Digitizing videotapes at home
VCRs, as you remember, used video cassettes. A variety of films and videos from holidays were recorded on such cassettes. Of course, many of us still have such videotapes, but they are short-lived. This is why many people are thinking about digitizing videotapes. You can find many offers for digitizing videotapes, but, of course, all these offers will not be free. That is why today we will look at the following question: how to digitize video cassettes at home? What exactly is meant by digitization? Video cassettes store video in analog form. Digitization is the transfer of such video into digital form, that is, into a form that is suitable for recording on digital media.
In order to digitize videotapes at home, you can resort to several methods. We will look at one of these methods. For this method you will need several devices, namely a VCR and TV tuner. And, of course, it will be necessary productive computer. With a weak computer, digitizing a video cassette may simply not work.
As for the TV tuner, if you don’t have one, you can purchase one. It costs several thousand rubles. For example, a TV tuner called Behold TV 607 FM or Beholder Behold TV 609 FM may be suitable for these purposes.
When purchasing a TV tuner, you need to take into account that it must have combined A/V input connectors. And you must have an A/V cable. If you already have all this, then you can start digitizing videotapes at home.
First, all components need to be connected to each other. The first thing you need to do is connect the TV tuner to the PCI slot. This connector is located on the motherboard and looks like this.
The TV tuner must be carefully inserted into this connector. You need to insert it there when the computer is turned off. As a result, you should get the following.
Now you need to connect the VCR to your computer or TV tuner. The connection is established using an A/V cable, which should come with the tuner. On your VCR you will need connectors Video out и Audio out.
Next, you need to find a standard VCR cable that has red (Audio) and yellow (Video) connectors. We connect these connectors to the VCR. Yellow cable into connector Video Out and red is at the entrance Audio out.
The other end of the cable must be connected to the A/V cable of the TV tuner. Accordingly, red is for the Audio input, and yellow is for the Video input. It should look something like this.
By the way, the last step at this stage is to connect the A/V cable of the TV tuner to the Combo input of the tuner itself. You also need to insert the video cassette into the VCR, but you don’t need to start anything yet.
Now you can turn on your computer. After turning it on, you need to install drivers for our TV tuner. After installing the drivers, a tuner shortcut should appear on the desktop, namely the Behold TV program. Let's open it.
The program is quite simple. We look for and press the button on it VHS. At this point, you can press the Play button on the VCR.
As a result, the video from the video cassette should appear on your computer. Now you need to tinker a little in the program settings. In settings "LF inputs"we indicate the standard PAL, and leave the rest unchanged. In the "tab"Video"looking for an item"Default default for Autodetect" and here we also indicate the parameter PAL. In settings "Audio"This item must be ticked"Peredavat zvukovoy potok po shine RSI".
Now we proceed to our main process, namely video digitization. To do this, press the button "Record". Shown more clearly in the screenshot below.
The digitization process can take a long time. On average, the time ranges from an hour or more. At the end of this process, you need to press the button "Stop". It is also worth noting that the digitized video will be in AVI format, and its size can be in the tens of GB. But do not be alarmed by the large size, since the digitized video can be compressed in the VirtualDub program, which can be downloaded from our website.
In order to compress a video, the first thing you need to do is run the VirtualDub program. In it we look for the tab "Video"and here we click on the item"Compression". Select the desired codec and confirm your actions by pressing the button "OK". Now you need to select the format of the saved AVI video, and also indicate the location where the video will be saved. The process of digitizing a video cassette at home is a rather lengthy and painstaking job, but this work can be done.
