Digitizing Old VHS Tapes to DVD
YouTube subscriber Jonathan B. asks:
Good evening, I hope you and Ponzi are doing well. My question is twofold. First my father is an ordained minister and is currently teaching theology and all related subjects to students in the Philippines. His mentor who he studied under allowed him and others to tape his classes those tapes are in some 14 to 15 years old and if something happens to them since my fathers Bible teacher passed away a few years ago, they cannot be replaced. My fathers other interest is in audio equipment and he knows how to set-up a computer to record audio from these aforementioned tapes. The problem is that we have gone as far as recording them with the “Narrate Timeline” feature in Windows Moviemaker, but such a redneck method means that if we mess up on the audio settings we generally have to start all over recording. My question is this, is there a free program out or one that is moderately priced, that would allow us to record these tapes through a laptop into any format so that we can burn them to c.d.’s or put them on portable players such as ipod’s or anyother brand name mp3 players, plus eventually put them on a website, to include the obvious feature of being able to control all aspects of the audio.
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2 Comments
Ryan Coleman
November 26th, 2007
at 10:11am
Hey Chris -There’s another pretty easy trick if you already have a camcorder with a firewire connection (& obviously a firewire card on your PC).
I’ve done this with a few Sony models and there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work on others. Camcorders all have Video/Audio output jacks (in various forms) but if you dig around in the menus you’ll often find that there is a way to switch those temporarily into inputs.
Basically:
1. Plug the camcorder into your PC via firewire.
2. Remove the tape from the Camcorder* (important)
3. Switch the camcorder jacks into “input” mode and connect your VCR.
4. Open whatever capture software you’re using (even the OS-included stuff will work)
5. Capture away.*
* Removing the tape basically disables the computers ability to control the camera. This stops it from interfering while you’re capturing. You’ll need to use the VCR controls to position & stop/start the tape. And use the manual controls on the computer to stop/start the capture.
Once you get it all rigged up it’s a great/easy way to capture all your old videos to your PC.
Ryan
J.D.B.
June 2nd, 2008
at 11:40am
I feel bad, I asked Chris that question in November, and just now realized that I forgot to tell Chris in a response to his e-mail reply, that he misunderstood me. *Chris: I apologize for not clarifying myself.* When I said “tapes” I meant audio tapes not video. Be that as it may, I do appreciate the willingness to answer my questions.
Thank
J.D.B.