I have a lot of old VHS content I'd like to digitise. This includes my old Messy Fun VHS tapes, so some sploshing relevance, but there's a ton more, home video footage, railways, etc. much of it on s-VHS. The other night I hooked up my old s-VHS player and was able to watch a bunch of tapes, in surprisingly high quality given I'm watching a 400-line-at-best source on a 1080p 49" flat screen, so now I want to properly record them to digital format.

A techie friend linked me to a YouTube video where the presenter explains a technique involving first using a device that does what the analog-processing chip in a modern TV does - takes the very complex composite video signal, which is designed to drive the colour and scanning coils of a CRT in interlaced mode, and first convert that into a pixel grid - re-draw it as an analog CRT would have done - and then feed that HDMI output into a video capture system. I can't link the video as it dealt with digitising home movie footage and has kids in, but the gist as as above.

And I can definitely see his point, a lot of digital video-from-VHS that you see does look poor, a lot poorer than the original VHS did - I was really impressed how well my decade-old £200 LG TV did with the s-VHS footage I gave it - so there may well be something in this "first convert and de-interlace, then record to digital" two-layer approach.

Has anyone had any experience with this kind of technique for recording analog video to digital? I know people are using AI to upscale old footage, but before even thinking about that, I'd like to get the best possible quality of digital start point, for onwads editing.

I'd be curious to see the video you watched.

I have a DVD-VCR combo unit with H.D.M.I. out. I send the H.D.M.I. out signal into my capture card on the computer, and capture it as 480p 60 fps.

Trouble is there were teens in it and possibly little kids in the background of some shots, and UMD rules are no under-18s in any circumstances whatsoever, and as an admin I have a duty to uphold the rules, so not going to try and skirt them even if it is in a completely non-wam context.

The kit I'm now thinking of getting is:

One of these to do the conversion from s-video and upscaling to 1080p:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Converter-Tendak-Composite-Upscaler-Nintendo-S-video-HDMI/dp/B00V2ULHBS/

One of these to convert the HDMI signal that will generate into a video feed the PC can record:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Capture-Streaming-Recording-Compatible/dp/B0BGMYPBF4

Of course this is all made slightly more complex with my stuff being 50Hz PAL rather then 60Hz NTSC, but hopefully the convertor will handle that too.


I'm hoping to upscale it as part of the conversion process, as 480p on my main 4K screen would be tiny. But capturing at lower res then upscaling is also an option, esp with AI upscaling as a possibility.

These days the process is very cheap and easy to do. I have been collecting stuff on video tape since 1972 when I had a Philips 1 inch format video tape recorder. Then I migrated to Betamax tapes in 1976 and ultimately to VHS tapes in 1979. I have had over 50 VHS tape recorders over the years, and by 2001 I bought my first DVD recorder and starting migrating my analog recordings over to digital DVDs and video files.

The biggest problem I had with Analog video recordings in the 1970s to 1990s was that there were 2 different tv systems in the analog world, i.e. PAL and SECAM system for UK and European recordings and NTSC system for American and Asian recordings, and those 2 systems were incompatible, i.e. you could not play European VHS recordings on an American VCR, and vice versa. I had to go to great expense to buy a multi system conversion VCR that could convert PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL system etc. Thankfully when the digital video age arrived those incompatibilities disappeared.

So....I gave away most of my old VHS vcrs to friends and customers, but I still kept 4-5 VHS vcrs in my store room for occasional restoration work.

I already converted over 6000 of my old VHS tapes to digital video some 20 years ago, via connecting a VCR to my PC capture card, so that part was a slog but is now over.

Once you have all your archives in digital format then now it is an easy process to install AI software where you can easily upscale old 360p VHS footage into 1080p or 4K digital video footage.

I am a non technical lay person, and I can do it, so you don't need to be a guru.....the main thing is, it is a time consuming process so it take many months to do this work,

If you need some tips, drop me an email.

MK.