VHS to mp4?

[jgreco]

So I'm at a point where it makes sense to me to see if anyone has suggestions.

Back story: my father is now 95 years old. He's been a music teacher and musician all his life, but has hit a point where he was admitted to hospice, then, due to Sicilian stubbornness, was able to walk back out of hospice a week later. Unfortunately, he's got memory issues and some cognitive decline. He had to be placed in a memory care facility, and so my mom also moved, downsizing into a smaller apartment. I've moved two elderly folks in the last month. A bit tired here.

My specific problem: several dozen VHS videotapes. I wish them digitized. In the far distant past, I've used roxio easy VHS to DVD for Mac and/or CyberLink Media Suite 8 to do this, but they don't seem to have updated the driver since 2009, and the device doesn't seem to usefully register anymore. I'm not looking for anything complicated, I just want to move the content to online storage, probably as .mp4's, so I can get rid of the bulky tapes. Any suggestions?

 

[winnielinnie]

I actually did just that using straight ffmpeg on Linux. Not sure if it's feasible in your setup?

VLC media player also has a capture feature. I believe it uses ffmpeg or libav in the backend.

 

[jgreco]

Using what hardware for the video capture? This roxio thing has a little USB2 dongle but it appears to need a driver.

 

[winnielinnie]

Using what hardware for the video capture?

Generic USB dongle, with composite cables. Modern Linux distros use the included uvcvideo driver by default, which seems to carry universal compatibility. Not sure about macOS.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07R71Q6MT/

(As for the S-video cable, it apparently doesn't make much of a difference, even with VCRs that offer an S-video out. However, I did notice it made a notable difference in quality for Hi8 tapes, captured from the handheld camera itself.)

 

[winnielinnie]

Going to pop it in now into my Windows 10 PC. (I've only ever tried it with Linux.) I'll see if it works "out of the box" or needs drivers to be installed.

 

[winnielinnie]

Device not working with Windows 10, and I don't have the "mini install disc" that came with the box. Works flawlessly under Linux (uvcvideo).

I'd imagine that macOS supports uvcvideo out of the box, without the need for additional drivers to be installed. Most recent generic dongles (such as "EasyCAP") use uvcvideo.

Windows 10/11 supposedly do, but this device is not working with any software.

 

[Constantin]

Alternative take, depending on how tired you are: A transfer service @ $15 a tape.

In terms of new hardware, the elgato system is pricey at $100, while seemingly-decent windows solutions are as little as $15. The current Roxio solution is $49 for the Mac and $39 for Windows. It claims Catalina compatibility, so it might be OK even today. I maintain a working copy of snow leopard and mojave for these kinds of occasions. I used to use eyeTV and their hardware to do this - my eyeTV250 and Mac no longer play nice, I suspect an issue w/the firewire power, otherwise I'd happily send it to you.

 

[Jailer]

I've done video capture in the past and it a royal PITA. A good freind of mine has an external capture device that uses real time hardware encoding. It's literally a plug and play device and I would highly recommend going that route. I don't remember off the top of my head what it is but I'll ask him and report back. He's a pretty cheap guy so I'm sure what he's using is fairly inexpensive.

 

[Etorix]

About 15 years ago I converted my family VHS and Hi8 stock to DVD with an Elgato Firewire box and whatever Mac mini I had at the time. It was very easy. The hardware is now in storage… somewhere.
For "several dozen VHS", which is a lot, I would not hesitate to go for a $50 Roxio or $90 Elgato solution over the "seemingly decent" $15 stuff to have good hardware and customer-friendly software to go with it. The main investment in this endeavour is one's time to feed the tapes one after the other and edit the output, not the device.

 

[jgreco]

whatever Mac mini

a $50 Roxio

Mmmm, yeah, I know that works (worked?) well. I wonder if I should use this to replace the 2010-era Mac Mini here. It's gotta give out sooner or later.