Archiving videos onto PC

theMAD2

theMAD2

theMAD2

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2 Aug 2005
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680
Can anyone recommend a good way to archive old VHS videos onto a PC? I don't have a capture card, but I do have USB2 and firewire. Some kind of external cable or device would be handy if anyone knows of one?

Any advice appreciated :)
 
They might be an option, the main reason I ask for external was because I wanted to do this on a laptop. Do you know any solutions for this?
 
Try and borrow a mates camcorder which has the 'AV In' facility. Most newer ones do these days. Scart out of the video into the camcorder and from the camcorder firewire into your laptop. A camcorder with 'AV In' will have been bundled with the right cables, e.g; yellow,red,white phonos into a 3.5mm jack for the vid to camcorder connection, and of course a firewire for the camcorder to laptop.
Once you've got everything set up use Windows Moviemaker to do the live capturing of the bits you want. (Get the Moviemaker update here:

Then, from within Moviemaker, edit, titles, etc, if you want, then save as a .wmv at the appropriate quality - depending on hard drive space.
 
Personally ,I think you would have more success if you bought a TV card. That's what I use to transfer ,straight on to Pinnacle as a mpg file .no problems .I use a cheapo Jetway card , it was only £29 , I bet you could get a cheapo one from flea-Bay. Also I read somewhere recently about laptop hard drives being slower than Pc one's .I dont know if that is true , but in any case you need a fairly large drive [@7200rpm] if you have a lot of videos.Some decent software wouldn't come a miss either , I supose movie maker is fine if you just want to view .wmv's on your PC , but If you want to put them onto DVD , then something reliable is needed to do the job.
 
I might have a look at the TV car option, although the PC I was looking at doing it on might not be up to spec. I'm sure I saw a cable with a box inbetween, it was like a really easy way of doing this, I just didn't save the link and I haven't been able to find it since :(
 
your right , there is in between boxes available where you plug in your camcorder or video and it sends it to the PC/laptop via the Firewire or USB ports. Some are made by a company called Hauppauge .......WinTV U.S.B for instance ...infact looking through this old catalogue from ****** [ year 2000 version ]there's a few models and there all made by Hauppauge. You could allways check out their website.
 
Bought a Dazzle DVD Recorder from a high street electronics store , cost £29.99. Has audio & video inputs and plugs into the PC using USB2. Piece of **** to use, will copy to HD or even burn direct to DVD :D
 
theMAD2 said:
Dazzle looks good! Can it save the capture as MPEG as well as DVD?
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Not with the software in the box , you should be able to use third party software with it , I will give it a try if you want ?
 
Only if it's not too much trouble! I guess Windows Movie Maker could use it as a capture decide and save them as WMV. Let me know if you do get a chance mate :)
 
theMAD2 said:
Only if it's not too much trouble! I guess Windows Movie Maker could use it as a capture decide and save them as WMV. Let me know if you do get a chance mate :)
Click to expand...

Just tried it as an input to webcamXP & it works , it should work as a video input to any software package
 
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