Thoughts on Capping a Small Amount of VHS

[hBIkOa7m]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have seven VHS with somewhere between 20 mins and 2 hours of footage on each tape that I would like to digitalise. However, I don't currently have any of the hardware to cap it myself (not even a VHS player to review the tapes with) and after having a good read of the capturing forums it seems that you really need to be smart about what equipment you buy if you have to buy any.

So I guess I have two options:

1) Buy a VHS/DVD combo player with some kind of TBC, buy a PCI/USB capture device and any cables required to connect them - then cap the tapes myself.

2) Find somebody with the equipment already and pay them to capture the tapes for me.

I'm fairly experienced with using both AviSynth and VapourSynth to process digital video and I'm pretty good at using search engines to answer questions about potential analogue processing issues not found in digital-source video; so the real barrier is just getting the contents of the tapes correctly dumped into an intermediate format on the computer!

I estimate it would cost ~25 GBP (~35 USD) per tape to have somebody rip them using their own equipment but I'm really interested to know what your (the Doom9 community's) thoughts are on doing that. By that estimate it would cost me ~200 GBP (~280 USD) in total to rip the entire collection and for that price I might be able to buy the hardware to do it myself - but then again, I only have seven tapes to rip so I don't know if I'd ever use the capture hardware again.

Looking forward to any thoughts on my situation!

[Ghitulescu]

Option 1 - buy/get the DVDs (maybe eves the BDs)
Option 2 (small quantities) - let a pro do it, but make sure the pro is going his job, not only press DUB (this is more difficult than it seems at a first glance)
Option 3 (large quantities) - get yourself a good player and a good recording device (preferably uncompressed), then learn avisynth or Adobe Premiere or Edius or or or to do the corrections. A TBC is highly recommended.

With 1st generation tapes (camcorder, TV shows, original tapes) there is not much to work upon (pay attention to copy prevention techniques like macrovision on commercial tapes)) and you can get away with little investment in apparatuses.

[hBIkOa7m]

Thanks for the feedback! It's really useful to get some opinions on my options.

Option 1 - buy/get the DVDs (maybe eves the BDs)

Unfortunately the first option is out the question - all the tapes are either from the family camcorder (holidays, presentations, etc), or were taped from local television stations many moons ago. The tapes are all purely sentimental but the scary part is they're irreplaceable. I'll feel much more comfortable when I have them digitally backed up in a couple of different locations.

Option 2 (small quantities) - let a pro do it, but make sure the pro is going his job, not only press DUB (this is more difficult than it seems at a first glance)
Option 3 (large quantities) - get yourself a good player and a good recording device (preferably uncompressed), then learn avisynth or Adobe Premiere or Edius or or or to do the corrections. A TBC is highly recommended.

With 1st generation tapes (camcorder, TV shows, original tapes) there is not much to work upon (pay attention to copy prevention techniques like macrovision on commercial tapes)) and you can get away with little investment in apparatuses.

I am 80% sure I wont come across another VHS tape I'll need to digitalise in the future so I guess the second option is my best bet. Do you have any experience with getting professional help with this? What sort of questions should I be asking to confirm they're not just talk?

I was thinking along the lines of "What hardware stack do you use for digitalising the tapes", "What software do you use to control the incoming feed" and "What A/V codecs do you normally use". Maybe I should try and catch them out with something like "What resolution and framerate will the resulting video file be" because that should be a pretty easy one!

[laserfan]

In the USA there are still available some new Toshiba DVR620 VHS/DVD recorders, which would enable you to easily cap your tapes to DVD. Less than $200 bucks.

I am faced with the precise dilemma of yours, which is two (yes just two) precious family VHS tapes with zero playback capability. I have a PC with capture card and DV input and etc but no VHS machine so am considering getting this.

Once I'm onto DVD I am free to rip the DVD and edit using my favorite editor VideoReDo. It even has mp4 output capability so now I can watch on my smartphone & tablets (and email to other relatives).

[vivan]

I was thinking along the lines of "What hardware stack do you use for digitalising the tapes", "What software do you use to control the incoming feed" and "What A/V codecs do you normally use". Maybe I should try and catch them out with something like "What resolution and framerate will the resulting video file be" because that should be a pretty easy one!Yeah, hw question is the most important one. If they know what they're doing they will have something from this list http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/1567-vcr-buying-guide.html

[ChiDragon]

I've seen ads from locals that mention discounts when the amount of material on a tape is less than 2 hours, and some charge based on the runtime they are converting rather than the number of physical tapes. You may want to look into that when comparing available services.

What sort of questions should I be asking to confirm they're not just talk?

I was thinking along the lines of "What hardware stack do you use for digitalising the tapes", "What software do you use to control the incoming feed" and "What A/V codecs do you normally use". Maybe I should try and catch them out with something like "What resolution and framerate will the resulting video file be" because that should be a pretty easy one!
Those are questions that they should be able to answer, except for maybe the second one. I'm not sure what you're asking there.

This thread also has a couple suggestions: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/myths/2852-how-media-professional.html

One trick is to search for services that can handle pro formats like Betacam. They're more likely to have done industry work. Of course, the good ones will cost more.

[Mounir]

You buy a good s-vhs vcr (jvc/pana) for cheap and you resell it in a year or two, you might actually profit from this little investment. Check on the Vcr buying guide (http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/286055-VCR-buying-guide-%28S-VHS-D-VHS-Professional%29) first