Date: 01/06/2011

VHS to PC

I have started to digitise home videos to protect them from being damaged and make them more accessible to watch in the future. Hardware wise I use an old Sanyo VCR and a Videomate C200 Plus which is a cheap USB video and audio capture stick. The capture stick is connected with Composite Video via a SCART adaptor to the VCR. I use the PowerDirector 7 DE software provided with the C200 to capture the incoming video and edit it to length. I then use Handbrake to de-interlace video and compress it down to a reasonable size. I'll also create physical copies on DVDs for extra security.

Here are three sample snapshots, each from a separate VHS: Sample 1, Sample 2, Sample 3.

13/10/2011 Update. I've started to burn to DVDs using DVD Flick and have been pleased with the results. The encoding times are fairly slow but I don't have a huge amount of video to burn so I don't mind.