Jeff, There are times, esp when ultimate quality is not necessary, to simply record the video off of a nice TV playing the video. Pulling old media into modern files is preferred if you have all of the dongles to make the connections, adjust impedance, etc. You can always start with the easy solution and spend time to perfect the most important of the videos. If you have a lot of video it might be nice to set up a video conversion station that you know has a working process. b On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 12:40 PM Jeffrey Jonas via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

I need advice how to best digitize video, mostly standard def TV/NTSC of VCF events.

I have several USB dongles that take composite and S-video. They may be adequate, but I don't know what one's really best.

I also have several DVR (digital VCR): Tivo, Sonic Blue replay-tv. Did those have good front-ends or was most of the attention to the subscription service? I know they need to be "jail broken" to work like VCRs. There's no big red "just record NOW!" button :-(

thanks

-- Jeff Jonas

I need advice how to best digitize video, mostly standard def TV/NTSC of VCF events. I have several USB dongles that take composite and S-video. They may be adequate, but I don't know what one's really best.

Any idea if they capture at 720 x 480 pixels?

I also have several DVR (digital VCR): Tivo, Sonic Blue replay-tv. Did those have good front-ends or was most of the attention to the subscription service? I know they need to be "jail broken" to work like VCRs. There's no big red "just record NOW!" button :-(

Good chance the dongles do pretty good. Do you have a good working VCR to play them on? Are the tapes in good condition? On video tapes, if the video drops out due to noise / old tapes it causes frames to be lost. When this happens the audio comes out of sync with the video. A time base corrector will solve this by providing a rock solid frame count to match the audio digitization, but wouldn't be needed usually if the video tape quality is still good. SVideo connection might give better video quality as well if you have a deck with it. It's out on loan right now but I have a JVC BR-811U SVHS deck with TBC, composite/svideo to SDI converter and SDI capture dongle for computer. Depending on how many tapes there are I might be able to digitize them for you once I get my machine back. - Ethan

thanks

-- Jeff Jonas

Just curious what medium, format, type, are you using now? Another words, are these recordings currently on VHS? Or something else? If you’re looking for a “ camcorder” I may be able to persuade my wife to sell her DVcam! Mike R. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.

On Apr 6, 2021, at 12:39 PM, Jeffrey Jonas via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

I need advice how to best digitize video, mostly standard def TV/NTSC of VCF events.

I have several USB dongles that take composite and S-video. They may be adequate, but I don't know what one's really best.

I also have several DVR (digital VCR): Tivo, Sonic Blue replay-tv. Did those have good front-ends or was most of the attention to the subscription service? I know they need to be "jail broken" to work like VCRs. There's no big red "just record NOW!" button :-(

thanks

-- Jeff Jonas