Copying Old VHS to DVD

S

S7CK

Carbonite Member
Hey guys, can you recommend a VCR that will copy footage from old VHS tapes and burn them to DVDs?

What about connecting a VCR to my mac and exporting the footage through FCP7?

Thanks.
 
If you are copying commercial tapes - all Copyright stuff aside most commercial VHS to DVD recorders will recognize the Anit-Copy signal embedded into the signal of the tapes and won't copy them, if you are copying home movies I used a Sony VHS to DVD copier I picked up at Costco a while back, it is much quicker than using FCP to do the job and works great.

BTW What part of AK are you in?
 
sublimesnfu said:
If you are copying commercial tapes - all Copyright stuff aside most commercial VHS to DVD recorders will recognize the Anit-Copy signal embedded into the signal of the tapes and won't copy them, if you are copying home movies I used a Sony VHS to DVD copier I picked up at Costco a while back, it is much quicker than using FCP to do the job and works great.

BTW What part of AK are you in?
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Do you remember the model number? It's homemade VHS so no anti-copy worries.

As for AK, I'm in Fairbanks.
 
Not off the top of my head I sold it on craigslist after I was done with the project. I would swing by Fred Meyer, I'm sure the will have something that will work, I usually try to stick to Sony or Panasonic for home theater stuff.

I was just up in Fairbanks shooting an ad two weeks ago, Glad summer is hear finally :-D
 
If you have a miniDV camcorder, or a DV or DVCAM deck, that has composite video (yellow RCA) and stereo RCA audio connections, you can use it to transfer your footage to DV tape for archival storage, or to capture straight into FCP. Personally, I recommend making DV copies first as they will give you a perfectly viable storage medium that can be recalled later without fuss. Plus, if you end up editing any of the footage down, you'll have a constant time code to refer to later when restoring projects.

That said, if the tapes are old and worn, you may need to invest in a Time Base Corrector (TBC) from a company like DataVideo. Older VHS tape can have a degraded control track, making it difficult for other video devices to lock onto the signal. That results in unstable video. A TBC will replace the missing black burst information and stabilize the video signal.

The drawback to going straight to DVD is that you end up with a compressed version that will be less than pleasant to work with later if you choose to edit any of it. Plus, the DVD recorder may also freak out if the tape has a damaged control track, again requiring a TBC.
 
sublimesnfu said:
Not off the top of my head I sold it on craigslist after I was done with the project. I would swing by Fred Meyer, I'm sure the will have something that will work, I usually try to stick to Sony or Panasonic for home theater stuff.

I was just up in Fairbanks shooting an ad two weeks ago, Glad summer is hear finally :-D
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That's cool man, are you based in Anchorage?
 
I've gone from a VCR through the DVX100 (in VCR mode) into DVMonitor Pro to digitize and capture directly to a hard drive. From there, just drop it into FCP and do what you want with it.
 
Another alternative would be to get a Canopus ADVC110 and capture into FCP by hooking the VHS player via RCA composite or S-Video connections on the box.
 
Cools said:
Another alternative would be to get a Canopus ADVC110 and capture into FCP by hooking the VHS player via RCA composite or S-Video connections on the box.
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This is a good alternative. It's called a "DV bridge." Essentially, using either your DV camera or a DV deck to record/capture from the VHS deck does the exact same thing, but if you don't have one of those this can certainly be a much less expensive way to go.
 
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