Home Movie Conversion 101
August 14, 2020 7:49 PM   Subscribe

I'm going to convert old VHS home movies to digital files. What's the best way to do it?

I have a pile of old VHS tapes that I want to transfer to the computer. Reading everything is leaving me more confused than anything. I don't have the $$$ to send all of them someplace (there are at least 15 years of dance recital tapes alone).

What I have: a VCR and a Windows laptop or a Raspberry Pi

What I will need:
Some sort of connection device to link the VCR and the computer. I see various things on Amazon, but it's honestly twisting my mind in circles.
Hard Drives to save onto. What size? I though this would be easy enough to google, but I can't get a strait answer on how much storage 1 hour of VHS will need. I realize it depends on encoding. I couldn't even find a good answer on what format (codec?) to rip it to. I'm guessing that maybe I want to transfer it lossless and then burn to DVD compressed to distribute.

Bonus question: What hard drive? How big? I don't need it to be super portable. It's going to sit in a closet (checking it regularly). I'm guessing old fashioned spinning platters are good enough. I need to keep it budget friendly because I need to buy at least 2 (one for here and one to store at my brother's house).

I have cloud backup available as well.


PS: Prefer Amazon as I have a gift card I need to spend there.
posted by kathrynm to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Here are instructions with a supplies list and links to items to buy.

Get a 1 or 2 TB hard drive, this should be more than sufficient. You dont mention how many tapes you have, but you can at least start there.

If your tapes are old and brittle, you may need to send them to a specialist.
posted by ananci at 8:15 PM on August 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


Technology Connections did a video about capturing video from VCR. In general, old analog video is going to be pretty small - on the order of 700 megabytes/hour using 2000's finest encoder, down under 200 using something from this decade. Modern HD 720p media is on the order of 1.5gigs/hr using h264 encoding. You'll probably get truly sick of the project before you fill a 4tb drive.

What's your redistribution goal? .mp4 / .mkv is pretty common, but if it's just digitizing some old cassettes before they become unplayable, you probably won't have too much trouble with anything you encode to.
posted by Kyol at 8:18 PM on August 14, 2020 [2 favorites]


Seconding the Technology Connections method linked above. Specifically, you need a digitizer like this and a capture card like this, in addition to a USB flash drive (or, I suppose, a external drive). It's definitely the most straightforward high-quality capture method I've come across.
posted by Betelgeuse at 6:51 AM on August 15, 2020


Response by poster: That Technology Connection video went over my head. I did understand The Verge article and I think I'm going to go with that method.

Are all major brand HHDs pretty much the same these days? Or is one better than the rest?
posted by kathrynm at 6:29 PM on August 15, 2020


Best answer: I've used SanDisk, Western Digital, and Samsung drives and they all seem to last a long time. You'll need to plan to replace them every 6 years or so, though I have a 15 year old external that's still alive and kicking. But dont push your luck on it, is my advice.
posted by ananci at 7:43 PM on August 15, 2020


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