[mythtv-users] good hardware for transferring videos from vhs and dvd players

[sean darcy]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Mike Andrews <mra at xoba.com> wrote:
> dear folks,
>
> i'm interested in mythtv for transferring my vhs and dvd collection to
> the computer. do folks have a particular set of hardware cards or O/S
> to recommend for this?
>
> thanks!
> mike

For dvd it's pretty easy, for vhs it's harder. How important are the
vhs tapes? First steps of your kids or I Love Lucy reruns?

If they're important get an svhs vcr, even if the tapes are standard
vhs. The svhs vcr will output s-video. That keeps luma and chroma
separate. They're separate on the standard vhs tape, and you want to
keep them separate. It's a _lot_ easier to clean them up (denoise,
etc) if they're not combined as a standard vcr would do.

Feed to svhs into a camcorder. Almost all camcorders will do a good
job of analog/digital conversion, and keep the audio in sync. It also
gives you a reasonable storage medium for your videos. Use kino or
dvgrab to transfer the videos from the camcorder to your pc by
firewire.

Good luck.

sean