As VCRs continue to fall into disuse, there's been an increasing need to transfer decades worth of VHS tapes into a digital format. If you need to transfer video from a VHS to an easily-used digital format, it's never been easier than today. With a few pieces of equipment, some software and a bit of time, you can preserve your video treasures.
Equipment and Setup
You'll need to gather together a few pieces of hardware and software in order to transfer your video. While it's possible to purchase a dual decked VHS/DVD recorder, it's not flexible enough to give you the best transfers possible. For that, you'll need the aid of a computer equipped with a DVD burner, a digital TV tuner adapter and video editing software. The digital tuner is necessary to convert the analog video from the VCR into a digital signal your computer is capable of reading. For editing software, you'll want to choose something capable of capturing directly from the tuner signal, as well as editing the captured video. Most modern editing software will be capable of doing everything you need, from capture to conversion to authoring a DVD using the converted video.
Hooking your VCR to the digital TV tuner adapter is easy. Just connect it as you would to any other display device, choosing the best quality connection; in order from lowest-quality to best: composite connection, s-video and then component. The better the connection used, the better the initial quality when you capture the video. Once you connect the adapter to your computer and start up the editing software, you're ready to begin the converting process.
The Conversion Process
Most quality video editing software will follow the same basic process for capturing and converting video. You'll have to choose the capture video option in your software package and follow the instructions. The software takes the playing VHS video and converts it directly into a digital format ready for editing. There's no quick way to do this as you'll have to play the video in real-time so the editor can capture every frame. Most editing programs are able to remove the most common video distortions during the capture process. Once it's been converted into a digital format you'll be able to edit the video further, altering it as you would any other video clips.
Finishing the Video
Once the video has been captured, you may wish to edit it further. Here you'll have a great deal of choice in the editing process, from cutting scenes and altering the general look of the video to adding effects; you'll only be limited by your creativity and the various capabilities of the editing software. When you finish editing and have a final product, you can save the video in the format of your choice for replay. You can also burn the video to DVD. Most video editing software allows you to author and burn the video directly from the program, but for those that don't, you'll need a separate DVD burning program that will both create the file types necessary for burning to DVD and create the DVD itself. Once burned to DVD, you'll have a transfer of your VHS video that's playable in any DVD player, often with a cleaner picture than you had at the beginning of the process.
Tags: editing software, digital format, into digital, digital tuner, into digital format, video editing, video editing software
