We have a lot of old VHS tapes from our youth mostly late 80s and 90s as well as my parents wedding video and there are a lot of memories we are keen to keep safe for the future. Was wondering if anyone has done this and has any advise of what to purchase to get the best results? I'm not really sure where to start, we currently have an old 14 inch TV with built in vhs player. I was thinking I probably need to purchase a separate VHS player to connect it to my pc, maybe with a TV card to do a direct conversation? I think I've got an old ati 8500 all in wonder card somewhere but not sure I have the cables and if this is a good option for this, I likely could put a windows xp agp pc together if needed for it. I've also got some separate old TV cards around also. Another option would be to get one of those VHS dvd recorder boxes but don't think they are as easy to find and expensive? Thanks in advance for any advice / suggestions.
Danger ahead: there are many many rabbit-holes here, both in terms of research and cost If you absolutely want the best quality possible, the easiest option is probably just to pay a commercial service to do it for you. That, however, will likely not be cheap, depending on how much you have to transfer. If you explicitly want to DIY something... You can very quickly go down very many rabbit-holes here, but by far the simplest solution is going to be an upscaler. Don't try and capture the analogue signals, get a box that'll do that difficult task in hardware and gives a nice clean HDMI signal. Get a VCR that supports RGB scart (one that's been well maintained/refurbished, or you risk chewing & destroying tapes) and an OSSC upscaler. There are cheaper upscalers/converters, but honestly, the OSSC has come down in price so much that it'd be madness to consider anything else; there are also higher-end options, like the OSSC Pro, but IMO they're overkill for capturing tapes. The upscaler will deinterlace & convert the video signal and spit out a nice digital HDMI picture - all you need then is any old HDMI capture card, whether USB3 or PCIe. There's a great primer from Technology Connections below, but he recommends quite a cheap converter and composite video. That might make sense in North America, but IMO it's worth using the OSSC & RGB SCART. EDIT: Context: RGB SCART was only really "a thing" in the UK & Europe (and also Japan, which had their own slightly different version), it was cheap and commodified here. The rest of the world used composite almost exclusively, or S-Video if they had a few quid to spare. RGB - true RGB - SCART is far superior to both. If you really really are set on trying to directly capture the analogue signals... well... you're braver than I am... . Start by taking a look these two links: https://www.retrorgb.com/videocapture.html (gaming & console oriented, but relevant) and https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarde...how_do_i_digitizetransfercapture_video_tapes/.
I disagree with @Byron C here. First, unless I'm sorely mistaken there's absolutely no point in RGB SCART on a standard VHS deck: the video is recorded as a composite signal, not as separate R, G, and B channels. There's also no point in a hardware upscaler: you should capture the signal as true to the original as possible, then if you want artificial upscaling you can do it in software after the fact. I've got an HDMI capture card (BlackMagic Intensity Pro, the original model) which has analog inputs, and I'm planning to digitise some VHS stuff myself with it in the near future - but I'll be using the composite input and capturing as 576i (or 480i for NTSC stuff). You could pick up the same, or there are plenty of cheap USB composite video capture devices out there - just check none of them are doing any upscaling!
Well how very dare you, what absolute cheek That’s a fair point. I’m not too familiar with how VHS signals are encoded & recorded. My default assumption back in the day was always “use SCART because betterer”, and the only “analogue” video systems I’ve had cause to look into in any great depth over the last 10 years or so is for consoles or computers which can output progressive scan. But I am going to still disagree with you about this, however . You’re not wrong in that if you absolutely need the most accurate representation of the original analogue video signal then capturing the analogue signal is the way to go. However. Letting a piece of hardware do the work for you is a hell of a lot easier when it comes to interlacing and encoding. Last time I really spent any time looking into this, I found that the cheap composite capture devices were pretty awful - though I will admit it’s been a few years. The BlackMagic hardware you mention there is easily £150 used, whereas you can pick up an Elgato or AverMedia USB HDMI capture device for £40-£50 on CeX. I suggested the OSSC since it probably is one of the best bang for buck upscalers; we’ve already established that SCART is overkill, so a much cheaper and generic alternative like the Technology Connections video suggests might do a good enough job. I found many such “composite to HDMI” devices for about £10 on Amazon. Which is why the main question really is how good you want the end result to look, and how much time, effort, or money are you prepared to invest
In the case of a VHS deck, the SCART cable will literally be carrying a composite video (and stereo audio) signal. At least, on every deck I've ever seen! Yeah, it wasn't really a recommendation - I'm using it 'cos it's what I have, no other reason. I bought it for a hunnert brand new way back in the mists of time - in fact, it was when I was writing my *first* book, 'cos there was no other way to capture screenshots from Minecraft Pi Edition at the time! Here, though, is a USB capture device with composite input from the same company: £38. Or it would be, if it weren't out of stock... You'll get better quality capturing the composite signal and deinterlacing/upscaling (if you want to upscale) in software - heck, throw "AI" at the problem, there are some good upscaling models out there if you don't mind the detail loss - than running a composite signal through a hardware upscaler and capturing the HDMI output. Remember that the hardware stuff is built for speed to keep latency down, with old consoles in mind, not for maximising quality. Now, if you're saying that you'll be able to capture the signal cheaper by throwing a hardware upscaler at it, I'd have to crunch the numbers - but remember that you'll need to spend... £60-150 (after a quick look on Amazon) for the OSSC *and* however much for the HDMI capture card of your choice (I've one of the cheap USB 3.0 ones here - it's awful, it spits out heavily-compressed MJPEG, I hate it) rather than just picking up a capture card that can do composite directly...
It's more a question of how much you value your time and what result you want. If your goal is "good enough", then IMO using a modern composite-to-HDMI box and USB3 capture card will save you a lot of time and effort. I'll concede that an upscaler like the OSSC is overkill (kinda already did concede that ), so... £8.99 on a generic composite-to-HDMI adapter, a £42 Elgato HD60 Game Capture, a (free, as in beer and speech) copy of OBS, and chances are that it'll be "good enough" for what most people want. If, however, your goal is to capture the source material as accurately as possible for archival purposes, then yeah - capture the analogue video signals. The trade-off there is that finding the right software processing toolchain for deinterlacing and optimal quality is going to need research and testing. You'll get a much more accurate result, and arguably better quality, but you pay for it in terms of your time. Honestly I think the bigger challenge is the VCR itself. You'll probably find quite a lot of them on places like eBay or Facebook Marketplace, but finding one that isn't going to chew your tapes to shreds will almost certainly be more difficult.
I used one of those cheap £15 SCART to USB grabber boxes you can find on a certain auction site and it worked fine. Finding a working VCR for a sensible price and a VHS-C to VHS adapter was much more of a challenge. Sifting through hours of footage of the floor/dangling lens cap filmed by my late grandfather whilst seemingly walking the entire length of the Great Wall of China was a real test of patience though!
Thank you for all your suggestions. Plenty for me to think about and look into. I think a scart / composite to hdmi adapter and a capture device looks like the best option to me. I just need to get lucky on a decent deal on a working VHS player first! Will keep you all updated on how I get on. Thanks
Sorry for the delayed update. Unfortunately I've not got very far with this. I did manage to source a VHS player however I've not even tested it yet. I then need to decide on what I'm going to do The plan was to get this project mostly sorted before I became a Dad again which happened at the beginning of this month so my time is very limited at the moment. Hopefully in the new year I will be able to pick it back up again and will keep you all updated.
