[JPLamb]

I am wanting to back up all of my family videos which are on VHS to my computer before they start losing quality.

Does anybody have a cheap way of doing it? i know you can get a VHS which has a USB cable to your computer but these seem to be really expensive, i am looking for a good cheap way of doing it.

Cheers

JPLamb

[cwwozniak]

Define Cheap.

Unless your computer all ready has a video input port, you will need some kind of hardware to capture and digitize the video (and audio).

EDIT: Do you have a working VCR?

[JPLamb]

Yes i have a working vcr it connects via a scart cable

[JPLamb]

Cheap means only using the basic hardware needed. I would also prefer if i could use a laptop to copy the tapes my desktop is not up to much and my laptop has a DVD writer which i could burn my videos to.

Would i just be needing a USB video input device which has the 3 phono sockets on so that i can connect the VHS to it via scart?

JPLamb

[cwwozniak]

If your VCR can output S-Video via the SCART connector, you might want to consider a USB based video input device with an S-Video input along with the two audio inputs. S-Video gives a little bit better color performance than a single composite video output. S-Video is not officially part of the SCART standard but some products may offer S-Video via a variation of the signal assignments.

If your laptop has Hi-Speed USB ports than a USB based product should work well with it. If your laptop is older and only has USB 1.0 ports, you may not get that good a picture quality because the the video capture device will need to apply more lossy compression to limit the data bandwidth to the lower data rate of USB 1.0.

[Drabdr]

One consideration you need to keep in mind is that it takes up quite a bit of memory to do the conversion process. If you have a large amount of free hard drive space and not very many movies; then not even a concern. But if your computer don't have a huge hard drive, and you have lots of movies, then... it may be a consideration.

So just kind of remember that whatever system you have, you'll need to estimate how many minutes of video, if you are going to store them, store them and burn them, burn them then delete, etc.

cwwozniak has given some great advice. Just to kinda add, obviously you can use what you have. But... the better video card, the better the quality of recording. Also, you might want to do some video editing, so you may need video editing software.

If you have a mediocre DVD burner, I would slow down the burn process.

[Who's Me]

Could you use something like this for that? they have video inputs.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...10%20-%20%2425
You would need to use a desktop but they are cheap.
I don't know what kind of software they have for recording

[JPLamb]

thank you all for your advice, it has really helped,

I will let you know how i get on

JPLamb

[sixpack]

Have you looked at "VHS2DVD", I've used it to transfer VHS tapes from my ole Sony 8MM camcorder or VHS player. I use a 2ghz Thinkpad, 40 gig drive and burn the video to a DVD, it has done a fine job for me and the program and USB/audio/video connector runs about $39. Check out:
www.vhs2dvdwizard.com

[JPLamb]

Thank you for the link, i am in the UK so have emailed them to see if they can ship to the UK. all of the others that i found did not seem to come with the capture software.

Thanks again

JPLamb