Vhs to computer. What video machine?

[White-Noise]

Hi everyone I saw a few older threads but they didn't speak to this specific question.

I've got a lot of old home video tapes I need to put onto the computer (back to early 80s). I have an old Sony Video Player which I haven't been able to get a clear picture out of so I've got another cleaning tape coming which I will try putting into it.

Having done a bit of research though there are other options and features on some VHS players including super VHS which can help even if the original ones aren't super VHS according to that.

I want to bring it in in a good quality as I can so that in future I will be able to enhance it. As technology improves.

So my question is, am I going to be doing a good enough job with my existing Sony VHS player or is it worth getting a super VHS player or one with some of these other features I've read about?

I've seen refurbished so to speak super VHS players for around a £100. This doesn't seem too bad to me so is it worth going for a super VHS player or one with any other particular features or is my One going to be good enough?

I don't mind spending a bit of money on it but it's a bit of a minefield and it's confusing me other than the obvious super VHS which apparently can help.

Thanks a lot.

[AndyTR]

Have a look at EasyCap, this should work with any VHS and converts the signal to a USB input. They're about £10 usually.

[White-Noise]

AndyTR said:

Have a look at EasyCap, this should work with any VHS and converts the signal to a USB input. They're about £10 usually.

I've got the cable and the converter if that's what you mean by time looking for advice on the actual VHS machine itself

[AndyTR]

In that case a super VHS machine is really only of any use if the tapes you have were recorded on one. Super VHS can record at a higher luma resolution, horizontal plane I think, it won't play back non-super tapes any better than a standard machine,

[Solocle]

White-Noise said:

Hi everyone I saw a few older threads but they didn't speak to this specific question.

I've got a lot of old home video tapes I need to put onto the computer (back to early 80s). I have an old Sony Video Player which I haven't been able to get a clear picture out of so I've got another cleaning tape coming which I will try putting into it.

Having done a bit of research though there are other options and features on some VHS players including super VHS which can help even if the original ones aren't super VHS according to that.

I want to bring it in in a good quality as I can so that in future I will be able to enhance it. As technology improves.

So my question is, am I going to be doing a good enough job with my existing Sony VHS player or is it worth getting a super VHS player or one with some of these other features I've read about?

I've seen refurbished so to speak super VHS players for around a £100. This doesn't seem too bad to me so is it worth going for a super VHS player or one with any other particular features or is my One going to be good enough?

I don't mind spending a bit of money on it but it's a bit of a minefield and it's confusing me other than the obvious super VHS which apparently can help.

Thanks a lot.

I've actually been doing the same just lately. The old VCR my parents had that I got hold of blew up when I plugged it in. So I looked locally and found a Toshiba DVR20 locally.

It actually does rather well imo. The big advantages for me are these:

Direct dubbing to DVD, no intermediary required, and HDMI output.

I can't answer for S-VHS, but it would seem to me that the signal quality on the tape is the main concern, and you can't retrieve information that's not there. Standard VHS seems quite capable.

Here's some footage I retrieved last night:

[Tyndall]

Agree with Andy re a SVHS deck not making a difference. I run a post production company but we're specialists in archive video formats and have about the widest array of machinery in the country.

We don't use SVHS machines for VHS playback but there are bits of kit we would play them through to get better results (noise reduction, chroma correction etc). These will be out of reach for a home setup though.

I don't have experience of your machine but as far as VHS playback goes we get about as good results out of our domestic Panasonic DMR-EX95Vs as we do the £5figure rack mounted professional decks. Often on eBay for under £100.

Edited by Tyndall on Wednesday 5th March 16:44

[White-Noise]

Tyndall said:

Agree with Andy re a SVHS deck not making a difference. I run a post production company but we're specialists in archive video formats and have about the widest array of machinery in the country.

We don't use SVHS machines for VHS playback but there are bits of kit we would play them through to get better results (noise reduction, chroma correction etc). These will be out of reach for a home setup though.

I don't have experience of your machine but as far as VHS playback goes we get about as good results out of our domestic Panasonic DMR-EX95Vs as we do the £5figure rack mounted professional decks. Often on eBay for under £100.

Edited by Tyndall on Wednesday 5th March 16:44

Brilliant thanks for that. I was reading that the svhs machines can have better components in the machine hence that side of things. Hopefully this cleaner does the job. I can't adjust the heads unlike in another machine I had.

It's a Sony slv se80 if you are aware of it. Thanks guys.

And the footage above looks exactly like I would expect it to and a nice wintery Christmas day too!

[Road2Ruin]

I would get someone else to do it. There are a lot of companies that offer the service. Their machines will be better quality and produce a far better picture.
I have also done this myself a few years ago, and it was a right pain. It worked, sometimes, it only works in real-time, you then have to check it in rela-time, it often had 'glitches', sometimes there were minutes of footage missing and occasionally the machine would go belly up near the end and I would lose it all. I aged ten years in about a week.

[White-Noise]

I'm going to give it a very good shot before I trust someone else with all this stuff which is irreplaceable. I know someone who lost all of theirs because of the company but this was some time ago so maybe it's different now. I enjoy it to be honest and I will be able to come up with some metadata while I'm doing it

[Jinx]

I did this awhile back for some family videos (stop smirking at the back). I needed to clean the heads on the VCR (isopropano ipa is your friend for this) and used a composite to USB lead. Was a bit of a pain (though wasn't as much of a pain as digitising old camcorder tapes - had to source a firewire connection for that). Haven't broken out the VCR since.

[SoulGlo]

I managed to clean up the picture of my Sony VHS player by cleaning the heads with 99% isopropyl alcohol and microfibre swab.

Those head cleaning tape don't really do the job properly. I took the cover off mine and it was covered in a fluff and dust around the heads. Once it was cleared the picture went from a white static to totally clear.

It was actually fairly easy to do, just have to be very careful.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ClXrffkN3M

[White-Noise]

Thanks guys for this I will have another go at cleaning the Machine.

While we are on the subject can you let me know what software you used please? I have tried to use OBS in the past and I will go back to that this time but I had some problems with strange audio sounding very Tinny and it seemed to be a common problem but I never actually got on top of it. It's been a few years though since I last tried to do this as I lost interest so maybe the AI will be of help

[Solocle]

White-Noise said:

Thanks guys for this I will have another go at cleaning the Machine.

While we are on the subject can you let me know what software you used please? I have tried to use OBS in the past and I will go back to that this time but I had some problems with strange audio sounding very Tinny and it seemed to be a common problem but I never actually got on top of it. It's been a few years though since I last tried to do this as I lost interest so maybe the AI will be of help

I've noticed audio... weirdness. Sometimes a very high pitched whine. That's entirely within the machine, VHS to DVD. But I've only noticed it really when playing back footage on my phone.

VHS doesn't have the best frequency response as a format, even at SP it peaks at 8 kHz. The good news is that simple audio post-processing with a low pass filter would resolve that particular issue.

[White-Noise]

Solocle said:

White-Noise said:

Thanks guys for this I will have another go at cleaning the Machine.

While we are on the subject can you let me know what software you used please? I have tried to use OBS in the past and I will go back to that this time but I had some problems with strange audio sounding very Tinny and it seemed to be a common problem but I never actually got on top of it. It's been a few years though since I last tried to do this as I lost interest so maybe the AI will be of help

I've noticed audio... weirdness. Sometimes a very high pitched whine. That's entirely within the machine, VHS to DVD. But I've only noticed it really when playing back footage on my phone.

VHS doesn't have the best frequency response as a format, even at SP it peaks at 8 kHz. The good news is that simple audio post-processing with a low pass filter would resolve that particular issue.

In my situation there was a definite issue, it was like it's under water in a tin. I had done conversions in the past without it so I must be able to sort it somehow I will look at what you mentioned about filters though as well. Thank you

[droopsnoot]

AndyTR said:

In that case a super VHS machine is really only of any use if the tapes you have were recorded on one. Super VHS can record at a higher luma resolution, horizontal plane I think, it won't play back non-super tapes any better than a standard machine,

My last new video recorder was a JVC which did Super VHS, if I recall correctly it recorded 440 lines, where a normal VHS recorder would record 220 lines. It needed special Super VHS tapes which weren't difficult to get, but a bit more expensive. If it detected a standard VHS tape, it would just record or play in the normal way, so you could use it to record tapes that would be played on normal machines. I can't see how it would make any difference to how a standard VHS tape would play.

Still got it here, connected to my Sony hard disk recorder ready for when I've got time to transfer some stuff to DVD. Once on DVD, I can then grab into various video formats if I want to. I planned to do that for all sorts of stuff I'd recorded from the TV that hasn't become available as far as I can tell, but it's a really time-consuming job so I've done hardly any of it.

[OutInTheShed]

The difference is likely to be most VHS machines are ancient relics now, it's a matter of finding one that still works as it did when it left the factory, and/or one that is well matched to the way the tapes are recorded.
A good technician familiar with these things can probably optimise the alignment to make the best of it?
But there's not so many VHS repair men with the correct kit any more.

We went through this with some 'family' videos, 95% of it is crap you don't really want to watch anyway.
The 5%, it may be worth paying for a service to have them copied across.

The trick is knowing which is the 5%...