Video to hard drive (1 Viewer)

Wildman

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I have nearly 300 video tapes taking up much needed space. I would like to transfer them to a dedicated hard drive. I know I can load them into my movie editor render and save them but each hour of film takes around 3 hours to do. I know several of you have done it already so what is the quickest and easiest way to do it. What software/hardware do you use. Does it have to be done at normal play speed? Must be an easy way so what is it please. Secondly how big a hard drive will I need to take them.
 

Bailey58

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Never done it on a large scale with tapes but I have a Panasonic Hard Disc Recorder which I use to copy stuff from the TV through the Sky+ box. Copy in real time (usually on a timer recording overnight or during the day when I’m doing anything else) then edit any ads or stuff out and dub onto a dvd in high speed mode which takes 4/5 minutes for a 90 minute episode of something.

I occasionally copy an old VHS tape from an oldish dvd/vhs combi player that is also plugged into the system but do it so seldom it takes me an age to make sure the HDR is copying the right thing and not a blank screen! But the method is the same and can be done on timer when you're elsewhere.

The HDR has about an 80 hour capacity in normal play mode, twice that in expended play which gives the same quality on the eventual dvd as the original tape. Given it is now 7 years old I’m sure there must be something out there with a bigger capacity, more sophisticated and a lot cheaper than the £500+ I paid at the time.
 

schojac

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Suggest you transfer to DVD using VHS to DVD recorder (if you can still find one). Hardrive may sound good but if it goes you have lost all your video files especially if,as I did, you dispose of the VHS afterwards. Unfortunately it all needs to be done in real time. If you intend to edit, author, then it will take even more time.

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callumwa

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I had lots of old "original" Rare VHS music tapes and concerts. I used a DVD recorder. I put the concerts onto a RW DVD then loaded it onto a portable hard drive via the pc.

So a hard drive recorder will eliminate one step of that process. As fas as I know it normally has to be done in real time from the VHS tape otherwise you will just get a recording of the tape playing at high speed.

Cheers

Callum
 

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