Capture video via RCA inputs?

August 11, 2007 8:17 AM

Software to capture video from RCA inputs on my PC?

I have a PC (no not a Mac, yes I know) that has RCA inputs. I also have a lot of VHS tapes of important moments of my life.

Is there a simple, free program to capture video to a widely-supported format? Some basic editing would be nice. I'm looking for something like Audacity (pops) for video.

posted by CaptApollo to computers & internet (7 comments total)

are you sure that that isn't an rca output?
posted by DJWeezy at 8:37 AM on August 11, 2007

(I am going to totally not answer the question you asked.)

The simplest way to convert my old VHS tapes to a format my computer understood was to connect my VCR directly to a digital video camera using a standard video cable. Digital video camera to computer via firewire and voila!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:02 AM on August 11, 2007

One of the RCA connections is going to have to be yellow for this to even get started. Red and white are just audio.
posted by rhizome at 9:38 AM on August 11, 2007

There are probably 'one-click' solutions that do pretty well, but I'm not familiar with them.

If you are technically inclined, you should probably try starting with the capture analogue sources with VirtualDub/AviSynth guide at doom9.net. It may be a little out of date, being from 2004, but very thorough.

The results of a search for vhs to avi seem useful as well..
posted by Chuckles at 11:18 AM on August 11, 2007

Yes, i am sure they are inputs. Yes, there is a yellow input.
posted by CaptApollo at 2:14 PM on August 11, 2007

Virtual VCR has worked well for me.
posted by Otis at 5:54 PM on August 11, 2007

VirtualDub is pretty much the best free option for this sort of thing. It's kind of difficult to use, but if you follow a guide like the one Chuckles linked to you should be able to get it working without too much suffering.
posted by zixyer at 7:47 PM on August 11, 2007