VHS to DVD

[Jim Hawkins]

Thinking of converting my VHS tapes to DVD discs. Anyone recommend a good device to do it ? The Honestech 5 looks okay, but I'd like to hear from people that have used it (or other makes).

[Brian Gaff]

Commercial or home made. In the former case as long as you can defeat the Macrovision anti copy routines its not that hard. I did some many moons back but now I can't see much not much point any more!

Brian

[Jim Hawkins]

Most of mine are homemade downloads from TV programs.

Brian Gaff wrote:

[David WE Roberts]

you have a desktop or a portable?

Solution may vary depending on hardware.

Cheers

Dave R

[dennis]

It almost certainly easier to look for downloads of the programs.

[Jim Hawkins]

I have both (both using XP pro)

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Brian Gaff writes

If you don't mind losing a bit of quality, the simplest method is probably to play the tapes on a VCR which has an analogue RF output (as most do/did), with the RF fed to a DVD/disc recorder with an analogue tuner. That should overcome the effects of any Macrovision protection (well, it worked for me).

For somewhat better* quality, I've used the Hauppague internal WinTV tuner card in my PC. As well as the RF input, it also has baseband AV inputs for composite video and mono (I think) audio - but not all cards do. To steady the tape video jitter, I probably also used a timebase corrector in the video feed - and this would also have removed Macrovision - and I think this was certainly necessary for some commercial tapes. The WinTV application recorded the AV as an MPG file, which I then burned to a DVD. Other computers may also have suitable inputs for baseband AV signals.

*Actually, the quality using the RF connection wasn't mush worse than the baseband.

[Graham.]

Yes, I use a DVDR to digitise stuff from VHS and camcorder tape, but why use RF? I have never seen a VHS machine without baseband audio and video outputs and similarly I haven't encountered a DVDR without the corresponding inputs.

In most cases all that is needed is a SCART between the two boxes.

I use a rewritable disk then transfer the VOB files to a PC for editing and burning the final disk.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Graham. writes

If the tape is commercial, it is quite likely to have Macrovision anti-copy protection. I believe that this consists of a high-amplitude signal added in the video vertical interval, and it makes the recorder's video AGC bounce around, fouling up the lock of the picture. This seems only to be effective when you are using a recorder's baseband AV input. If you go into a TV set - either at modulated RF or at baseband, the picture is normal.

When you think of it, a TV set has to be capable of taking either an RF or video input from a Macrovisioned tape, so I guess that a recorder is deliberately designed so that when using at least the baseband input, its video ACG reacts badly to the Macrovision, and fouls up the picture.

However, the RF side is of a recorder is essentially the same as a TV set, and it would appear that if it is used as a demodulator (whether you're recording to disk or feeding the AV to a TV set), the AGC behaves itself, and the picture is OK. It's a long while since I copied video tapes, but I'm pretty sure that at least my machine (a LiteOn 5045) worked OK. But I might be wrong!!

[Graham.]

I thought the OP wasn't copying commercial pre recorded tape.

Yes I agree with your explanation about Macrovision, and the fact it sometimes was defeated when the link was RF.

It all depended on the combination of equipment used for making the dub. Manufacturers were supposed to be signed up to a scheme where they would "honour" the Macrovision protection, we would call it DRM now, I'm not sure if it was called that in the '80.

One of the Philips VHS machines that we had available for rental digitally regenerated clean sync pulses so it completely defeated Macrovision if used at the "B" end. This was the machine that had a mechanism that laced the tape in a Betamax fashion, you will remember it if you ever worked on one.

I used to maintain hotel distribution system and in one case we started to get Macrovion protected tapes on some Disney titles. All the Salora sets in the rooms refused to display a stable picture.

Fortunately we had some of these.

reason we had them was many TV sets only had a single channel button that selected a short time-consent in the line sync PLL often channel 8 and commonly called the video channel. We typically needed to distribute 3 VHS channels so rather than go round to hundreds of rooms and modify all the sets we used the TBC to clean up the signal at source.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Graham. writes

Yes, I eventually realised this - but as I'd started, I thought I'd better continue (if only as general interest for anyone waning to copy treasured commercial tapes.

While most TV sets were happy with a crude single-block frame sync (like you got out of a Philips 5501 pattern generator), a few were very fussy if the full normal frame sync train was nominally present, but was slightly corrupted (eg sometimes even if one equalising pulse was missing). I can imagine Macrovision sometimes causing problems.

Indeed. The long time-constant was necessary to provide 'flywheel sync'

- designed to give jitter-free pictures if the received TV signal was weak and noisy. Unfortunately, when the signal is noise-free - but jittering in its own right (as typically provided by a VCR), it's far better to have a hard sync, so that each horizontal line is locked to its own albeit jittering start-of-line sync pulse, rather than a constantly wandering average. Weren't some later TV sets capable of deciding for themselves what time-constant to use, depending on the characteristics and quality of the incoming signal?

[John Williamson]

The same thing is happening to popular commercial VHS as has happened to a lot of vinyl. The owners have worked out that if they do the transfer from the original media to DVD, they can sell it at a price that makes it easier and cheaper than copying for the average user. There are a lot of old TV shows on Youtube as well, often with surprisingly good quality.

Why spend at least three hours copying a commercial tape and burning a DVD, when you can buy a new & better copy for a tenner? Other than the "I did that" or "Can't find it" factors, of course.

FWIW, for my home tapes, I use a Vivitar camcorder which records at 640x

480, then convert to whatever format I want. 640 x480 is much better than domestic VHS recordings, which are only equivalent to about 350 pixels across, and normally with a sensor vertical resolution of 288 horizontal lines, double scanned for the tape to show 576 visible lines in the frame. That's for PAL, NTSC is worse. Hi band VHS is about equivalent to VGA graphics.

[Graham.]

Better get the camera again and a trip to the garage... ...Bloody hell I thought I had pinched the 2N3055 for a project but I must have put it back because it's still working. Lord knows when I last powered it up

you no doubt know, similar to the PM5501 but made by Labgear.

[danakins97]

Everyone's reply appears useless o answer your question.

[The Natural Philosopher]

MMm. we thought about doing that but frankly, te quality of ten year old VHS was so bad we bought the DVDS instead.

Of course if they are home made videos, that's another matter

[newshound]

I *realise* that this is an old post, but for anyone who might currently be interested I just bought one of these

to download stuff of an old Camcorder and it works fine (does NTSC and PAL). Comes with female phono sockets.

[Davey]

Knowing that the original is an old post, I agree about the EZCap. It works fine, and it's cheap. There were warnings about a similarly-named Easycap rip-off copy when I bought mine, but this one is good.

[Bob Eager]

WRT the Honestech...beware the bargain one from Maplin (much cheaper) as it's an old version.

[Brian Gaff]

Old post alert.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Besides, the commercial ones have a kind of deliberately unstable pulse rate to foil copies to other media. There are according to what I have read, now some very good programs that can process home made videos to get rid of noise and dodgy definition, but they do take hours to process the videos. Not that I have any need for such things. Brian