Hi folks, how's tricks? I've got my hands on a video/dvd player combo, just need a scart cable to watch my old WAM videos! I'm thinking I can now copy them onto a DVD and then I'm able to save to my PC? Anyone tried this, would you know if I'm better buying a cable to connect it, only problem is that the PC has no hdmi outputs?

I think you'd be better off doing VHS to PC conversion, rather than VHS to DVD to PC.

The PC outputs won't be relevant for this, only the PC inputs and the VCR outputs.

This is definitely the case. You'll wanna get some sort of decent capture device, maybe with an upscaler as VHS video is only about 480p. If you go through the process of going to dvd then to pc you'll deal with more generational loss as you're starting with an analog signal and then doing 2 transcodes.

Thanks for the replies! I'm looking at cables/kits on fleabay just now, will this plug into the usb of my PC as its not got HDMI outputs? I'm just about at the limit of my tech knowledge here, no idea what an upscaler etc. is lol! PC is hooked up to telly by VGA!

What you want is something that connects to the video and audio outputs of your VCR, and the USB sockets on your laptop. Outputs on the laptop are irrelevant, it's input that matters - signal comes from the VCR, and the hardware and software convert it into a digital video file.

An "upscaler" is something that increases the resolution of the signal. Traditional VHS is 240p, sVHS is 400p. On a modern monitor that's going to be postage-stamp size. An upscaler tries to intelligently "fill in" to make a higher resolution signal, to at least DVD resolution. There are limits with what can be done but it's worth trying, though I'd suggest also saving the "raw" version so you can then try better upscalers in the future as AI advances.

Good luck! TBH I need to digitise my Messy Fun VHS tapes at some point.

Lemme stop ya right there. As a young whippersnapper, you can be forgiven for this slight error regarding antique video formats, but let me set the record straight for those who either never knew anything about analog video or have long since forgotten. Analog video formats were so goddamn ugly and stupid they should have been banned decades ago and erased from the human consciousness, but they will probably be around for another century or so.

"P" = "progressive scan". No analog video was ever "P". All analog TVs and monitors (the heavy glass picture tube type) were "i" = interlaced. Also, the numbers preceding i or p indicate vertical resolution (which, in analog means horizontal scan lines) All NTSC broadcast and recorded video was 480i. PAL (UK/EU) was 576i. This is due to the US being on the 60 Hz electrical frequency standard and across-the-pond being at 50 Hz. Early tube circuits used the very steady and predictable line frequency to generate timing signals.

Horizontal resolution (in analog, that was vertical "lines" that could be read from a test pattern) depended on the medium. Broadcast signals were theoretically good for about 440 lines (NTSC) or 520 (PAL) but that was almost never the case in the real world unless you lived next door to a broadcast tower.

VHS tape used the same specs for horizontal lines because that was not optional. It's how TVs worked at the time. Due to the slow tape speed and crappy consumer-grade hardware, VHS (NTSC) was only good for about 240 vertical lines. SVHS could maybe do 360 lines on a good day. Here's the kicker though. That spec was only for luminance (the black and white part of an NTSC signal). Color was developed decades after TV was invented so they had to resort to shoehorning the color (chrominance) information into the video signal at a MUCH higher frequency. VHS tech could handle the luminance no problem, but the color signal frequency was too high (3 MHz vs a few kHz for b&w) and got horribly truncated, so you basically only got about 80 vertical lines of color info. That's primarily why VHS tape sucks balls.

There are a ton of reasonably good converters on the market now that can take the stereo audio + the composite video signals from the VCR (red, white, and yellow, respectively) and turn them into a halfway decent 640x480 digital video signal into a USB port, which you can then import/record with any decent video editor. I say half-way because digital is really not a good representation of this particular kind of noisy, erratic analog signal. It's always going to be a compromise. You are also doubling and tripling identical pixels to make up for the missing info. (240 lines vs 640 pixels)

FYI, cheap "upscaling" found in low end software and even most decent editors is utterly worthless. It does nothing but make the video file larger. True upscaling requires some fairly decent AI tech that can extrapolate motion trends in a series of video frames to intelligently create "missing" information and turn it all into a reasonable approximation of an HD file. (cue CSI: "enhance. ENHANCE!")

BTW, with a very few exceptions, most analog video in our world was shot in 4x3 aspect ratio, whereas the majority of HD formats default to 16x9. You don't want to stretch SD to HD aspect ratio. It will squash everyone. Just live with the black bars on the sides or use a 4x3 HD render template when upscaling (not typically included in most editors afaik. You'll probably have to make your own)

Also, only a handful of the old guard used professional tape gear. Most material was shot on consumer gear. As I recall, Mark Kelly and crew used broadcast-grade cameras in the analog days, due to the fact that he knew a guy in the business. We definitely want to preserve all this old material, but I would suggest that nobody throw away their old master tapes after converting just yet, as technology is always changing and things that are now only affordable by Hollywood film preservation studios will probably become more accessible to us mere mortals sometime soon.