Hi

I've heard conflicting views on this.
I wish to convert my VHS analogue tapes to digital. Which process will provide the better quality result.
1) Transferring the tape via my Pinnacle PCTV card to my PC, using good software, and a AMD 3500 CPU, and 9600XT 256 meg graphics card, and 1 gig of RAM.
OR 2) Inputting the analogue VHS sugnal into a Canon digital camera and back to the PC via flywire?
How much out of 10 would readers give each process?

regards

go straight from the VHS deck to the camera - less cable means better transfer.

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www.irishmark.net / MyYouTube / www.mediachill.com

cibola123: I cant rate those methods as I havn't personally tried them. What I can talk about is the DAC-100 Analogue to Digital converter I've recently purchased. It does the job fantastically. Just connect the VHS players output to the DAC and a firewire cable from your pc to the DAC. Load premiere, start capturing, play the vhs. Boosh - your VHS tapes are imported in DV format.

Certainly worth a look http://www.datavideo.info/products/dac100.htm

:) I tried the camera to camera method. i.e. I conected my full-size VHS Panasonic M10 camcorder to my Digital Panasonic GS400 camcorder via the supplied AV cable. I had to follow the instructions from the book for the GS400. I had to go into the menu and select the AV in / AV out option then I think press the night view button. All I did then was press play on the big VHS camera and I think record on the GS400. The result was a transfer of footage on to the tape in the GS400. Now that it is "digitised", the signal cannot degrade any further. Incase you did`nt know, digital is based on a set of binary codes (numbers). The number 1000 is always 1000. I then captured the digitised footage into Premier elements in portions at a time, (naming them) as I went, then I was able to play about with the stuff in premiere. The end result was surprizingly good. I was also able to add effects and deal with the old VHS footage just like it was shot on a digital camera. The only down side of doing it this way is it will cost you money for the DV tapes, and of course the time factor. And one more thing, If the VHS footage was shot by someone with a rubbish camera with cheap tapes and a terrible technique, then I`m sorry but, you wont make a silk purse from a pigs ear! Good luck mate. Wullie.

I've been using a Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U Video Converter ($159). Had it for about 18 months, have used it primarily to archive video off of my Tivo onto DVD. Hardware based encoder delivers great video quality. I've only transferred video from a VHS tape on two occasions but was very pleased with the results.

I recommend the Canopus ADVC300, It's not cheap but it cleans the signal as it captures and locks the audio. I have uploaded a 10 sec clip taken 8yrs ago with an old SVHS cam, it's full dv(26mb) showing the results compared to capture via camcorder.

right click save target as http://www.kidspc.bits-uk.com/videos...re_compare.avi

This maybe a bit over the top, but if you have a lot of video to convert, probably worth a look, it is bi directional so can be used to record back to video or used to give output from the timeline to a TV or monitor.

Mike W