The cheapest method is one of those USB dongles. I've not used one personally as I have a dedicated card in the computer for doing that sort of thing along with a decent VHS player which processes the video prior to capturing it. I have read that the USB dongles can go out of sync with audio after a while, but I dont know if thats the case with all of them. Worth reading the reviews on amazon.
Does your VHS have an s-video out ? that can typically carry a slightly better picture quality and the USB dongles generally have a plug for them. If only scart, then get a scart to rca cable ... and plug the yellow, red and white into the USB dongle. ( Watch for male / female connections etc )
There are a few points to remember...
- Its VHS, so compared to modern video standards, the quality is going to be low ... both in terms of resolution and colour quality. There is no point capturing VHS at anything like HD resolutions ... its a waste of time. Capture at PAL resolution and be done ... or at most 720p.
- The better your player, the better the final result. Unless the player has what's called a TBC built in, then expect a little bit of shimmy / wobble down vertical edges on the picture.
A quick look on amazon shows up lots of them. I personally would go with one which has lots and lots of reviews, even if it were a few pounds more. Again, read the reviews as they often identify both issues and relevant fixes to pitfalls.
Method / Tips
All depends on what you're trying to record. For me, it was 3hr long tapes. My software allowed me to specify recording time in advance. So I would fast forward the tape to the end of the footage and note the length, then wind it back and set the record time, start recording and walk away and let it do its thing.
I didn't let the capture software make any adjustments to picture quality as I knew i was going to use it in a video editor to clean up and do better adjustments.
The Tapes
Old tapes can be frail, so I would generally fast forward all the way through the tape to make sure it unrolls the full length.
Sometimes this would snap the tape. To fix it, I would cut and splice the tape back together using plain old sellotape cut to the right size. There are plenty of youtube videos on how to do this.
Sellotape is not the best tape you use as it degrades the tape itself over time ... but considering that you are normally capturing this once to get it into a more archival format and probably ditch the old tape, it works well enough for the tape to play through.
