help converting old video cassettes tapes

aideen

Guest

hey anyone know how i might convert very old recordings on video casette tapes to a format i can edit and play around with on my mac and then burn onto a dvd to play on a dvd player???

aido

jgs22

Guest

Do you have a digital video camera because essentially you are trying to capture your VHS footage into your camera to convert to highest quality possible ie DV with no degradation through mpeg2 compression. Hence, my suggestion is look at getting a digital video camera with certain features...........

A lot of midrange digital video cameras come with a “pass-through” or AV-In feature. It allows you to connect your VHS player to your camera (simply using RCA out from the VHS player to “pass-through” (or AV-In) of the camera.

Hit “Play” on the VHS player and “Record” on your camera and this is basically it. Your analog footage is now in your camera as DV and ready for download direct into your application for editing etc.

i have done many such conversions myself this way for editing on my Mac and it works like a dream.

Doing it this way (ie. via the camera’s “pass-through” or AV-In) eleminates the need to purchasing a dedicated capture interface such as Canopus etc which can be quite costly. I have no issues with the resulting quality doing it this way, either. Quality is as good as the VHS original tape.

Hope this helps.
Cheers from Oz