VHS to DVD using Roxio Software

[Steve Eisen]

First if you want this done by X-mas, you better get started right away. 300 VHS tapes is going to take a very very very (I’ll add another) very long time to transfer into an editable codec. Then you have to edit? You should have started this over the summer.

If you only had 2-5 tapes, I would suggest doing the editing.

Get yourself a VHS/DVD recorder and copy away. This is still going to take a very long time. The transfer rate is real time.

593 hours till Christmas!!!

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Jared Smith]

30 not 300… got an extra 0 in there… still a chore but not 300 at least

[Bill Lee]

I’d have to agree with Steve – a VCR/DVD burner combo drive is the best option, otherwise you’ll be mothering the process far more than you want to do. The trick is to make most of what you do when capturing an automatic process, and one that only requires mental effort when you absolutely have to.

Just remember: VHS is very low quality, so copying to DVD and ripping it off the DVD if you need to edit won’t damage the quality significantly. Old VCR video often is off poor quality, and missing frames.

Workflow:
Load up VCR/DVD with tape and blank DVD. Set up monitor to keep an eye on where the VCR is up to. Burn VCR to DVD – don’t worry too much about cueing up – just rewind and start burning. When you notice the VCR has stopped playing useful video, stop the recording, change tapes, rewind and continue burning as long as you think the DVD has enough space for the new VCR video. If you run out of DVD, don’t worry, just finalize this DVD, change to a new blank DVD, rewind the VCR and burn some more VCR video to DVD.

After a while, you’ll have some burnt DVDs containing video, and you’ll still be burning VCRs to DVD. Take the burnt DVDs and copy them on a computer on to a large hard disk by drag copying the VIDEO_TS folder (each one will be up to 4.3GB). Once you have some copied, use MPEG Streamclip to open the Video_TS folder, select one of the video streams, then set In and Out points and either save the video as an editable format for FCP, or Demux it if you just want to trim and arrange the videos in order and burn it using DVD Studio Pro. Here’s where you can quickly set In and Out points and export the video without having to do this trimming in real time like you would otherwise have to do. While you are doing this, keep an eye out for when the VCR playing finishes, so you can change tapes. I would recommend Export to DV… if you need an FCP editable format, since it isn’t going to require a higher quality codec since the original VCR quality will be so poor.

In MPEG Streamclip, when you select File>Open DVD… it will ask you which stream you want to open. Each separate stream should be another VCR tape you have captured. You will almost certainly need to fix frames when opening a video stream in MPEG Streamclip.

If you never get around to editing the video from the burnt DVDs, then you at least have them on DVDs. Navigating around a handful of DVDs is far easier than trying to find some scene from somewhere in a box of VCR tapes.

Bill Lee