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Importing VHS to my MBP??????HELP

Mr. Clean

Mr. Clean

macrumors member
Original poster
I know that I could buy a VCR to DVD duplicator (standalone), But I would really like to be able to use my MBP, that way I could edit the video as soon as it is done, with out burning it to the MBP after making a copy. I also realize that it records in real time, no problem.

Is there anything out there that is not to expensive? Some kind of video input adapter?😕
 
If you have some VHS tapes that you need to transfer the simples way is to use a miniDV camcorder. Most will pass any analog inputs through to the Firewire output. Even a cheap DV camera is so good that the weak link in the process is the VHS tape itself. If you already have a camera then you don't need to buy anything more.
 
If you can't find a video camera with FireWire throughput, you should be able to use the Elgato EyeTV Hyrid.

Use a piece of coax to hook up to the VCR, tune the Elgato to CHANNEL 3 or 4 (whichever your VCR uses), click RECORD on the EyeTV software, and then press PLAY on the VCR.
 
aristobrat said:
If you can't find a video camera with FireWire throughput, you should be able to use the Elgato EyeTV Hyrid.

Use a piece of coax to hook up to the VCR, tune the Elgato to CHANNEL 3 or 4 (whichever your VCR uses), click RECORD on the EyeTV software, and then press PLAY on the VCR.
Click to expand...

I never thought about that. I have EyeTV Hybrid. Thanks😀😀😀
 
ChrisA said:
If you have some VHS tapes that you need to transfer the simples way is to use a miniDV camcorder. Most will pass any analog inputs through to the Firewire output. Even a cheap DV camera is so good that the weak link in the process is the VHS tape itself. If you already have a camera then you don't need to buy anything more.
Click to expand...

I have a camcorder as well, But no FireWire, only USB. Will that work?
 
Hello,

I know that you mentioned not wanting to go out and buy a DVD recording system and all that extra stuff, but you may just want to

Seeing that you will be backing up numerous tapes in real time, along with the noisiness that tapes contain, I would highly highly highly recommend to get a cheap Panasonic DVD recorder.

I have tons of experience with the panasonic recorders, and really love how well they clean up and restore some crappy feeds that I've sent to it.

Of course, when done recording your tapes on rewritable media, take the recorded footage off of your DVD, and do what you please be it archiving to hdd or burning a full DVD with menus.

In the long run, the quality of your backups will be much cleaner, and you can be satisfied knowing that your memories have been properly preserved!
 
harodude said:
Hello,

I know that you mentioned not wanting to go out and buy a DVD recording system and all that extra stuff, but you may just want to

Seeing that you will be backing up numerous tapes in real time, along with the noisiness that tapes contain, I would highly highly highly recommend to get a cheap Panasonic DVD recorder.

I have tons of experience with the panasonic recorders, and really love how well they clean up and restore some crappy feeds that I've sent to it.

Of course, when done recording your tapes on rewritable media, take the recorded footage off of your DVD, and do what you please be it archiving to hdd or burning a full DVD with menus.

In the long run, the quality of your backups will be much cleaner, and you can be satisfied knowing that your memories have been properly preserved!
Click to expand...


Thanks for the input, I just might do that. At the present time I only have 3 tapes to back-up, that is why I was looking for the essayist way for now. But having a standalone DVD recorder wouldn't be a bad idea.
 
Easiest And Best Solution...

I would recommend the Canopus AVDC 110. IMHO, that device is the best for what you're trying to do. I also use one to connect a standard TV to my editing rig so that I can monitor what my finished product will look like. You can get a new one for about $210 or look on ebay and get it for $150-$200. Check out B&H...that's where I bought mine. And hey...once you get your work done, you can even start a small side biz transferring video if you'd like!
 
Mr. Clean said:
I never thought about that. I have EyeTV Hybrid. Thanks😀😀😀
Click to expand...

Did the EyeTV Hybrid have a breakout cable for A/V (or even s-video) inputs? If so, that will probably give you better results than connecting with coax and using channel 3/4.

As for the camcorder question, it'll work if the following requirements are met.

1. the camcorder has inputs ... not all of them do.

2. the camcorder has USB/FW outputs ... which you indicated it has USB. The real question is whether the Mac is compatible or not.

3. if the camcorder does have inputs, you still have to worry about Macrovision if you're trying to transfer commercial VHS tapes. Just about all VCRs output the Macrovision copy protection, and many camcorders will respect that flag and turn off the inputs. This is only a concern if you're trying to transfer commercial tapes.

ft
 
It sounds as through EyeTV is your best option, I have used it to digitize my old tapes several times with great success and results.
I'd recommend using it over any DV passthrough feature on a video cam, it's just so much longer or more hassle to setup using DV passthrough or recording analogue straight to DV tape then importing. Before I had my EyeTV I would use passthrough on my DV Cam, it was very annoying to try to set up, not to mention the fact that only iMovie 3 worked with the feature (4 or later broke support for it on my specific model).

If you have Roxio Toast, you can then burn the disk straight from the EyeTV software without having to mess around with menus/themes and such with iDVD.
 
TheReef said:
It sounds as through EyeTV is your best option, I have used it to digitize my old tapes several times with great success and results.
I'd recommend using it over any DV passthrough feature on a video cam, it's just so much longer or more hassle to setup using DV passthrough or recording analogue straight to DV tape then importing. Before I had my EyeTV I would use passthrough on my DV Cam, it was very annoying to try to set up, not to mention the fact that only iMovie 3 worked with the feature (4 or later broke support for it on my specific model).

If you have Roxio Toast, you can then burn the disk straight from the EyeTV software without having to mess around with menus/themes and such with iDVD.
Click to expand...
Both routes have their uses.

The OP mentioned editing, and I think that the eyeTV files would be more difficult to edit than DV files. Not sure what the OP meaning of editing is, but to me, DV is the way to go. I know the newer versions of iMovie support MPEG-4, so perhaps the eyeTV files could be edited ... but even then, the DV files should be better quality, assuming similar input connection types are used.

As for iMovie breaking support for DV pass-through, I know that it still works for me. Both iMovieHD and iMovie'08 works with the Canon Elura 100.
 
ftaok said:
Both routes have their uses.

The OP mentioned editing, and I think that the eyeTV files would be more difficult to edit than DV files. Not sure what the OP meaning of editing is, but to me, DV is the way to go. I know the newer versions of iMovie support MPEG-4, so perhaps the eyeTV files could be edited ... but even then, the DV files should be better quality, assuming similar input connection types are used.

As for iMovie breaking support for DV pass-through, I know that it still works for me. Both iMovieHD and iMovie'08 works with the Canon Elura 100.
Click to expand...

The end product will be burnt as MPEG-2 to DVD anyway (so you'll end up with the same quality on disk either way) - EyeTV captures in MPEG-2 (wrapped in the EyeTV format, I believe) whilst DV must be re-encoded. EyeTV does offer simple trimming functionaliy, you can always export into iMovie for more advanced edits but that's defeating the purpose I guess 😛

Your right, iMovie is better for more advanced edits, but as far as getting the job done quickly, first hand experience has shown that EyeTV is actually a lot quicker when you just need to cut and trim. (Keeping the workflow in MPEG-2 means no encoding also).

That said it's personal preference. 🙂
 
Mr. Clean said:
Got another question for you guys....How can you take a screen shot from a DVD?????
Click to expand...
You can't do it if you play the DVD with Apple's DVD Player application. It's a copy protection thing.

If you download VLC, you can use that to play the DVD. Get to the scene you want, and use CMD-3 or CMD-4 to take a screenshot.

ft
 
ftaok said:
You can't do it if you play the DVD with Apple's DVD Player application. It's a copy protection thing.

If you download VLC, you can use that to play the DVD. Get to the scene you want, and use CMD-3 or CMD-4 to take a screenshot.

ft
Click to expand...

Thanks for that ftaok.
 
Got another question for you. How can I get a 1.5 to 2 hour video on a DVD????? Some of the VCR tapes are running that long. When I import them through EyeTV, they are about 4.8gb in size. How do I get them to fit on a DVD????
 
TonyBVideo said:
I would recommend the Canopus AVDC 110. IMHO, that device is the best for what you're trying to do. I also use one to connect a standard TV to my editing rig so that I can monitor what my finished product will look like. You can get a new one for about $210 or look on ebay and get it for $150-$200. Check out B&H...that's where I bought mine. And hey...once you get your work done, you can even start a small side biz transferring video if you'd like!
Click to expand...

+1 for the ADVC 110. I also have a Formac Studio TVR. Both work perfectly.
 
Mr. Clean said:
Got another question for you. How can I get a 1.5 to 2 hour video on a DVD????? Some of the VCR tapes are running that long. When I import them through EyeTV, they are about 4.8gb in size. How do I get them to fit on a DVD????
Click to expand...

You have to look at your bit rate. I'm not sure what the bit rate of your EyeTV files are, but DVDs have a maximum bit rate of ~9Mpbs. This translates to a little over an hour on a DVD-R and just under two hours on a DVD-R/DL.

If you have access to a DL burner (and media), that could solve your problem. Otherwise, if you have Toast (I think Toast Lite is supplied with EyeTV), you could further compress your footage to fit onto a DVD-R, at the expense of video quality.

ft
 
ftaok said:
You have to look at your bit rate. I'm not sure what the bit rate of your EyeTV files are, but DVDs have a maximum bit rate of ~9Mpbs. This translates to a little over an hour on a DVD-R and just under two hours on a DVD-R/DL.

If you have access to a DL burner (and media), that could solve your problem. Otherwise, if you have Toast (I think Toast Lite is supplied with EyeTV), you could further compress your footage to fit onto a DVD-R, at the expense of video quality.

ft
Click to expand...

How do they get so much info on a store bought DVD????Are they DL?
 
Mr. Clean said:
How do they get so much info on a store bought DVD????Are they DL?
Click to expand...

Yes, commercial DVDs are typically DL, but they also have the luxury of professional/industrial strength MPEG-2 compressors, so they get better quality at lower bit rates than you or I would using software/hardware compressors.

The 9 Mbps rate is a DVD maximum. I suspect that a typical commercial DVD uses about 6 to 7 Mbps. That will allow them to cram the movie along with all of the extras and previews and still have decent quality. You'll see 9 Mbps on the Superbit DVDs that don't have any of that extra crap.

Again, I'm not sure what your video clips are encoded at, but you're saying the files are ~4.8 GB. So you're about 0.4 GB too large (a DVD-R is 4.34 GB, not 4.7GB). Either trim stuff off or use Toast (or something like MPEGStreamclip or Visual Hub) to re-encode at a lower bit rate. Or use DL media.

ft
 
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