Bulk copying of VHS to DVD or h264?

[pete]

Our History HOD is affectionately known as Have VHS, Will Travel, because of his grip on antiquated video formats. Two walls of the history office are floor-to-ceiling with VHS tapes.

 

There's no way he'll ever get round to converting those himself, and anyone he approaches to ask about the task understandably runs for the hills.

 

So, who have you used for something like this? Say ~100-200 tapes.

[SteveBentley]

I'd be quite surprised if any commercial company was interested due to the copyright headache.

[RTFM]

We bought a VHS - DVD player / recorder combi and copy the VHS to DVD, then rip the DVD and put it into ClickView where we can.

 

It's time consuming but if its broken down into batches and everyone understands it can't be done overnight then at least your all on the same page

[SYNACK]

We used a DVD/HDD recorder to grab the files then burn them to DVDs. Some of the HDD recorders did have network ports and USB where you could copy the video off, a hacked Tivo off ebay with an external HDD may be one of the most efficient ways of getting it done.

[mavhc]

Older the better for vhs to dvd if there's macrovision to ignore

[timbo343]

We bought a USB video capture device off amazon and its just a case of sat waiting for them to finish. I would love to know if there was a quicker way of doing it though.

[SYNACK]

We bought a USB video capture device off amazon and its just a case of sat waiting for them to finish. I would love to know if there was a quicker way of doing it though.

 

Buy ClickView and see if they are all on there Not a cheap solution but there is a stack of content on there.

[pete]

We have looked at the VHS > X convertor/recorders (there's one sat in the staff room), but no-one sane wants to be saddled with a task of that magnitude.

 

It's exacerbated by arcane scribblings on the covers like:

 

00:35:21 - WW2 trenches.

00:47:01 - Emmerdale*

01:15 - Stalin Russia

02:00 - Vikings.

 

So it's not even a "push button, walk away" job.

[plexer]

Buy clickview and tell them to find equivalents and while they are pre-occupied burn them all?

 

Ben

[jimmy_2k]

make a list of all titles we need converting, post them on EduGeek and to save reinventing the wheel post the copies we have already made to each other. Will have to work out how to cover our backs when it comes to copyright but hey why reinvent the wheel!

[SpuffMonkey]

I'll do it for £10 per tape ;-)

[laserblazer]

If you have an ERA licence and the videos are recordings of BBC/ITV programmes, then you should be ok. Otherwise, there's a good chance that you are infringing someone's copyright. Unless we can prove that there is no copyright violation, I refuse to do it.

[Chris_Jones]

When this came up for us, we got one of those VHS / DVD combo boxes that could copy. We showed the departments how to use it, not to copy copyrighted works and left them to it

[Earthling]

I refuse to do stuff like that anyway. I always ask 'Which part of IT TECHNICIAN is A/V Technician? Where on my CV does it say anything about Audio-Visual? That's right, it doesn't, but you took me on regardless. I run the IT systems, not errands.'

 

Or some such.....depending on my mood.

 

[chazzy2501]

I offloaded this to repographics. I bought and trained them on VHS to DVD. We have videos with multiple titles but recorded them all on to the DVD with no chapters. The teacher still had their time indexes but instead of VHS21 it's DVD21 (and now WMV21 thanks to WINX DVD Ripper

[mole]

I asked staff to fill out a simple form - video Title, description of content, length (necessary metadata for a useful searchable video library), where the programme they wanted started and stopped and to get the video in the correct starting point. this was 2 years ago, so far no replies. If someone takes the time to do this then obviously they deem the video to be a worthwhile resource and I will happily convert it form them (if copyright law allows)

[bushby]

oh i remeber the job of vhs-> digital media straming (my last big project at old place) my desk consisted of bin full of vhs, bin full of dvds and bins of more vhs's

what i used was 1 video player -> usb capture card, tape player -> usb capture card and ofcorse dvd player -> usb capture card

i worked on many of subjects from the pasion of christ to santa clause 3: the escape clause

[caffrey]

Same here, oddly enough with history too, maybe they are preserving the past ;p (odd thing was some kids came to me yesterday because they didn't know how to operate a vhs player, that made me feel old....)

I used to use a vhs to dvd copier that we borrowed from somewhere but that put some rubbish menu on the front so I ended up having to rip that dvd and messed about with it in DVD flick to make user friendlier versions, very time consuming so I dont do it a lot!

[sidewinder]

I tend to copy the whole tape to DVD, not worrying about different programmes, then rip that DVD and edit individual programmes out in iMovie - much easier then as you can see thumbnails. Also then we can store them on the network rather than have DVDs.

 

Still a long, long job though

[tommej]

There's this great thing called a skip you can hire - might be worth a look

[SYNACK]

There's this great thing called a skip you can hire - might be worth a look

They're big enough to fit damaged users in too Edited July 3, 2012 by SYNACK

[Gibbo]

I just record the entire tape to a single MP4 file using an Aldi USB video converter (Belkin Videobus clone) then use Virtual Dub to extract the individual programmes to smaller files.

 

Providing copyright and ERA rules allow of course.

[Oaktech]

Apprentice? Work experience?

[jhothersall]

Just buy the Region 1 copy and then remove the region and store it on maybe ...