f13.net

Its that time again, another help thread. This one should be easy though. What I am looking for is an easy way to get the content of a VHS tape in to my computer. I have a bunch of old VHS and no VHS player. My two thoughts where ether to by a video card with RCA-in and connect a VHS player, which I would have to buy, or get a combo player that could burn a VHS to DVD then input the DVD to my computer. I dont really like ether of those options, the first is better I guess.

Any advice would be much welcomed.

I'd probably do the first way - you can buy a pretty cheap TV capture card that accepts composite video, which is what most VCRs do (I think).

I think there are services that will take all your VHS and put them on DVD for you, but I bet they aren't cheap. :)

There are any number of devices that will do what you want. The options on such a device are:

1) Video card or not
2) TV tuner or not
3) Internal card or external USB box
4) Hardware MPEG-2 encoder or not

E.g. you can get among others:

Video card with a TV tuner plus composite/S-Video input, no hardware MPEG-2 encoder (e.g. ATI All-in-Wonder card)

Video card with composite/S-Video input, no hardware MPEG-2 encoder and no TV tuner (A "VIVO" card, Video In Video Out)

Dedicated internal card (usually PCI though there are some PCI-e x1 now) with TV tuner plus composite/S-Video input, hardware MPEG-2 encoder (Hauppauge WinTV, ATI TV Wonder)

External USB box with TV tuner plus composite/S-Video input, hardware MPEG-2 encoder (Hauppauge WinTV USB)

External USB box with composite/S-Video input, no hardware MPEG-2 encoder (Plextor ConvertX PX-AV200U and a ton of others)

The TV tuner is nice if you want to turn your machine into a PVR device.

If you have a lot of VHS tapes to convert it would be best to get something that has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder unless you have a dual-core CPU and don't mind tying one of the cores up while things are converting.

If possible it's better to get a capture device that has it's own audio inputs rather than capturing through a sound card/motherboard sound inputs to minimze the chances of audio sync problems.

Edit: I forgot to say that video card and hardware mpeg-2 encoder are mutually exclusive options. I.e. if you get a video card with video capture capabilities it'll always use your CPU to do the encoding.

Wouldn't the easiest thing be just to buy one of those VHS to DVD burners such as this one (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8516616&type=product&id=1186006199610)?

Step 1:  Burn to DVD
Step 2:  Profit?

Moved to college FB thread.

So I did some more research, seems the cheapest way to go is to get a Video Capture Card. Now I just need to find a cheap one that works for Mac.