Crossposted from ComHall since no responses there.

Ok, I've got some old vhs tapes that I'd like to convert into video files for computer hard drives. Probably several of you have some experience with this already.

Which video format should I choose, for longer term support (what format will still be used say 10 years from now? what formats are "free" or more 'free' than others?)?

What actual method do you use to connect it to the computer? At BestBuy they suggested "Dazzle Video Creator Plus" by www.pinnaclesys.com, which seems nice and convenient, good price. But maybe you have a bad experience with it? Or a better suggestion?

It is painful.... I 'converted' over a dozen, all Home-Made tapes, using a DVD maker I got from COSTCO for around $90. VCR output to DVD maker input. Worked fine but had to be done in Real Time. I had a dozen or so more that I had made from TV VCR recordings. Better bet has been to find commercial DVD's for some, on Amazon..'Used-Good'; the Golden Oldies....

B

I concur what BILL said.
When my Mum wanted a load of her old VHS films (mainly aircraft stuff,BoB etc) put on DVD she bought a machine that did just that.It had both a VHS tape slot and a DVDR drive.
It was a pain in the a** to use and slow and wouldn't copy some of the films at all (copy protection?).

In the end I ended up buying most of the films for her on DVD anyway.Much less hassle although I am assuming you have films to convert but maybe just family movies?

for a home consumer, you'd have to do it in realtime, the best bet is a good VCR with an S-Video output for the best resolution and color spacing. any tuner card w/ an S-Video input and VFW/WDM support,

My Old Old Old Old ATI Tuner Cards all recorded directly to MPEG-2 in the ATI Software..

My brother uses a VCR hooked to a DVD Recorder to convert his VHS tapes to DVDs

Called MarcoVision, a flaw in the video that triggers a fault in recording devices, Even windows software had this (at least packaged retail software, ie ATi TV, etc). You’d encounter the same problem with recording using a PC to encode. I think ATI has a “disable marcovision” regkey somewhere, but that was back in the AIW Radeon7500 days

For Compatibility:
The DVD Format will be around for a while and most next gen BR players will play them. As well as any PC with a DVD drive.

For Portability:
WMV-VC1/H.264, Can be off loaded onto an USB HDD, and hooked to devices (Xbox360, PS3, PC/Laptop, Video Dock for TVs etc). Can have as many movies as your HDD can hold.

To be more clear: no hollywood copy protected movies, DVD's work well for that. I meant events I recorded, tv clips of old shows. And I'm not converting to DVD, but into an external hard drive. I mean to ask what the most common video file is, for longer term compatibility/playability. Thanks for the replies!

.avi for good quality, but large file size
.wmv for pretty good quality and much smaller file size.

There are plenty of others, but I think that's what you're looking for. Common and not tricky to work with.

WMV9-VC1 will be around as long as Windows is around.

Low Resolutions of VHS (560x480 for SVHS and 330x250 (320x240) for VHS) can be recorded on the fly directly to WMV using Windows Movie Maker, or another Windows program (Windows Live has their version on Win7 that works great).

I chose DVD media, rather than a computer file. For my purposes, they are playable anywhere, safe from HDD wipeout, and cheap enough.

Since I used a VHS to DVD machine, real time took a while, as did my adding custom titles. But I've got a nice library now. These were all home video recordings, so if I needed to rip them as a file, it should be easy enough.

Some of my more recent home videos have been on a digital camera that shoots in AVI. These are dang huge files, with half an hour taking nearly 4GB. When I'm done editing them, I compress them into high quality WMV, then eventually will burn them off to video DVD I can play anywhere.

Unlike video tape, filming each short scene creates lots of files that have to be edited together and exported, rather than a continuous film that's ready to view. This really turns me off even using the digital camera video recorder.

I copied well over 50 VHS tapes, most 8 hr but some 6 hr, to DVDs over the span of a few years. It took a LONG time, especially if there was something that screwed up the process like a brownout. I didn't have one of those VHS/DVD-R-in-one boxes, just my last working VCR (I think it still works) and my DVD-R routed thru my receiver to copy my old tapes of MST 3000. Once on DVD, I could easily rip them to my PC if I wanted to...but I don't right now. I've been slowly replacing them as Rhino and then Shout Factory have been releasing them in boxed sets on DVD where the picture and sound quality is so much better and there aren't any commercials!




The Jedi Master