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Thread: VHS tapes - what to do with them in 2022

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    Senior Member AGTDenton's Avatar
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    VHS tapes - what to do with them in 2022

    Currently having a large clear out at my dads and came across numerous VHS tapes.
    The question is, what to do with them. Oddly they felt smaller in my hand than I remembered as a child.

    The first focus is on the genuine films & series, in the hope they'll be easier & quicker to deal with.
    A couple of years ago there seemed to be a bit of a VHS resurgeance, but not heard anything recently.
    I want to avoid dealing with them individually as there's about 40-50 and I don't have the patience for eBay also the cost to send those bulk will be more than they're worth.
    I've 5 charity shops on my high st and none of them are taking VHS any more.

    Just wondered if anyone had some recomendations as to what to do with them, avoiding landfill where possible and not looking to make any money on them either.



    Secondly we have around another 10 personal home video transfers from old camcorders. I'd quite like to digitise these as the tapes just take up so much room and also requires one to keep a player in the long run.
    However, happy to purchase a player for the task at hand, I can then blank those once complete so that they could also be used again by somebody.

    What players or methods should I look for, ideally with the highest quality.
    I recall Marantz being good back in the day but I wouldn't have a clue what models.

    Thanks

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    Super Moderator Jonj1611's Avatar
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    Re: VHS tapes - what to do with them in 2022

    I am not saying this particular model but maybe you could buy one of these for fairly painless video transfer

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325261133396
    Jon

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    AGTDenton (11-07-2022)

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    Re: VHS tapes - what to do with them in 2022

    For players, my favourite has long been Panasonic.

    For methods, trickier. There are many devices available. most of which have ... to put it politely, mixed results.

    I've found two pretty good solutions, but .... not cheap.

    Option 1) Elgato Video Capture – USB 2.0 Capture Card Device. On Amazon, but about £90. I've had good results direct to PC, and it copes not just with colour drift but also with sound and video geting out of sync, even on longer recordings. That's a pretty miserable experience with the cheaper ones I've tried.

    Works by connecting analog outputs to the USB-based capture card, then into PC. Any editing needs to be done on PC.

    Option 2) Use a domestic type DVD/R recorder, with HDR. To be clear, I'm talking about a device that looks rather like a video recorder or a hifi component, not a computer device. You can then connect the VCR to this box via Scart or svideo, and record the whole disk onto the HD on the HDR machine.

    Why bother? Well, buy the right HDR and they have easy to use video editing facilities built right in. You can crop, remove sections (I take out ads if I recorded something from TV before I watch it.

    You can then either plat the edited file into some capture device, or burn to DVD/R. I tend to do the latter. As long as they're decent disks and carefully stored, that gives a decent approximation of an archived copy on optical media. I digitised one such disk to computer a couple of hours ago, and the original disk was about 15-20 years old. No problems.

    Depending on what you're after, that might be the end - VCR footage archived onto optical media. However, if you still want a copy on PC, then yu can rip from the DVDR using MakeMKV, and convert to a more usable format (MP4, MPV, etc) using Handbrake. Both of these are free to use, and pretty effective ... though, by default, won't handle anything on copy-protected media. It can be got round, though, as always. Personally, I MUCH prefer that route, but those domestic type recorders are fairly few and far between. Best brands, IMHO, are Pioneer and Panasonic but be careful, these are very specific devices and many similar machines will record to HD or to DVDr but you can't edit and then transfer. Be careful what you buy. I can look up a couple of models if you go that route.

    This option has the luxury of just pretty much working, and no faffing about with capture devices like the Elgato which, while pretty good, is less elegant (ironic, given the name). So you don't need to buy that.

    EDIT - Note - be very wary buying those 'domestic' type machines from ebay with a view to 'repairing' broken ones. It's not as easy as you might think as they have some copy-protection stuff built in that will lock hardware if you try to swap out duff drives, for instance. You need the right service files and a service remote to re-activate them, and they aren't easy to come by. My advice - buy only working models.

    Oh, and I'm not copying commercial copy-pritected tapes so am not sure if they'll hand that.
    A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".

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    AGTDenton (12-07-2022)

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    Re: VHS tapes - what to do with them in 2022

    You can copy the VHS tapes to digital with a kit. it supplies the needed software and leads from the player to your PC.

    There are a few places up and down the country that still do tapes (audio and video), they run rental stores and are quite popular apparently. Maybe give them a shout and see if they want them

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