks

[elling]

Can I plug a VCR or DVD player directly into one (with a Sima CT-2, where applicable) and start editing 6-hour tapes down?

Would this "S-Video+Audio to 3 RCA Adapter Cable" from Cables to Go's Value Series do the trick (for hooking my VCR up to an external HDD)? I found the Adapter Cable at Buy.com for $22.67 (includes S&H) link.

Club CD Freaks Forum thread (mine).

[elling]

I have been at this for years and as the basic idea is to get the stuff digitised, concentrate on that, also start with your oldest recordings or most valued, editing can come later and never ever forget that a LOT of stuff is available from various sources that will save YOU the effort of transferring to DVD, if you get my drift.

I will also help to know at least what country you are in-thanks

Hi Terry,

Those are very good tips. If you were asking me which country I am in, why it's the United States of America, Washington state. Thank you for taking the time to post with your advice,

[victoriabears]

sorry I mean the originator of the post