recording from vhs to my harddrive?

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timf0rantimf0ran
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
My father is looking for me to record some vhs footage to the harddrive on my powerbook for his work, and I'm wondering what I need to do to be able to accomplish that. I'd like to record onto a generic



I've got a VCR and my laptop so far, do I need other cables? Special programs? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Reply 1 of 3
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by timf0ran

    My father is looking for me to record some vhs footage to the harddrive on my powerbook for his work, and I'm wondering what I need to do to be able to accomplish that. I'd like to record onto a generic



    I've got a VCR and my laptop so far, do I need other cables? Special programs? Any help would be greatly appreciated.



    Likely you'll need some sort of capture card since powerbooks (or any current computers) don't have VCR inputs. I did some amount of VCR interfacing about 8 years ago, when Aurora video systems made a number of compelling products to complete this task. They still do, although 8 years ago $500 bought you the cheapest device that could do a quality job, whereas Aurora's current $500 (bottom end) product does a lot more.



    These days, there are some really cheap input-only solutions that plug into Firewire or USB. If you go USB, make sure there's nothing else on the bus while you capture.



    Browse this page:

    http://www.videoguys.com/vidcap.htm
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  • Reply 2 of 3
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    Juts get one of these:



    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...lance&n=560798



    Put the TV out from the VCR into the DVD recorder and record onto a DVD-R. If you need to edit that, rip the DVD to you computer.



    The DVD recorder is a great buy anyway because it gives you DVD quality TV recording and you don't have to wind tapes any more. It's so much easier to skip through TV shows for me and you don't have to worry about winding to free space because when you record, it only writes to the free space on the disc.



    One with a hard drive might be better for what you are doing.



    A purely computer method would need a TV tuner card and they would cost as much as a standalone DVD recorder and you wouldn't use it as much.
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  • Reply 3 of 3
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by timf0ran

    My father is looking for me to record some vhs footage to the harddrive on my powerbook for his work, and I'm wondering what I need to do to be able to accomplish that. I'd like to record onto a generic



    I've got a VCR and my laptop so far, do I need other cables? Special programs? Any help would be greatly appreciated.



    You can't just input VHS into a computer without some hardware to convert the analog (VHS) into digital. There are stand-alone digitizers that do this, but I personally use a digital video camera. It takes me two steps: One to record the VHS onto the digital camcorder, and a second to put it in the computer. But there are also video cameras with pass-through digitizing, so you can do it in one step. If you're at all thinking about getting a video camera (or if you already have one), this is probably a better option than getting a stand-alone digitizer.
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