Cheap USB Video Grabber - Capturing VHS

[Andrew25]

Hello there.

First off, I'm so glad I found this forum and it is great to be here! Over the past few days I was lurking around and finally decided to register. I hope I can get some advice here.
I'm a total newbie when it comes down to capturing videos. So please bear that in mind.

Anyway, one of my hobbies is video editing and cutting. Now one of my best friends is going to marry and I'll be his best man. In order to contribute something to the wedding and due to my basic knowledge of video edition, I was thinking about a small video of the groom and bride in their early days. I already got some footage. Some is already digital (DV) but I also have a few VHS tapes I'd like to use some footage from as well.

I know I have to capture and digitize it first. But what is the best way to do it? I did some research online and found cheap USB video grabber for sale online on that website http://www.for-sale.co.uk/usb-video-capture. So what about them? Can I use them or should I keep my hands off 'em?

Right now I just need a few scenes off the VHS tapes. So I really don't want to buy equipment worth a few hundred bucks. Are there any alternatives or other solutions available? Or should I get some used equipment for sale? And how much do I need to invest then? Any feedback is highly appreciated.

Andrew.

[Sharc]

If your VHS tapes are in reasonable condition, a USB grabber can serve your purpose well. The quality of different brands may vary though, I am using Hauppauge USB-Live-2 and I am reasonably happy with it.

Few aspects:
- The tape playback device: Camera, desktop player/(recorder) or ....
- Type of analog signal between playback device and the (USB) converter: Composite, S-Video, Component
- Capturing software and format conversion (compression), like lossless capturing or on-the-fly compression (mpeg2, mpeg4 ....)


Playback and connectivity:
I play the tapes with my legacy SONY VHS recorder/player which connects to the USB converter via a "SCART (player side)-to-Composite (USB converter side)" cable.
Note that S-Video would be preferable as it prevents luma/chroma crosstalk which is prone to "rainbows" and "dotcrawl", depending on the quality of the comb filter of the USB grabber/converter. In my case "Composite" is the only option I have.

Capturing and compression:
The USB-Live-2 comes with capturing software which supports on-the-fly mpeg2 compression. It's straightforward to use, and when one uses the highest bitrate (10MB/sec) the quality is acceptable. Alternatively you may want to try x264 vfw with "veryfast" profile.
For quality reasons I usually capture to a lossless format (using Huffyuf or UTVideo codec) with VirtualDub or VirtualVCR on the PC, and filter and compress to mpeg4 with x264 in a second step afterwards.

[laserfan]

I know you said you didn't want to spend several hundred dollars for a solution, but I will tell you anyway: wanting to save several hours of precious, ancient family video to digital, I had neither playback nor capture method and got a Toshiba DVR620 for about $220 (I see Amazon has them for $230 still). These are long discontinued by Toshiba but do a nice job of VHS playback and DVD recording both.

Once the footage is transferred to DVD then it is an easy matter of ripping and editing.

[Andrew25]

Alright. Thanks for the advice. Maybe one of my friends still owns an old DVD-Recorder.