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Video Capture from VHS help please

(17 posts) (5 voices)

Started 13 years ago by Dragonlair
Latest reply from Dragonlair

Dragonlair
Member

You guys tend to be very helpful for other cases so now it's my turn.

I decided to try to convert some of the old VHS tapes I have (some are NOT available on DVD at all) to DVD. I first tried Roxio Creator 2011 which had a special deal around Thanksgiving that included the video capture device (USB 2861).

I had nothing but trouble with the software even though my older Creator 9 worked fine. Their customer support and their forums are next to useless! I ended up requesting a refund and had to totally uninstall all my Roxio stuff. Because Creator 9 was pre-installed in this machine, I have no way to get back to it.

I have replaced Roxio with BurnAware Free. Now I'm trying to get at the video capture. Even though I gave up the license for the Roxio Creator 2011, I still have the license for the hardware and those drivers were on a separate CD. I have also downloaded what should be the latest form of those drivers.

However, a test with WinAVI Capture was less than successful. I was unable to capture to .avi format (it either hung or gave a divide by 0 error). I could not capture audio. It captured to DVD format (which I haven't figured out how to play without burning it). A test With Audacity with the input coming from the audio portion of the Device had the same result - no audio.

I am running Vista32 Ultimate SP2 with 2 GB RAM and 2.4 GHZ processor. I do not have dual core. The Device Manager says both the audio and video portion devices are working properly.

Can anybody help me? Either tell me why I'm having problems with WinAVI Capture or give me recommendations for free or shareware software that should work on my machine and do what I want to do.

I particularly want to convert "Fluteman". It's a low budget Australian movie that was sponsored by a deaf group. I cannot find anybody who even had heard of it. Even checking with the group did no good. They have no copies of it and it was never put in DVD format.

Can anybody help me? PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

Posted 13 years ago #
Idunnobutiwastold
Gaming Acolyte

Here's a suggestion...
If you have MS Live Movie Maker installed, the program is capable of capturing VHS video and exporting it to Windows' native *.WMV format. You will then have the option of using a stand-alone video converter for burning the captured video on a recordable CD or DVD.

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Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

I have Windows Movie Maker but not Windows Live Movie Maker. How do it get it? Movie Maker will import from a video camera but not a USB video capture device.

Posted 13 years ago #
goodgotd
Member

err... what kind of USB capture device is it? simple MPEG-2 stream, or a multimode device?

I have a wide variety of capture software I've tried over a fair amount of time, and some of it is pretty good at using a wide range of hardware. I have a rather hard-to-support unit myself, and keep looking for a wider range of options. But I also have a *bunch* of stuff I got for my (currently offline) MSI FX5700 vidcard with a philips capture chip of it's own. (yes, it was a pain, thus the current direct-to-divx solution)

Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

It's a general USB Audio/Video capture device. It can capture in almost any format from what I can tell, depending on what the software offers - from low-res up to avi formats. It's just a little box that has a cable at one end that takes the 3 RCA cables (red, yellow, white) or the S-Video (which I don't have) and it plugs into a USB 2.0 port.

When I tried it with Roxio, I got sound but I could not get the audio and video to sync and the video was very "choppy". Now I've got Roxio out of the picture and a self-contained driver, I can't get any audio to capture.

Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

Here's a suggestion...
If you have MS Live Movie Maker installed, the program is capable of capturing VHS video and exporting it to Windows' native *.WMV format. You will then have the option of using a stand-alone video converter for burning the captured video on a recordable CD or DVD.

Idunnobutiwastold,

I found Windows Live Movie Maker and was reading up on it just now. I saw NOTHING that indicated it can capture from VHS. Could you explain how that is done?

Posted 13 years ago #
goodgotd
Member

Dragonlair, it's not listed as 'vhs capture'- you gotta play the VHS to video, so what you're looking for is the capture device. (install the drivers first)

What I usually use is the old standby that was included with all sorts of capture devices, WinDVD Creator 2- there was also a Ulead deal that went with some.

you can try Debut Video Capture Lite 1.49 (info page here)

look up GB-PVR, it's a bit more complex- PM me, I'll try and give you some tips on the sound synch problems. (the *other* reason to go DivX before it hits the USB port..)

Posted 13 years ago #
Idunnobutiwastold
Gaming Acolyte

Thanks, Goodgotd!

Hi Dragonlair,
In theory, go into the Options menu and select a compatible video capture driver from the drop-down list. This worked reliably in Windows XP. I'm now running on Windows 7 and it's possible that the function is no longer supported.

Try this third-party front-end for video-capture. Maybe it would be compatible with your installed drivers/CoDecs...
Download link for NCH Golden Videos - "VHS to DVD Converter" Freeware (3 Mb):
http://www.nchsoftware.com/goldenvideos/index.html
(If the program prompts you to install additional applications — namely, Trials or Freeware — I recommend you postone those downloads for the time being.)

Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

goodgotd,

I have the capture device. That's what the USB2861 is. In this case, I have to plug in the device and then run the driver installer. It's a bit strange that way. The Device Manager says both the audio and video portions are running properly. I get video but I'm not capturing the audio.

I see both software options suggested, Golden Videos and Debut Video Lite, are by NCH. I had tried Golden Videos before but it didn't seem to be working right and left a lot of garbage on my machine. It's possible that I installed too much and that was why all the garbage that had to be cleaned up. It's also possible the the overhead of all the Roxio stuff installed was part of the problem.

Roxio's latest version (Creator 2011) is HUGE. It uses about 2 GB on the hard drive. Also, no matter how much CPU you have free when you load it, it uses ALL it can get and then STAYS at max as long as the video capture is running. I think that is why I had the choppyiness and out-of sync audio/video problem.

I'm willing to try the two NCH products. I thank you both for trying to help me. If they don't capture the audio then It looks like Roxio has boobytrapped their drivers so they don't work right if NO Roxio product is running. It's not for sure but it's sure looking in that direction.

I don't know about Windows Live Movie Maker but Windows Movie Maker (came with Vista) does not support other kinds of import other than a video camera. It does NOT support VHS capture. I checked the helps.

Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

My "conspiracy theory" against Roxio got shut down royally (I'm glad about that). I tried both of the NCH products and BOTH of them successfully captured the audio. That means that both the drivers and my capture device work.

I tried the Debut software and it did record in .wmv format (not great quality) and very choppy. However it will NOT save .avi formats properly. It hangs and if you wait long enough for it to save the file, it's garbage audio with no video.

However, The Golden Video capture did work. I am able to capture VHS import into avi format. I'm getting a lot of dropped frames to it's not good enough to record (in general) but the audio doesn't seem to be out of sync. It's a visual problem. I'm losing over 5000 frames for an under 2 minute test recording.

This quite possibly is good enough for some of the old "Pops goes the Fourth" programs I recorded (and I can edit out the commercials) and similar - mostly audio recordings - but not for other VHS tapes.

Thanks for your help, guys!

Posted 13 years ago #
Idunnobutiwastold
Gaming Acolyte

Should you care to experiment...
Currently, AVS Video Recorder is being offered for free - but the About document says that the non-activated version will only record up to two minutes!

AVS Video Recorder - now free. (145 Mb)
Version: 2.4.1.40
(The non-activated version of the program records no more than 2 consecutive minutes.)
24 Dec. 2010

Quoted from the About.rtf document:

The non-activated version of AVS Video Recorder has all features enabled. The only limitation is that you can record each video during two minutes.

-------------------------------
Download Page & System Requirements:
http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Recorder.aspx

List of Supported Devices:
http://onlinehelp.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Recorder/CompatibleDevices.aspx

Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

Thanks for the idea. However, my machine has the minimum requirements but not the Vista recommended requirements. However, it does bring up an idea to help with the dropped frames. I'm going to try disabling the Aero interface to see if that helps with the overhead and gives me a cleaner capture.

Posted 13 years ago #
Idunnobutiwastold
Gaming Acolyte

Good luck, Dragonlair.

-----------
p.s. I edited my previous post: the non-activated version of the AVS program will only record 2 minutes at a time.
Sorry. :(

Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

Hubby and I have been working on the problem and we think we have another way of doing it that will get our old self-recorded stuff done. We've been looking at the idea of buying a VCR/DVD Recorder combo that will allow us to play one to record to the other. Something like this Magnavox ZV457MG9 Dual Deck DVD/VCR Recorder. It should at least help me get "Fluteman".

Posted 13 years ago #
NolafromNZ
Member

Dragonlair, Here in NZ I'm always copying my old train videos to DVD and it is very simple. I use an ordinary video player plugged into an HDD Recorder via RCA cables. Once the correct 'channel' on the recorder is chosen i.e. Pr 1 for Sky, Line 1 and Line 2 for the video and a video/dvd combo etc, etc I start the video playing then press the record button on the HDD Recorder and voila! I have a copy of the video sitting on the Hard Drive. For me, most videos are around an hour long so I put 3 'matching' videos onto a dvd like 3 one hour New Zealand train videos on the one dvd, or 3 one hour English videos. This works every time without fail.

I would imagine that you Americans are far ahead technically and electronically than us here in NZ (sorry fellow NZers)and you probably have an HDD Recorder. I wish we were in the same country so I could do it for you and show you how simple and quick it is. Well, not as quick as a dvd copy/backup because you have to play the whole video which takes time but I have never had a failure. And I have a lot of dvds now so that if the old videos fail, which several already have, I've got copies of them. And I buy a lot of really cheap videos on Trade Me (our eBay equivalent) and put them on dvds to store them for the future.

Posted 13 years ago #
Whiterabbit-uk
Games Guru

Hi Nola, I do exactly the same with my old video recordings and taped vid cam recordings. Thankfully I'm almost done converting all my pre digital video recordings (always been worried that the video recorder and the old analogue video camera were going to conk out on me. They are prone to dust in the mechanisms that usually make them unusable. I just connect a cable from the old video recorder to the DVD recorder and hey presto I've got digital recordings. There is some loss to the picture, but it's negligable unless you have a large 40" plus TV.

That's quite a good idea. You can buy old video films 10 to the dozen for next to nothing now. No one wants them, or hardly anyone. We cleared out a massive collection of disney and other childrens films as well as some of my own adult fuilms and took them to the local charity shops and most of the ones they put on the shelves almost a year ago are still there.

Posted 13 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

What I just ordered is my first DVD recorder. The prices have been high and getting both VHS and DVD in the same box was the most convenient (and reasonably priced). Electronics are getting cheaper but with this economy, the definition of "cheap enough" varies widely!

At least I won't have to worry about cabling!

Posted 13 years ago #

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