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How to convert old VHS tapes to digital

I am hoping someone can give me an overview of what kind of equipment/software is necessary to convert VHS tapes into a digital format that could be saved in iMovie. Do I just need the right cables for the VCR or something more complicated? Thanks!

macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Apr 29, 2008 1:19 PM

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Posted on Apr 29, 2008 3:38 PM

What do you want as your end result? Just digital tapes, DVDs, both?
Which version of iMovie will you be using if you import the VHS footage?

I did it this way:

I converted about 200 hours of VHS footage. Because I wanted to preserve the original footage, I connected my digital DV camcorder to a VCR unit and placed my old VHS tape in it. I then used the VTR(Playback)-Record function to record all the VHS footage to the small DV tapes. Yes, I had to watch near the end of each hour of recording to change the tapes. When I finished all of that, I had all my old VHS footage in digital form, ready to be imported into my iMovies, a little at a time. I used my camcorder for that and imported into iMovie HD6. I have been doing this for all our family videos beginning about 29 years ago. I wanted to convert the VHS tapes first so that they would not further degrade while I was creating my iMovies. The miniDV tapes take up much less room to store. I am not as pressured to get the footage into iMovie, and save drive space doing the movies a few at a time. I delete them from my computer after burning the iMovie to DVD.

If you have only a few VHS tapes, don't want to preserve the original footage, and just want to directly import into iMovie, you can use a converter, such as Canopus to connect a VCR to your computer.

Let us know what you want to do, which version of iMovie you are going to use, what end result you want, and we can give you more specific information and instructions.
22 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 29, 2008 3:38 PM in response to Terabithia

What do you want as your end result? Just digital tapes, DVDs, both?
Which version of iMovie will you be using if you import the VHS footage?

I did it this way:

I converted about 200 hours of VHS footage. Because I wanted to preserve the original footage, I connected my digital DV camcorder to a VCR unit and placed my old VHS tape in it. I then used the VTR(Playback)-Record function to record all the VHS footage to the small DV tapes. Yes, I had to watch near the end of each hour of recording to change the tapes. When I finished all of that, I had all my old VHS footage in digital form, ready to be imported into my iMovies, a little at a time. I used my camcorder for that and imported into iMovie HD6. I have been doing this for all our family videos beginning about 29 years ago. I wanted to convert the VHS tapes first so that they would not further degrade while I was creating my iMovies. The miniDV tapes take up much less room to store. I am not as pressured to get the footage into iMovie, and save drive space doing the movies a few at a time. I delete them from my computer after burning the iMovie to DVD.

If you have only a few VHS tapes, don't want to preserve the original footage, and just want to directly import into iMovie, you can use a converter, such as Canopus to connect a VCR to your computer.

Let us know what you want to do, which version of iMovie you are going to use, what end result you want, and we can give you more specific information and instructions.

Apr 29, 2008 3:48 PM in response to Beverly Maneatis

I (or rather other people like my boyfriend and parents) have old VHS tapes from back in the day before digital recording. We want to put them in a digital format that will be easier to store and play and safer from eroding over time, so I guess the end format I'm looking for is DVDs.

I have iMovie 08 on my Macbook, and a JVC camcorder that uses mini DV tapes. I'm just learning how to use iMovie now, so I might wait a little while before attempting this, but I'm trying to find out how complicated it is and whether I need to get more equipment. Based on how hard it sounds, I might do it sooner or I might put it off for awhile while I practice messing around with iMovie.

So, your method worked using just a VCR, a camcorder, and your computer? No special converters? I have a VCR but its old and I don't know about the exact capabilities.

It sounds like it would be fewer steps to connect the VCR directly to the computer if possible-- do you have any idea how much those converter things cost?

Apr 29, 2008 11:59 PM in response to Terabithia

I recommend that you download the free iMovie HD6 for those with iMovie 08 who do not have a prior version of iMovie HD6. You can get it here: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html

And, do this tutorial: http://www.apple.com/support/imovie/tutorial/

It is more capable of creative editing and you have a quite a bit more control over your iMovie with it.

+So, your method worked using just a VCR, a camcorder, and your computer? No special converters?+
Yes, I just used the AV connectors that came with my camcorder to hook the camcorder to the VCR....which was in a combo TV/VCR unit so I could see the footage on my tv, just to make it easier. The AV connector cable has a special prong that fits into the camcorder, and those white/red/yellow prongs at the VCR end. The TV/VCR is a few years old, certainly not anything fancy or new.
I didn't bother with a converter since I just used the camcorder.
My computer and that VCR are not physically close enough to try to import directly, and since I wanted the digital tapes of the original footage, recording first to the miniDV tapes worked for me. Canopus makes a couple of nice converters...they are around $150-250, I think.
Then, to connect to the computer with the camcorder you will need a 4-6 pin Firewire cable.


+I might do it sooner or I might put it off for awhile while I practice messing around with iMovie.+

The benefit of recording from VHS to miniDV tapes is that the tapes are digital, they store easily and the footage will not degrade before you get around to creating your iMovies and DVDs. iMovies can take up lots of drive space, so don't be thinking that you will just import them all and save them for editing later. You would need a huge amount of space for this. Most of my movies are just under 2 hours, and occupy between 25-40 GB each. A couple of my movies were well over 100-140GB!!!! Yes, that is correct. I have a couple of external drives that I use for my movies while I am creating them. I usually have about two or three that I am working on at the same time.


+We want to put them in a digital format that will be easier to store and play and safer from eroding over time, so I guess the end format I'm looking for is DVDs.+

Because DVDs can break/crack/warp/melt/etc, you should consider exporting your finished iMovies back to the camcorder so that you have the miniDV tapes for more permanent storage and as a backup to your DVDs.
That is one of the big reasons that I don't use iMovie 08---it does not permit exporting back to a camcorder.

Although I do not save my created iMovies on my computer after I have made the DVD and exported the edited movie back to tape, I do save all my iDVD projects as disk images. A disk image can be up to 4.7 GB--even my large movies were automatically compressed down when put into iDVD. The limitation in iDVD is the total length of the movie in TIME, not SIZE. I use single-layer DVDs, which can hold up to 2 hours of content. Creating disk images allows you to have an exact copy of your iDVD projects, self-contained so that you can delete the original iMovies and the original iDVD projects. You can use the disk image to burn your disks when you first create them, and any time in the future. It is a good backup for the entire DVD.

Enjoy being creative with your movie projects! Post back with any more questions, and feel free to email me if you want.

Regards,
Beverly

Apr 30, 2008 6:56 PM in response to Terabithia

Anything can degrade. The digital miniDV tapes are pretty sturdy. It is recommended that you keep them in a dry, cool place. If you really want to do the best for them, you should rewind them once a year. I haven't yet done that--but I am considering it since some of them are now about 5 years old. 🙂

The other thing to consider about DVDs, is that they are 'state-of-the-art' for now, but what to do when another format replaces them? Yes, probably there will be converters, just as now you can get VHS/DVD players and just dupe from one to the other. I am hopeful that it will be a while before I have to redo all my DVDs, but already I am seeing that I will be wanting to do my movies in HD as soon as I get an HD camcorder! Then, I will have to learn how to burn HD DVDs!

I figured that the digital tapes will keep my movies until I need to use them for the newest format.

May 1, 2008 10:04 PM in response to Beverly Maneatis

Can't you use the camera as a "pass through"? I did many times!

your DV camera can "digitize the signal" from VHS tape to your iMovie in your MAC!!! save the middle step of copying from VHS to DV tape.

1-remove the dv cassette out of your DV camera,
(by removing the cassette, it will prevent the camera, to go into sleep mode-hence turn off)
2- put your camera in the vcr mode
3-connect you VHS vcr to the camera- verify that you see the VHS footage into the camera viewfinder.
4-connect the camera to the MAC via firewire and voila


Michel

May 2, 2008 3:09 AM in response to Michel Vézina

I didn't use my camcorder in the pass-through mode because I wanted the original VHS footage converted to digital tapes. My VHS tapes were beginning to degrade, some worse than others, and I had too many to get them into iMovie all at once.
I realize it is an extra step, but it made good sense for me. Also, my VCR is inconveniently located in another room, making it physically more difficult to do.
But my main reason is to get the footage digitized so that I can store the tapes until I am ready to import them, not worrying about the continued degradation as with the VHS tapes.

May 2, 2008 8:28 AM in response to Beverly Maneatis

I just did the conversion. Thought I would throw in the discussion what I used to do it. I had been wanting an "Eye tv" by Elgato for some time. I was looking at them and found out that the Eye tv 250 Plus lets you plug in your old VCR to it's input, (via RCA cables) and you can do the conversion through it's software. It was super easy........and I've enjoyed watching t.v. on my computer while I work as well.

May 2, 2008 11:46 PM in response to Beverly Maneatis

Beverly,

I totally undestand your point of view why you saved to DV tape 1st, but going by what Terabitha said "so I guess the end format I'm looking for is DVDs.", then using the pass through method, saves her one step in the process!

By the same token I also agree that saving to DV tapes, is probably the best thing to do "still" as of now, as saving to a DVD also has a major flaw. If you manage to create a scratch on the dvd where the directory is, then the entire DVD is rendered useless. Of course you can send it to labs and retreive some info.....but at an expensive cost. This leaves saving to DV tape, the most economical way to store info. DVDs and CDs are not so infallible as they were promised to be for 100years and more..... On the other hand, if you happen to physically damage a portion of a DV tape (same with VHS) you could always "splice" the tape back together, deleting only a very small portion of the data, and you'd be back on the road again. No such luck with a damaged DVD directory!

This is why the digital photos/video camera recording on CDs/DVDs are almost out of the market. I had a few friends that bought theses cams, because the salesmen, promissed it was a better format to save onto, and it would save the step of paying $$ for photo lab to put theses pics/videos on CD/DVD. You are essentially doing it yourself!!! All that not knowing, that if by mismanaging, the disks, or if the disc sessions was not "closed" properly it would wreck havoc with your pics/video. At a great cost of loss photo/video memories, all of them have discarded their CD /DVD digital pic cam, to the benefit of ones that record to solid state memory chip or DV tapes. Just 4 months ago, I was using a brand new video cam of my wife's friend for their baby's 2nd B-day. While loading a new DVD into the camera, it slipped and fell edge wise on a patio brick floor. That created a split and delaminated the plastic shell from the optical media....rendering this "new/virgin" DVD useless.... Imagine if I had dropped the "full" DVD I was replacing!!!! I would have lost over 2hrs of their precious video memories! The husband said "that's not good! what if the same happens witha full DVD?"... exactly my point! OUCH!!!

That being said, I still beleive in tapes to save stuff.... I will have time to die before the tapes are rendered useless.... because let's be real...who's really gonna watch all the "stupid" videos and 1000's of pics I took in the past 15yrs..... except me! That alone may take 6 months of straight viewing, 24 hours a day..... enough to kill someone out of boredom... I shall be buried with all my DV tape and my HD... ha ha ha

Michel

Message was edited by: Michel Vézina

Message was edited by: Michel Vézina

May 3, 2008 2:04 PM in response to Michel Vézina

+I shall be buried with all my DV tape and my HD+

LOL!!! Me, too!! 🙂

Having everything on DVDs scares me. Even the hard drive disks are a concern. They can hold hours of footage. When the drive fails, there goes all the hours of precious video. You are so right....if you ruin a portion of a DV tape, the most you lose is a few seconds.

Reinforces my position of continuing to use iMovie 6 since you can export back to camcorder and save your edited iMovies.

May 4, 2008 8:31 PM in response to Eric Basir

Eric,

Here is 2 thing that may be happening.

1 you have a more recent camera that prevents you from sending the signals to the computer because there is a "copyright" issue software imbeded in the camera, in case you were trying to copy DVDs or VHS casettes. My camera is older: TRV 17. So it might be the camera sending a "copyright signal" but it might not be the case cuz you are getting the signal from VRC to the camera.

issue #2 more likely.
it might be iM6 that prevents you from using a passthrough in order to prevent the same above copyright issue. Last time I use my camera as a passthrough, it was with IM4. I don't have time right now to try out with im6, but if you have a copy of im4, try that... it might work. With every update, there's always some new feature that are thought of that were not in previous version as people bring it to Apple's attention. So it could be the copyright issue. I have kept a copy of every version of iMovie on a external drive. I'm not sure if it is ok for me to send you a copy of an older version.... as it might also be an infringment of copyright.

So try an older version of iMovie, and if possible, try borrowing a DV camera from a friend that is older (the camera not the friend ha ha ha) and give it a try.

But e-mail me.

p.s. did you remove the cassette from the camera?

Michel

Message was edited by: Michel Vézina

Message was edited by: Michel Vézina

May 4, 2008 8:51 PM in response to Beverly Maneatis

Very helpful discussion. I have a question about the following statement by Beverly:

"Although I do not save my created iMovies on my computer after I have made the DVD and exported the edited movie back to tape, I do save all my iDVD projects as disk images. A disk image can be up to 4.7 GB--even my large movies were automatically compressed down when put into iDVD. The limitation in iDVD is the total length of the movie in TIME, not SIZE. I use single-layer DVDs, which can hold up to 2 hours of content. Creating disk images allows you to have an exact copy of your iDVD projects, self-contained so that you can delete the original iMovies and the original iDVD projects. You can use the disk image to burn your disks when you first create them, and any time in the future. It is a good backup for the entire DVD."

So if I delete events or projects in iMovie '08, the iDVD projects that contain the same footage will not be affected? The reason I ask is that I would like to be able to clear out space on my hard drive but I would like to keep backups of the DVD's I've burned (footage of our new baby) on my computer. It appears that the events in iMovie take up much more space than the exact same footage iDVD.

How to convert old VHS tapes to digital

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